Marvelman #102

History

By mid-1955, Mick Anglo had been producing the weekly Marvelman and Young Marvelman comics for London publisher L. Miller & Son for approximately eighteen months, having originally devised both characters as direct replacements for Fawcett's Captain Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr. after DC Comics' legal action ended Fawcett's superhero output. Anglo operated his Gower Street Studios using a plot-first workflow resembling what would later be called the 'Marvel method,' assigning plots to a rotating roster of artists and then writing dialogue over the finished pages — a necessity driven by the weekly publishing schedule. For issue #102, dated 30 July 1955, Anglo scripted the introductory story 'Introducing Kid Marvelman,' with artwork provided by Don Lawrence, who would go on to illustrate the majority of the character's 1950s appearances and later become one of Britain's most celebrated comics artists. The British comics industry of the period did not credit creators in-strip, so the Anglo/Lawrence authorship of this issue is reconstructed from later scholarship and publisher records rather than contemporary page credits.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published 30 July 1955 by L. Miller & Son, Ltd. (London); the lead introductory story is titled 'Introducing Kid Marvelman.'
• First appearance of Kid Marvelman, the superhero identity of Johnny Bates (full name Jonathan James Bates), created by Mick Anglo and drawn by Don Lawrence.
• Kid Marvelman activates his powers by speaking the word 'Marvelman' — unlike Michael Moran, whose transformation keyword is 'Kimota' (phonetically 'atomic' backwards).
• Johnny Bates's origin is left deliberately unexplained; only a text box stating that Bates had been 'appointed by Marvelman himself' establishes how he received his powers — an ellipsis that was never filled in during the original 1950s run.
• Kid Marvelman was conceived as a male counterpart to Mary Marvel (the third member of Fawcett's Marvel Family), with Anglo opting against a female character; both Alan Moore and Denis Gifford later attributed this to the presumed demographics of the readership.
• The character debuted as a back-up feature in the Marvelman weekly before being promoted to co-lead of the new monthly title Marvelman Family, which launched in October 1956 and ran 30 issues until November 1959.
• The splash page of 'Introducing Kid Marvelman' was later used as illustration art for Marvel Comics' Marvelman Family's Finest #1 (2010), confirming the issue's status as the canonical origin point for the character.
• Alan Moore reinvented Johnny Bates as a major villain in Warrior (1982) and the subsequent Eclipse Comics Miracleman series (from 1985), where he is renamed Kid Miracleman; this reinvention is widely regarded as one of the most consequential superhero deconstructions in comics history.

Cast · 4 characters

Full credits

Key issues in Marvelman