take over from his predecessor, even picking up the numbering of the comic Captain Marvel was vacating. Actually, Marvelman was less created than adapted, an older character made over into a newer one by the utterance of a magic word, somewhere halfway between Shazam! and Kimota! – Shimota!, perhaps, or Kazam! The name was changed, the costume was changed, the magic word was changed, but underneath all that Marvelman was still much more like than unlike Captain Marvel. However, Fawcett Publications had not objected to Marvelman in the 1950s, apparently because they were complicit in his creation, according to Arnold Miller, so again the chance to claim that Captain Marvel had been copied may now have expired. Fawcett Publications no longer exists, with various bits having been boughtlonger be supplying them with Captain Marvel material for the British market. The Millers were in a panic, and begged Anglo to help them out, as they were about to lose their most lucrative comic character. Anglo went back to his studio, gave it some thought, and came up with Marvelman, which he then supplied the Millers with for the next six years.

In a way, neither of these versions of the story is entirely satisfactory, and the truth probably lies somewhere between the two. There may, in fact, be a third version of the story. The Don Lawrence website says,

Don Lawrence was one of the first artists working on Marvelman. Together with Norman Light and Denis Gifford he was involved with the creation of Britain’s first superhero. […]