Though Miracleman first appeared as Marvelman in 1954, 2022 marks 40 years since the character’s revival in 1982 by writer Alan Moore and artist Garry Leach in the anthology comic Warrior. Marvel has some plans to celebrate as the character’s return was teased in the final page of this week’s Timeless.

Timeless is this year’s one-shot teasing what we can expect from Marvel in 2022 with the return of Miracleman being a big surprise that was kept under wraps.

Marvel announced in 2009 that they had purchased the rights to Marvelman though the publisher’s use of the character has been one of stops and starts since.

In June 2010, Marvel published a Marvelman Classic Primer one-shot and in July 2010 began an ongoing series reprinting material followed by hardcovers. But, there were issues behind the scenes we’ve been told that things were still up in the air and complicated.

In 2013 Marvel announced they had “solidified” their rights to Miracleman and Neil Gaiman would finish his run that had begun 25 years earlier. A “lost” story by Grant Morrison and drawn by Joe Quesada was eventually released with a new story by Peter Milligan and Mike Allred. For the most part, the releases were reprints of older material. New material was announced to be released in 2017 but was canceled due to legal hurdles which were then supposedly resolved with a publication that was supposed to begin in 2019 that including Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham‘s work.

Now, it looks like we’ll finally be getting that and possibly more. The fact this tease was within a Marvel comic as part of the story and not an ad indicates this will tie into the proper Marvel comic universe. In a recent calendar released to stores, Marvel further teased the 40th anniversary of Miracleman’s return.

What does 2022 have for us as far as this character? Could the teased “Judgement” event that involves the Avengers, X-Men, and Eternals have something to do with it? We’ll find out soon enough!