British Superheroes

I was a voracious comic book reader as a kid and the British comics were always my favourite but I could never understand why it was only the American comics that had the costumed superheroes and why British comics were more grounded. Well in a comic book reality kind of way - the action was over the top but it came from heroics rather than superheroics. I remember Billy the Cat but that's all really. And while Judge Dredd could, at a stretch, qualify as a costumed superhero he doesn't really since he has no super powers other than a squarer jaw than Ben Grimm.

The superhero was an American obsession or at least that was what I thought until I read an interesting article in issue 4 of Future Publishing's Comic Heroes. Apparently British comics had its share of costumed crime-fighters with super powers. The article by comics expert Lew Stringer lists several UK superheroes and although most of them were before my time it is an illuminating article.

The Dandy comic featured a character called The Amazing Mr X in the 1940's. The character was named Len Manners and he wore a curious costume and could summon incredible strength at will. There was also a character called Powerman who apparantly gained his powers from the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. There was also a rather attractive fellow called Captain Magnet, as well as Maskman and Electro Girl.

One character I do have vague memories of was The Steel Claw but then only from reading old strips in copies of The Valiant that I've picked up over the years. The Spider is another character I remember and his adventures were still running when I was a kid, but he was more a super-villain than a superhero.
 By and large though British comics tended to focus on adventure strips - war stories, western adventures, sports stories and secret agents were always successful. Humour was also very popular in British comics and titles like The Beano, Dandy and Whizzer and Chips were dominated by humour strips.

 British superheroes just couldn't be taken as seriously as their American counterparts. Where they had Batman, we had Fishboy (Buster 1968) who was abandoned on a desert island and learned to breath underwater and grow webbed feet. Some other unlikely Brit heroes - Birdman from Baratoga (Smash 1970), Kangeroo Kid (Scorcher 1970) and Kid Chameleon (Cor 1970).

King Cobra featured in Hotspur comic and I do remember this character from my childhood but when Marvel UK launched in the UK in the early 1970's it was a massive success and the British superheroes seemed tame in comparison to all the new American characters that were cropping up. Of course most of the better known American strips such as Batman, The Fantastic Four, Spiderman and some others were already known on these shores and there had been British titles that had run the strips, but we now had entire titles dominated by the costumed heroes from across the pond. From then on UK comic publishers gave up on creating original superheroes and tended to concentrated on their strengths with titles such as Warlord and Battle Picture Weekly.

It was from this period onwards that I became aware of all the comics out there and whilst I would pick up titles like Planet of the Apes, Dracula Lives and Spiderman from time to time, my true allegiance was with the British comics such as Warlord and Battle which I absolutely adored and would never miss a single issue. It was not until 1976 when 2000AD came about that British comics were able to create characters that could compete with the likes of the Americans - characters like Judge Dredd were more than able to stand alongside the American heroes in terms of creating their own mythology.

The first truly successful British superheroes were created by the Americans - Marvel's Captain Britain made a stir with British comic book readers in the UK.

"The character was created by writer Chris Claremont and artist Herb Trimpe and originally appeared in Captain Britain Weekly, a British anthology comic that also included reprinted material featuring other Marvel Comics characters (such as Nick Fury and the Fantastic Four). The first few issues of the comic were also promoted with free gifts, including a cardboard Captain Britain mask and a Captain Britain boomerang - free gifts in the first three issues of a title were a tradition with UK comics. Chris Claremont left the series after just ten issues, midway through the 'Doctor Synne' storyline, and has since stated that this was because his view of the character and series was very different to that of the editor.Up to this point, the character had appeared exclusively in Marvel's UK comics - although some established Marvel characters such as Captain America and the Black Knight appeared, Marvel's American comics had not referenced these stories or acknowledged that Captain Britain was part of the same shared Marvel Universe.In 1978, though, Chris Claremont revisited the character and introduced him to an international audience, fully integrating him into the Marvel Universe via a story that starred Captain Britain and Spider-Man. Initially published as a black & white story in the UK's Super Spider-Man & Captain Britain comic, this was then coloured and reprinted in an American title, Marvel's long-running Marvel Team-Up series." FROM THE WIKI ENTRY

These days the American heroes are still being published in the UK by the likes of Panini and Titan, but there are still the odd British superhero popping up in titles like Judge Dredd Megazine and the long running 2000AD. These days it is the traditional war, sport and adventure strips that are no longer being produced and you know, I miss them.

The Year of the Superhero

It seems these days that there is always one superhero movie or another playing at the local multiplex, and this year will see several titles hit the screen.

I’ve been catching up on the X-Men movies – I saw and very much enjoyed Bryan Singer’s The X Men when it was released way back in 2000, but for some reason had never gotten around to watching the others. Until now that is – I recently picked up at a bargain price a dvd set entitled, The X Men Quadrilogy – isn’t that an ugly word …quadrilogy! It doesn’t sit right on the tongue, there’s an awkwardness about it, but I digress and four movies for a tenner can’t be bad. Now I’ve always enjoyed superhero comics but the movies have more often than not left me cold but, as I said, I enjoyed the original X Men movie so I decided to give these a try – watching them over a four day period – one film a night.
I enjoyed all of them, with Wolverine origins being the weakest in my opinion. Yeah I know The Last Stand gets mixed reviews but I  enjoyed that one and found it a fitting end to the trilogy proper. Wolverine wasn’t exactly a bad film, and Jackman was great  but the movie just wasn’t as interesting to me as the X Men movies, though it was cool to see Wolvie beat up on a helicopter. Maybe the X Men work better when presented as a team and the plots of the first three movies were certainly far more layered than the Wolvie standalone. The second and third movies seemed to be loosely based on the Dark Pheonix story arc which I actually own as a collected graphic novel.

Historically Superhero team up movies don’t really work and the pudding seems over egged, becoming far too much to digest – The Fantastic Four movies weren’t exactly hot and think how the Batman franchise went stale when too many villains, not to mention heroes were introduced – Batman Forever was naff and the less said about Batman and Robin the better, but the X Men, in the hands of director Bryan Singer worked well. Of course the emphasis was on Wolverine and Jackman was brilliant in all three of the original trilogy, but then so too were other cast members, especially Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler. But as a stand alone character Wolvie just felt lost, the movie too felt small despite some brilliant setpieces, but the Wolverine of this movie seemed more Rambo than rampaging renegade.

Bryan Singer was originally back on board to direct the third movie, but he left the series for Superman Returns (bet he regrets that, now) and Matthew Vaughn came on board as director in February 2005, but left due to the rushed production schedule. Brett Ratner took over in June,  and filming began on August 2, 2005. Maybe it would have been better regarded by fans had Singer remained, but the eventual movie did tick all the right boxes and some of the effects are incredible – moving the Golden Gate for one after Magneto does some cool tricks with the traffic and the final bam,bash,wow fight is a joy.  I picked up the prequel movie, X Men: First Class this week and am looking forward to getting a chance to settle down and watch it.

So as we enter 2012 the film industry is hoping for a good year with several superhero films hoping to generate some much needed revenue. Marvel films are to release The Avengers this May and there are high hopes that this team up will be another X Men, for Singer’s movie did revitalize the superhero movie and without it there would have been no Spiderman, Hulk or Iron Man.  Superhero movies are coming thick and fast at the moment with both Captain America and Thor doing big business last year. And of course the third in the Dark Knight trilogy is also on the way and to say that film is eagerly anticipated would be a massive understatement and that’s not to mention the Superman reboot, The Man of Steel (though that’s not due till 2013) , as well as the new Spiderman pic. And besides the biggies we’ve got another Ghost Rider on the horizon, a new G I Joe and a reboot of Judge Dredd simply titled, Dredd.
2012 is certainly the year of the superhero

Britain - we don't need no superheroes!!!

I was a voracious comic book reader as a kid and the British comics were always my favourite but I could never understand why it was only the American comics that had the costumed superheroes and why British comics were more grounded in a kind of  comic book reality - the action was over the top but it came from heroics rather than superheroics. I remember Billy the Cat but that's all really and while Judge Dredd could, at a stretch, qualify as a costumed superhero he doesn't really since he has no super powers other than a squarer jaw than Ben Grimm.

The superhero was an American obsession or at least that was what I thought until I read an interesting article in issue 4 of Future Publishing's Comic Heroes. Apparently British comics had its share of costumed crime-fighters with super powers. The article by comics expert Lew Stringer lists several UK superheroes and although most of them were before my time it is an illuminating article.

The Dandy comic featured a character called The Amazing Mr X in the 1940's. The character was named Len Manners and he wore a curious costume and could summon incredible strength at will. There was also a character called Powerman who apparantly gained his powers from the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. There was also a rather attractive fellow called Captain Magnet, as well as Maskman and Electro Girl.

One character I do have vague memories of was The Steel Claw but then only from reading old strips in copies of The Valiant that I've picked up over the years. The Spider is another character I remember and his adventures were still running when I was a kid, but he was more a super-villain than a superhero.
 By and large though British comics tended to focus on adventure strips - war stories, western adventures, sports stories and secret agents were always successful. Humour was also very popular in British comics and titles like The Beano, Dandy and Whizzer and Chips were dominated by humour strips.

 British superheroes just couldn't be taken as seriously as their American counterparts. Where they had Batman, we had Fishboy (Buster 1968) who was abandoned on a desert island and learned to breath underwater and grow webbed feet. Some other unlikely Brit heroes - Birdman from Baratoga (Smash 1970), Kangeroo Kid (Scorcher 1970) and Kid Chameleon (Cor 1970).

King Cobra featured in Hotspur comic and I do remember this character from my childhood but when Marvel UK launched in the UK in the early 1970's it was a massive success and the British superheroes seemed tame in comparison to all the new American characters that were cropping up. Of course most of the better known American strips such as Batman, The Fantastic Four, Spiderman and some others were already known on these shores and there had been British titles that had run the strips, but we now had entire titles dominated by the costumed heroes from across the pond. From then on UK comic publishers gave up on creating original superheroes and tended to concentrated on their strengths with titles such as Warlord and Battle Picture Weekly.

It was from this period onwards that I became aware of all the comics out there and whilst I would pick up titles like Planet of the Apes, Dracula Lives and Spiderman from time to time, my true allegiance was with the British comics such as Warlord and Battle which I absolutely adored and would never miss a single issue. It was not until 1976 when 2000AD came about that British comics were able to create characters that could compete with the likes of the Americans - characters like Judge Dredd were more than able to stand alongside the American heroes in terms of creating their own mythology.

The first truly successful British superheroes were created by the Americans - Marvel's Captain Britain made a stir with British comic book readers in the UK.

"The character was created by writer Chris Claremont and artist Herb Trimpe and originally appeared in Captain Britain Weekly, a British anthology comic that also included reprinted material featuring other Marvel Comics characters (such as Nick Fury and the Fantastic Four). The first few issues of the comic were also promoted with free gifts, including a cardboard Captain Britain mask and a Captain Britain boomerang - free gifts in the first three issues of a title were a tradition with UK comics. Chris Claremont left the series after just ten issues, midway through the 'Doctor Synne' storyline, and has since stated that this was because his view of the character and series was very different to that of the editor.Up to this point, the character had appeared exclusively in Marvel's UK comics - although some established Marvel characters such as Captain America and the Black Knight appeared, Marvel's American comics had not referenced these stories or acknowledged that Captain Britain was part of the same shared Marvel Universe.In 1978, though, Chris Claremont revisited the character and introduced him to an international audience, fully integrating him into the Marvel Universe via a story that starred Captain Britain and Spider-Man. Initially published as a black & white story in the UK's Super Spider-Man & Captain Britain comic, this was then coloured and reprinted in an American title, Marvel's long-running Marvel Team-Up series." FROM THE WIKI ENTRY

These days the American heroes are still being published in the UK by the likes of Panini and Titan, but there are still the odd British superhero popping up in titles like Clint, Judge Dredd Megazine and the long running 2000AD and it is the traditional war, sport and adventure strips that are no longer being produced and you know, I miss them.

Superman is Jewish!!!

Got a problem with fascist dictators? Simple, send for Superman.

Superheroes have long been used for various propaganda reasons - in fact the likes of Superman and Batman were being used in the fight against Hitler before America had entered the war. In the Feb 27th 1940 issue of Look Weekly there was story which showed Superman ending the war. He grabs Hitler and Stalin and flies them to Geneva where they are found guilty of unprovoked aggression by the League of Nations. The story infuriated Goebbels so much that he famously proclaimed, 'Superman in a Jew!'

A year later Captain American was launched and the hero was pictured on the cover giving Hitler a jolly good sock on the jaw. This angered American Nazi sympathisers and people opposed to America entering the war. The artists and writers were swamped with hate mail and later they had to be given around the clock police protection. Captain America would continue to feature in stories where he was pitted against an evil axis force. This continued until the war was over and later in the 50's the character became a commie basher.

In the 60' and 70's, Stan Lee ignored the Comics Code's policy on not mentioning drugs, by having Spiderman spell out the dangers of illegal drugs. And Superman was used as part of an anti-smoking campaign during the mid to late 70's in which the man of steel faced off against the evil NickOteen. And the Green Arrow strip caused a sensation when it was revealed that his trusted sidekick was a drug addict - mind you the fact that he was called Speedy should have been a clue.


In more recent years many public service organisations have used the costumed heroes to get their message across. And there was one notorious issue of Spiderman that revealed that Peter Parker had been the victim of homosexual molestation when he was a child. This event though has been written out of the character's official biography.

And even today heroes continue to be used by everyone from government to health organisations. Back in 2005 Donald Rumsfeld appeared on stage with actors in Spiderman and Captain America costumes to support Marvel's Free Comic Books for Troops on the Front-Line Initiative.