Can Miracleman be reprinted without changes?

After years and years and far, far too much money, I finally acquired a complete collection of the 24 published Miracleman comics by Moore and Gaiman. (With my luck the legal battles will end tomorrow and the damn things will be out in TPB in a few months).

But finally reading the whole series, and given the rumors that Gaiman and Marvel are talking about going ahead with reprinting them, I was wondering if they could actually be reprinted without a couple things being changed. Spoiler space for those who haven't read them...

Ok, that should be enough. Ultimately neither of these are huge obstacles that would keep the book seeing print again, just little things Marvel might have to consider changing.

First off, DC's Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family are not only the inspiration for the series, but in a couple instances the characters are actually shown in Miracleman. In the past DC and Marvel were on much cozier terms, but given some of the bad blood between Jemas and Levitz, does anyone thing DC would let this slide? It wouldn't really take a drastic change to the comics to fix this, but then you'd have a story so mind-bogglingly meta it would just border on the surreal...Captain Marvel was changed to Marvelman, who was changed to Miracleman (but was then changed back to Marvelman by Marvel, in all likelihood), who in the comic was inspired by Captain Marvel who's name had to be changed to, I don't know, Magnificentman or something.

A second quibble comes from a scene late in the series, featuring superpowered children playing a game where they fly around knocking each other into skyscrapers. One child declares 'I 'm leading him 5-3' and the other replies 'No fair counting the World Trade Center as two different scrapers.'

Now I love irony, so I found the line amusing, but I can imagine others being a bit sensitive about it. Do you think Marvel would publish that as is, or do you think they'd want to change the line, just to save themselves the possibility of getting complaints?

Captain Miracle, of course. Though one panel (which is all I recall ever seeing, though it's been years since I reread the series) is probably fine in theory. (I won't use the term 'fair use' since it tends to provoke Mike Chary, but single panel uses of the other company's characters for in-jokes and the like have been done before without anyone's bringing out the legal big guns.)

Besides, if DC really wants to get into it, they have a Supreme Court decision that says that the Fawcett Captain Marvel infringes their Superman rights. That at least suggests that DC could get an injunction against a derivative work of a derivative work of Captain Marvel, probably infringing on the preceding work at both stages[1], at least for as long as it took to sort out the rights. Given that they didn't AFAIK bother about Miracleman the last time it was published, I'd guess that they're not going to make a stink about it unless it shows any of their trademarked characters on the cover.

[1] Assuming, as I am, that Dez Skinn never actually got around to securing the rights to Marvelman from either the government receiver or Mick Anglo, depending on who actually turns out to own them.

This last bit reminds me of the rumour that 'The Twin Towers' was going to have it's title changed because of public sensitivity over the whole 9/11 thing. I'd hate to think that the people behind that action won so completely (as they have won in many other areas) that the American public would feel the need to censor the very existence of the WTC from their memory by excising it's name from all books, movies, etc. Even in this post-Oprah age of super-sensitivity, are Americans so afraid of their own memories that they would resort to censorship to prevent themselves being reminded of a vital piece of their own history? Tell you what I'm going to do....I'm going to find me an American and pin him down while I say 'Twin Towers' over and over again, just to see if he'll stick his fingers in his ears and go 'lalalalalala, I can't hear you!' If he does, you may have a point.

the idea that anyone would have a problem with the twin towers remark is just beyond me.

i understand that some people live their lives looking for something to feel offense over, i just take the "dont feed the trolls" hard-line by ignoring them.

so yeah, there will probably be some sad spat over rephrasing that bubble if it ever gets to a reprint stage. which is pathetic, but a good reason for us to have our originals.

all that being said, i still dont believe that in the current climate any sort of reprint is likely. regardless of how much of a 500 lb. power-cheerleader marvelman has in gaiman. DC canned "the boys" not long ago because of how it portrayed superheroes. marvelman makes "the boys" look like a beavis and butthead cartoon in its handling of the superhero myth.

to arksdad, you hit quite nicely at why construction of the memorials at the world trade center is still stalled in the courts. :/

It is not so simple for many people to move on so with time it would happen both in comics, movies and real life but it is very very touchy

people deal with things in their own ways and in their own time, however i dont feel that i'm going out on a limb to say that someone who has not had enough time to deal with their losses on that day is probably just reaching for something to get upset about if they decide to fixate on the content of a panel in a 25ish year old british comic book.

as a broader concept: revising history to make it hurt less is probably not a great idea, sanity wise.