It's only February, but the tale of the CAPTAIN BRITAIN copyright warning must already be a frontrunner for overhyped non-event of the year. Vast screeds of opinion and outrage have been generated by an argument that, in total, runs something like this: "They haven't put on that copyright warning they promised me. Bastards." "Sorry, Alan. Dreadful cock-up. We'll fix it on the next printing." "Oh, alright then. I've calmed down now. Mind you get it right this time, okay?"

Mildly interesting, but, when you get down to it, really not terribly important. But this is Alan Moore, and this is Marvel, and the reaction has been interesting largely for what it tells us about some of fandom's cherished assumptions. Two core themes keep cropping up in most of the discussions on this topic - that the state of Alan Moore's relationship with Marvel is desperately important in and of itself, and that the whole affair in some way vindicates the viewpoint that Marvel is basically very evil and bad.

Now, nobody disputes the importance of Alan Moore's work. Highly influential on a generation of creators. Somebody who showed new ways forward for comics. CAPTAIN BRITAIN is one of his lesser works, but still certainly an interesting one. But then, this isn't a story about Moore's work, it's a story about his relationship with a publisher.

Equally, Moore has every right to be annoyed that the agreed copyright warning did not appear. Whether by accident or design, Marvel didn't honour its deal with him.

What's less clear is why, in the greater scheme of things, it really matters whether Moore is annoyed with Marvel or not. After all, he hasn't written anything for them in years. Nor, despite a general thawing of relations under the Quesada regime, was there any particular reason to think he was going to.

The CAPTAIN BRITAIN copyright story may be the non-event of the year. Moore is nicely settled in with DC/WildStorm and his ABC imprint at the moment. Pretty much anything he wants to publish with some kind of fantasy element to it fits happily into the ABC imprint. Anything without a fantasy element would probably be shopped round several other willing publishers before coming within a mile of Marvel, if only because Marvel just doesn't publish that kind of thing.

About the only thing Marvel has to offer Moore is a library of pre-existing characters. This may not be quite as unappealing to Moore as some purists would like to think. This is, after all, the man who wrote LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, which is entirely based on playing with other people's creations. It's always baffled me that so many people who love this series can profess incomprehension at why a writer would want to write other people's characters. But then again, if Moore really wanted to use a Marvel superhero, he'd be perfectly capable of creating his own thinly veiled version. He's done it before. The character library isn't that big a draw.

Yet there seems to be a widespread assumption that bringing Alan Moore back to Marvel ought in some way to be Joe Quesada's Holy Grail, even though there is no real reason to think that it's even achievable.

To some extent this is understandable. Marvel's big idea over the last couple of years has been to reinvent itself as a more upmarket publisher and present itself as a more risk-taking, creator-driven line in comparison to its generic 1990s output. A conscious effort has been made to present Marvel as the natural home of quality mainstream comics.

Sometimes Marvel seems to be trying almost too hard - there's something inescapably amusing about seeing the origin of Wolverine played as a costume drama. But every time Marvel gets a creator in the door who is inextricably associated with quality and artistic merit, it helps the image. The upcoming Neil Gaiman fundraising miniseries will do nicely towards improving Marvel's image in these target areas. (And it doesn't hurt that it's raising funds for a legal dispute that really involves the question of who's the proper beneficiary of a shitload of conflicting assignations, but which, if you squint at it from the right angle, can easily be mistaken for a creator-rights crusade.)

It's widely assumed that Moore's return to Marvel ought to be Quesada's Holy Grail. Bringing in Alan Moore, who practically embodies the concept of intelligent English language comics to so many people, would be a coup. It would be the final stage in the company's transformation. The ultimate endorsement.

But it isn't likely to happen, and it never was, so there's not much point getting so worked up about it. Yes, it would be nice for Marvel to improve relations with Alan Moore, but it's hardly the end of the world if the company doesn't manage it. It's not like Marvel's missing out on some massive cash windfall that DC is getting from PROMETHEA.

Moore would be a trophy writer for Marvel - lovely to have him, genuinely lovely, but really, there are more pressing things to be worrying about than this. The editors at Marvel have enough highly reputable writers on their books right now that they don't really need Moore. And he doesn't need them, and their creative and business agendas don't meet in the slightest. So even if they were the best of mates, a Moore/Marvel alliance would still be unlikely.

Which brings us to the other big theme: that this story is important because of what it tells us about Marvel's business practices - in other words, that Evil Marvel screwed poor Alan again.

Of course, Marvel is a corporation, which means it's in it to make money. And this means that lurking within Marvel there are the much-loathed decision-makers often referred to as The Suits. And as we all know, The Suits hate and fear all forms of goodness and light. Instead, they worship money, Satan and Starbucks.

Naturally this is all arrant nonsense. Even if you start from the premise that The Suits are solely obsessed with money - and god knows, given Marvel's financial position, somebody damn well ought to be - this does not necessarily mean that the company's goals are irreconcilable with everyone else's. You may want to expand the comics audience in order to promote the medium; Marvel wants to do it in order to make even more money. It's still a degree of common ground. Some parties are too dim or short-sighted to appreciate that, but that's just dumbness, nothing more.

As we know, The Suits at Marvel fear goodness and light and worship Satan. Nonetheless, even on the stereotype, The Suits are greedy rather than malicious. It might be credible that they would screw somebody over in order to take advantage of a legal loophole. It is rather less credible that they would do it just for a laugh, which is essentially what many people seem to believe.

Some deeply implausible attempts have been put forward to explain why there might be a money-grabbing explanation. Retaining the rights to the Special Executive? Come off it, I'll give you 25p for the lot of them. Setting a bad precedent? Marvel's already effectively conceded the precedent by holding off publishing the book until it had Moore's consent; besides which, this is an unusual exception caused by outdated Marvel UK practices. At the end of the day, these are just rationalisations for "Marvel Is Evil".

It's much more likely that somebody within Marvel screwed up rather badly. It's not like Marvel has such a track record of perfectionism as to make this implausible. The damn book is missing a page of story, for god's sake. Frankly, the indicia reads to me like the classic lawyer's error, "filling in the blanks without actually bothering to think about what you're writing". It seems like the work of a draftsman who was asleep at the wheel - or, at least, a draftsman who never got the message that the usual style wasn't appropriate for this particular book. This kind of thing happens all the time. It shouldn't, but it does.

The sort of feeding frenzy we've seen over this staggeringly inconsequential story is trying to hammer a banal set of events into some kind of clash of the titans. It's looking for heroes and villains where none exist. It's all rather adolescent.

The industry soap opera might not be as fun if you stop assuming that everyone is either a creative saint or a scheming corporate villain, but it'll make much more sense.

Paul O'Brien is the author of the weekly X-AXIS comics review.

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