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Young Marvelman
Young Marvelman was a British Golden Age superhero comic book, published by L. Miller & Son in the United Kingdom between 1954 and 1963. The lead character was originally created in 1954 by Mick Anglo as a replacement for Captain Marvel Jr due to Fawcett Publications ending the latter's titles following legal action by DC Comics.
In 1982 the character was revived in the comics anthology Warrior, and later renamed Young Miracleman in 1985. Since 2009, the rights to the character have been licensed from Anglo by Marvel Comics, who have reprinted some of the vintage material under the original Young Marvelman name.
With the British economy struggling to recover from World War II, a ban on importing American comics was enacted, leading to a boom in indigenous comics. However, a loophole existed whereby a British publisher could import overseas comics, print them and sell the results. This proved to be a lucrative move for L. Miller & Son, especially when they licensed Captain Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr. from Fawcett Publications. However, after losing a landmark legal case against National Comics in 1952, Fawcett discontinued their superhero material, cutting off the supply of strips for L. Miller & Son. Not wanting to cancel the highly profitable titles, Len Miller contacted artist Mick Anglo, whose Gower Street Studios had already created cover art for many L. Miller & Son comics. Anglo devised the characters of Marvelman and Young Marvelman to replace them, featuring a similar premise of young men who could change into powerful superheroes.
L. Miller & Son's Captain Marvel Jr #24 featured the title "Captain Marvel Jr - The Young Marvelman" on the front cover; inside the editorial revealed that Freddy Freeman had decided to retire and lead a normal life, with his place being taken by Dicky Dauntless as Young Marvelman. Thus Young Marvelman took over the numbering of the Captain Marvel series, leading to the character debuting on 3 February 1954 in Young Marvelman #25. A similar transition took place in sister title Captain Marvel, which soon became Marvelman.
Like its predecessor, Young Marvelman was a weekly comic. In order to cut expenditure in resizing or modifying artwork from American publishers, L. Miller & Son retained the same dimensions as US comic books. Each issue was 28 pages long, and the interiors were printed in black and white on newsprint, with only the covers in colour. Issues typically contained two 8-page Young Marvelman tales and a third back-up feature from the inventory. In addition there were humour strips and, bookending the contents, a letter from the unnamed editor (penned by Anglo) featuring a preview for the next issue and a 'Young Marvelman News' page, other fragments of news and plugs for other L. Miller & Son books. It was priced at 7d, and would stay that way until the title's demise. Back-up features were either produced by Gower Street Studios or were from other series licensed by Miller, including Tom Moore's Billy Brig and the Pirates and Spanish science fiction hero Johnny Galaxia. In-house humour strips such as Young Joey, The Friendly Soul and Flip and Flop were also used to fill single or half pages.
Young Marvelman was similar to Captain Marvel Jr: a young messenger boy working for the Transatlantic Messenger Service (TMS) named Dicky Dauntless encounters an astrophysicist called Guntag Borghelm, instead of a wizard called Shazam, who gives him superpowers based on atomic energy instead of magic. To transform into Young Marvelman, he speaks the word "Marvelman", the hero having arranged for Dauntless to receive his powers from Borghelm. Like his hero, when surprised Dauntless would cry "Holy Macaroni!". The character's origin was initially only relayed in a text box accompanying the first frame of each adventure, before later being told in the strip "How Dicky Dauntless became Young Marvelman" in Young Marvelman #64. While Young Marvelman had debuted at the same time as Marvelman, his origin story would establish that the latter predated Young Marvelman in-fiction.
Anglo initially handled the strip himself while it was shaped before involving other artists from his studio. The British comic industry of the time did not keep exhaustive records of creators - with the strips themselves bearing no credits - but among the Gower Street Studios artists identified as working on Marvelman, Young Marvelman and/or Marvelman Family were Don Lawrence, Ron Embleton, George Stokes and Denis Gifford, who would all go on to have successful careers in the industry. To keep the work on schedule Anglo adopted a system broadly similar to the "Marvel method" later used by Stan Lee - to avoid complicated scripts with overdetailed panel descriptions he would devise a plot outline, pass it to one of the studio's artists and then write dialogue and narration to fit the resulting pages of art. Anglo handed work on Young Marvelman over to the other Gower Street Studios at an earlier point than he did for Marvelman; James Bleach, George Parlett, Frank Daniels and Leo Rawlings were among those to work on early issues.
Writing in 1977 for his book Nostalgia: Spotlight on the Fifties, Anglo would evaluate the work of several of those who worked on Young Marvelman, praising Roy Parker, Parlett, Rawlings, Charles Baker and Mike Whitlock but noted a "quaintness" in the work of Stanley White.
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Young Marvelman
Young Marvelman was a British Golden Age superhero comic book, published by L. Miller & Son in the United Kingdom between 1954 and 1963. The lead character was originally created in 1954 by Mick Anglo as a replacement for Captain Marvel Jr due to Fawcett Publications ending the latter's titles following legal action by DC Comics.
In 1982 the character was revived in the comics anthology Warrior, and later renamed Young Miracleman in 1985. Since 2009, the rights to the character have been licensed from Anglo by Marvel Comics, who have reprinted some of the vintage material under the original Young Marvelman name.
With the British economy struggling to recover from World War II, a ban on importing American comics was enacted, leading to a boom in indigenous comics. However, a loophole existed whereby a British publisher could import overseas comics, print them and sell the results. This proved to be a lucrative move for L. Miller & Son, especially when they licensed Captain Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr. from Fawcett Publications. However, after losing a landmark legal case against National Comics in 1952, Fawcett discontinued their superhero material, cutting off the supply of strips for L. Miller & Son. Not wanting to cancel the highly profitable titles, Len Miller contacted artist Mick Anglo, whose Gower Street Studios had already created cover art for many L. Miller & Son comics. Anglo devised the characters of Marvelman and Young Marvelman to replace them, featuring a similar premise of young men who could change into powerful superheroes.
L. Miller & Son's Captain Marvel Jr #24 featured the title "Captain Marvel Jr - The Young Marvelman" on the front cover; inside the editorial revealed that Freddy Freeman had decided to retire and lead a normal life, with his place being taken by Dicky Dauntless as Young Marvelman. Thus Young Marvelman took over the numbering of the Captain Marvel series, leading to the character debuting on 3 February 1954 in Young Marvelman #25. A similar transition took place in sister title Captain Marvel, which soon became Marvelman.
Like its predecessor, Young Marvelman was a weekly comic. In order to cut expenditure in resizing or modifying artwork from American publishers, L. Miller & Son retained the same dimensions as US comic books. Each issue was 28 pages long, and the interiors were printed in black and white on newsprint, with only the covers in colour. Issues typically contained two 8-page Young Marvelman tales and a third back-up feature from the inventory. In addition there were humour strips and, bookending the contents, a letter from the unnamed editor (penned by Anglo) featuring a preview for the next issue and a 'Young Marvelman News' page, other fragments of news and plugs for other L. Miller & Son books. It was priced at 7d, and would stay that way until the title's demise. Back-up features were either produced by Gower Street Studios or were from other series licensed by Miller, including Tom Moore's Billy Brig and the Pirates and Spanish science fiction hero Johnny Galaxia. In-house humour strips such as Young Joey, The Friendly Soul and Flip and Flop were also used to fill single or half pages.
Young Marvelman was similar to Captain Marvel Jr: a young messenger boy working for the Transatlantic Messenger Service (TMS) named Dicky Dauntless encounters an astrophysicist called Guntag Borghelm, instead of a wizard called Shazam, who gives him superpowers based on atomic energy instead of magic. To transform into Young Marvelman, he speaks the word "Marvelman", the hero having arranged for Dauntless to receive his powers from Borghelm. Like his hero, when surprised Dauntless would cry "Holy Macaroni!". The character's origin was initially only relayed in a text box accompanying the first frame of each adventure, before later being told in the strip "How Dicky Dauntless became Young Marvelman" in Young Marvelman #64. While Young Marvelman had debuted at the same time as Marvelman, his origin story would establish that the latter predated Young Marvelman in-fiction.
Anglo initially handled the strip himself while it was shaped before involving other artists from his studio. The British comic industry of the time did not keep exhaustive records of creators - with the strips themselves bearing no credits - but among the Gower Street Studios artists identified as working on Marvelman, Young Marvelman and/or Marvelman Family were Don Lawrence, Ron Embleton, George Stokes and Denis Gifford, who would all go on to have successful careers in the industry. To keep the work on schedule Anglo adopted a system broadly similar to the "Marvel method" later used by Stan Lee - to avoid complicated scripts with overdetailed panel descriptions he would devise a plot outline, pass it to one of the studio's artists and then write dialogue and narration to fit the resulting pages of art. Anglo handed work on Young Marvelman over to the other Gower Street Studios at an earlier point than he did for Marvelman; James Bleach, George Parlett, Frank Daniels and Leo Rawlings were among those to work on early issues.
Writing in 1977 for his book Nostalgia: Spotlight on the Fifties, Anglo would evaluate the work of several of those who worked on Young Marvelman, praising Roy Parker, Parlett, Rawlings, Charles Baker and Mike Whitlock but noted a "quaintness" in the work of Stanley White.