Marvel Comics had a couple of big announcements today at the Cup O’ Joe panel at the San Diego Comic-Con, and one that frankly blew my mind. The big announcement of the day was that Marvel has apparently acquired the rights to Marvelman — or Miracleman as he may be better known as. (See SDCC 09: Marvel Acquires Rights to “˜Marvelman’.)

This news came as a shock to the audience, since the rights to the character have been tied up for many years in a long string of legal disputes. The announcement today states that they have purchased the rights from original creator Mick Anglo, who knows how this will work out with the other disputes, but publisher Dan Buckley went into a bit of how they were dealing with Mick Anglo and it sounds like they have everything lined up. I’m curious myself to learn more details on how this happened, but since I’ve never been able to read the work that Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman did with the character in the 80’s and 90’s, I’m very excited. Now specific publishing plans were announced, beyond a vague 2010 release, but Buckley said that they were talking with Moore and Gaiman, and the artists from the most recent stories, so it sounds like they are treating the character with a lot of respect. It will be interesting to see how much information comes out on this in the next few days.

Marvel Comics has acquired the rights to classic super-hero Marvelman, also referred to as Miracleman in the United States, from creator Mick Anglo. The company made the announcement during the last few minutes of the San Diego Comic-Con Cup o’ Joe panel.

Shortly after the announcement, the panelist, which included Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada, Publisher Dan Buckley, Jeph Loeb, Jim McCann, and C.B. Cebulski, donned blue t-shirts with the familiar “MM” Marvel Man logo on it.

Buckley stated that Marvel was talking with several creators who did Marvelman stories in the ’80s and ’90s. Both Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman are among those creators, but nothing has been announced beyond the acquisition.

Marvel hasn’t stated the full terms of the deal — whether they own just the likeness or if they can reprint past stories such as the unpublished Miracleman #25 that was written by Gaiman for the now-defunct Eclipse Comics, which was never published.