British comics : A cultural history by James Chapman

Author:James Chapman
Language: eng
Format: epub

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Strange World of the

British Superhero

I was there in 1976 when Captain Britain was unleashed on the

awaiting masses. We’d been led to believe that he would be a

British hero – as British as Dan Dare or Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately

this was not to be; instead we had a poor, less adult copy of

any number of previous Marvel heroes. The whole series was cheap,

rushed and gave little thought to what makes a character British.

We had an American superhero, dressed in a Union Jack.

Letter to Captain Britain (May 1985).1

The superhero is an archetype indelibly associated with American popular culture. The first superheroes appeared in comics in the late 1930s and achieved the height of their popularity early during the Second World War when titles such as Action Comics and Detective Comics – where Superman and Batman, respectively, made their first appearances – regularly sold a million copies. With their colourful costumes and fantastic adventures, the superheroes provided escapism from the harsh realities of Depression-era America and then reassurance following the shock of Pearl Harbor as Americans found themselves involved in a war that few had wanted and fewer still understood. The superhero was born at precisely the moment that the sleeping giant that was the USA was about to emerge from its isolationism and would become the leading military and industrial power in the world. In this context characters such as the super-patriot Captain America and Superman, the first and mightiest of the superheroes, were very much products of their time. The popularity of the superheroes provided a much-needed boost for the fledgling us comic book publishing industry and was instrumental in helping picture comics to displace the ‘pulps’ as the favoured reading matter for children and adolescents. They were particularly popular with GIS: comic books were shipped to us servicemen in their millions during the war.2

The first generation of comic-book superheroes, then, arose from particular historical and ideological contexts. The superhero mythos evolved quickly. Superman, who first hit the newsstands in 1938, was initially a social reformer who stood up against lynch mobs, wife beaters and corrupt businessmen. Within a short space of time, however, he was battling mad scientists and master criminals who provided more of a challenge for his rapidly expanding super powers. Batman, who followed in 1939, quickly developed from a masked vigilante terrorizing small-time hoodlums to an officially legitimated crime-fighter pitted against a colourful array of bizarre costumed villains. Batman is not strictly a superhero in the sense that he has no special powers: he represents a link between comics and the heroes of pulp magazines such as The Shadow and Doc Savage. Superman and Batman were followed in quick succession by Captain Marvel, The Flash, The Green Lantern, Captain America, The Green Arrow and Wonder Woman, who all appeared between 1940 and 1942.

The congruence between the emergence of the superhero and America’s entry into the Second World War was highly opportune for the comic book industry. The war saw the market for comics expand rapidly, while

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.