Young Marvelman

Publication Dates: February 1954 – February 1963
Number of Issues Published: 346 (#25 – #370)
Color: Color cover; black & white interior
Dimensions: 24.5 x 17.5 cm
Paper Stock: paper cover; newsprint interior
Binding: Saddle-stitched
Publishing Format: was ongoing series

Numbering continued from CAPTAIN MARVEL JR. (L. Miller & Co.; 1953 series)

Dicky Dauntless was a teenage messanger boy working for the Transatlantic Messenger Service who was given superhuman powers like those of his mentor Marvelman by the astrophysicist Guntag Barghelt (he could transform from his normal self into the super powered Young Marvelman by simply saying his mentor’s name, “Marvelman”). He fought crime both alone and alongside Marvelman and Kid Marvelman in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, taking on villains such as Dr. Emil Gargunza, Young Gargunza and Young Nastyman before fading into obscurity.

Young Marvelman was created by Mick Anglo for L.Miller & Son in the 1950s, and was a fairly generic teen superhero, created as an analogue to the American Captain Marvel Jr. The later revelations about his origins were the creation of Alan Moore writing for Warrior magazine in the 1980s and later for the American series Miracleman published by Eclipse Comics (in which Young Marvelman was duly renamed “Young Miracleman” for the same legal reasons that had prompted Marvelman to become Miracleman; the publishers were afraid of being sued by Marvel Comics. However, since Marvel now own the rights to these characters but not, it seems, to the 1980s stories, that later information may now be considered apocryphal.

– Young Marvelman starred in his own title, as well as in several Young Marvelman Annual’s.
– Young Marvelman was supposedly an American in the Miller & Son series’, but curiously seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time in Britain, particularly in the annuals. In the 1980s revival, however, Dicky Dauntless is quite definitely British. Even in the Miller & Son stories, though, YM’s speech is continually peppered with British terms.

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