I was asked about what would make a British super hero comic unique and not an Americanised version of Britain? Well, I think I have answered this question more than ten times. Here is a post from 2022 on the subject and with lots of links.
I would say that anyone interested ought to look at Paul Grist's Jack Staff or the VERY short lived Mud Man. It had references to popular British TV classics as well as comic characters and the settings were all "down our street" -they could be in any town in the UK. I picked up a copy of no. 3 at Forbidden Planet Bristol and the assistant there looked it over at the till and asked "Are you sure? Not very good art!" When I said I was sure he gave an eye roll.
It is not a "draw comics the way Marvel never really used to" style but it exudes fun and I loved it and despite what the assistant said the art style worked. I have written before that Grist's The Union for Marvel Comics was a mess. I tried reading it again a month ago and still think so. If only Marvel had the guts to have aid to him: "Write and draw it like you normally would".
Although Grant Morrison (are we still allowed to mention him?) obviously knew little about some of the characters in his 2000 AD series Zenith the story worked and we were dealing with alternative Earths. Steve Yeowell's art style worked perfectly and I still read the collected volumes once or twice a year.
Read on!
Without being facetious the answer to that question is...it being British. To stamp "local" on something you have to set a story or add a scene that people in a country will recognise. For instance I twice set Germany's D-Gruppe in stories at the time of the Narri Narro festival -the good old Narri Narros they used to televise back in the 1980s-1990s with characters from folklore or whatever.
Germans would know what Narri Narro is immediately -in fact most of the scenes set in Germany they ought to recognise such as Externsteine and Herman's Denkmal.
For the UK stories have to have the "Fish and Chips" element; D. C. Thomson's athlete Alf Tupper was often depicted have a fish and chip lot. In fact most British comic characters at one time or another could be seen scoffing down chips.
Above -Alf Tupper scoffing down newspaper wrapped chips. How much more British could he be? Unfortunately the Americanisation through media means he would need to be seen noshing on a pizza. In fact...2022 he'd be chewing of alfalfa on stone ground wrap. At this point I hurt my eyes as I rolled them up far too severely.
Sometimes you will catch a standing gag in a Black Tower comic based around fish and chips. In a Black Tower Super Heroes story The Avenger is disgusted to find that "Tupper's Chip Shop" (no relation in any way to Alf Tupper) of which he is a long standing customer, has run out of vegetarian sausages -the last being handed out to the Druid. On another occasion the Avenger and Jon Future are sat in a park having a "chip supper" and discuss the finer point of chips.
Ahh, for the days when you used to get your chip in (biodegradable) grease proof sachet and wrapped in newspaper. Now its all far too expensive and comes in polystyrene clam boxes. So..."American".
Dammit we even had a comic titled Whizzer and Chips!
See?
Another traditional bit o' nosh was bangers and mash with peas (unless you were one of those 1970s kids had your bangers and mash with ...baked beans..yeeeuw).
A nice big plate full of bangers and mash -no gravy you will note (so many make that mistake!) Of course if you are a vegetarian you could replace the meat sausage with Quorn sausages or even make your own with Sosmix! It's all in the new Black Tower title Twenty-Two Recipes For Vegetarian Bangers (out in May).
Yep, even traditionbalist paper Punch were proud to show the traditional bangers and mash in its pages!
Food-Drink-Cartoons-Punch (1990-08-03)
All the real kids of my era used to love bangers and mash...so did the comic strip characters including Beryl the Peril and Minnie the Minx...
Of course modern kids do not have the intestinal fortitude of 1960s kids. "How many calories are in each sausage?" "Is this free roaming?" and "Is there no vegetarian option, mpother?" Look at this kid below being offered what any kid would get for tea in the 1960s before asking "Any rasberry ripple for afters?"
Of course, 1960s kids would have made that face if they found baked beans with their bangers and mash (I really must stop thinkling about that crime).
Then we have that traditional British get-a-way of the seaside. Immortalised since the 1930s in movies, then TV and radio and in Boys Papers going back to the 19th century. Of course, the comics brought us the Bumper Summer Specials featuring all the favourite characters at the beach.
And, yes, of course Black Tower has followed the tradition of seaside action and adventure and Weston-Super-Mare has had its fair share. Oh, and yes that is Patrick Troughton's 2nd Dr Who with the checkered trousers and big hat on the front of TV Comic. I was asked whether days out at the seaside was not a little old fashioned but judging by the news reports of packed beaches recently...no.
A cup of tea may still be a traditional British staple (if you drink it -I was weaned on "Ein tasse kaffee" as a kidin Germany) and my grandparents all "put the kettle on" when someone called around. If we were old as kids to go play in the park as a family friend was "calling in for a cup of tea" we knew it meant something had happened. "Tea and sympathy" is still a strong tradion and one Alan Moore and Alan Davis procured for the Captain britain story "Tea and Sympathy".
Of course you also got to see a lot of strange sights at British beaches but even odder out to sea (if you were at Weston-Super-Mare the sea only came in at night but I'm quite sure that if you wore night vision goggles you might see something like this...
Above all I think that what makes a British comic or character British are...British creators. Not the ones that want to draw comics like something you might find on Cartoon Network or wanting to make a BRitish character emulate American comic book characters. And where is all our British comic charactwer cosplay? Well, we have Essex Girl and Captain Britain...
https://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/Captain_Britain
Look at the 1940s British comics which carried on with the tradition of anti-heroes. I have written before about the Iron Warrior and how certain people have no idea about the character https://hoopercomicart.blogspot.com/2017/07/a-hero-or-villain-iron-warrior.html
We had Krakos The Egyptian who was involved in all sorts of goings on that might make him classed as not just one of the first British (non European) supernatural heroes but...an anti-hero. As shown in Black Tower comics he was not known as "The Angel of the Burning Death" for nothing and that was demonstrated in Krakos Sands of Terror!. Even The Bat (William A. Ward's creation not all the other "Bats") fought for his country's freedom and finally won after decades in The Bat Triumphant!
In the last few years we saw some old British adventure heroes brought back in The Vigilant -about which I have nothing good to write.
I have written posts on old or lost British characters..
https://hoopercomicart.blogspot.com/2018/01/british-heroes-occasional-series-part-1.html
https://hoopercomicart.blogspot.com/2015/06/british-heroes-occasional-series-part-2.html
Oh and then there is this one
https://hoopercomicart.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-miserable-daytime-for-comic-nostalgia.html
and, of course, the mega Improbability Of The British Super Hero
https://hoopercomicart.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-improbability-of-british-super-hero.html
And if all of this does not answer your question then I give up.
Why do none of these Captain Britain cosplayers have beards, hey, lad?
n there is this one
https://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/Captain_Britain
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