With the release of Marvel’s first Miracleman reprint collection out this week, the publisher has released the video below featuring Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso, Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada, and writer Neil Gaiman looking back at the classic Brit superhero and his place in comic book history.

It’s only a little over a minute and a half and can’t get into the occasionally messy history of the character, but it does touch briefly on the impact the 80’s period Miracleman (called Marvelman in the UK back in the comics magazine Warrior) would have on subsequent generations of comics creators and fans.

It was under Alan Moore that the character became one of the first comic properties to explore what might really happen if beings with superpowers were unleashed upon the real world, culminating in brutal, bloody battles above the skies and mass carnage.

Fun stuff!

Neil Gaiman followed Moore with a stint on the book in the 90’s, when the rights moved over to Eclipse, who in turn (allegedly) sold the rights to Spawn creator Todd MacFarlane, at which point it all became a tangled mess of who owns what (it turns out, Eclipse didn’t), before the rights went to Gaiman, who subsequently authorized Marvel to reprint the book.

Marvel is reprinting Gaiman’s Eclipse period with plans to continue the story the writer began back in the 90’s.

The synopsis is below:

“KIMOTA! With one magic word, a long-forgotten legend lives again! Freelance reporter Michael Moran always knew he was meant for something more-now, an unexpected series of events leads him to reclaim his destiny as Miracleman! The groundbreaking graphic novel that heralded a literary revolution begins here in A DREAM OF FLYING. After nearly two decades away, Miracleman uncovers his origins and their connection to the British military’s “Project Zarathustra” – while his alter ego, Michael Moran, must reconcile his life as the lesser half of a god. Available digitally and in print wherever comics and books are sold.”