Since I originally wrote this piece things have changed. For one thing Paul Grist's Jack Staff ended and despite my asking a couple of times I have received no response from him about future plans and being years later I doubt there are any plans for a return. The same can be said for Grist's Mud Man that left the reader with many questions. Again I have asked a couple of times but no response.
They were such fun books, too.
Perhaps the downloaders made it not worth the work going into producing the titles?
Black Tower's own line of characters has increased.
But the thing that has not changed is the 'comic fan' apathy. We could have great fun action comics out there but people don't buy why put them together. So this post is more of a "What we had and could have" but comic buyers don't support so we are stuck with the memories.
This 2014 article "At Long Last! The Return Of The Improbability Of The British Super Hero" got some of the highest views on CBO so this seemed a good time to repost but under a new heading and with a lot more cover and interiors art added.
I think it well worth re-posting this item (with some new artwork) because, as I pointed out in my post on Delcourt jumping on to the cash-cow of super heroes (admitting it!) by having its series Sentinels made into a film, super heroes are highly profitable and if the rather conservative big Franco-Belgian BD publishers realise this....
But where are the business entrepreneurs -hmm?
Myself, Stransky, LaBatt and Ben Dilworth sit ready. Yes, after years of just saying "someone" needs to be a figure-head to launch such a project I am now so fed up that I am putting myself forward ("Blimey! A Saviour complex -I told you!" I can just hear that little moron screaming it now).
Forget skyscrapers. We have high streets, coastal towns, villages and cities -we have unique scenery in the UK and all are ripe for British super heroes!
“Hmm. Don’t you understand? Think about it –we have no skyscrapers! How can you have American style super heroes in England?”
My response to the senior editor is probably why things went a little “odd” work-wise. My first response was “So, what exactly is Marvel UK publishing? And Power Comics (Odhams) before it? And…” I went on to rattle off a very, very long list of British super characters going back to the 1940s. I think I ticked him off. Really, he should have known better though, in one respect, he was right.
British comics never had super heroes.
Before you start thinking that I’m on new medications and answering “Yes” and “No” at the same time allow me to explain.
Tim (Kelly’s Eye) Kelly travelled the world and even in time and space at one point and was totally indestructible. He was not a super hero.
Clem Macy, television news reporter had a costumed archer alter ego…The Black Archer. He was not a super hero.
Cathy had amazing cat-like abilities and wore a costume. She was not a super heroine.
William and Kathleen Grange were incredible acrobats and wore costumes as Billy the Cat and Katie The Cat. They were not super heroes.
In fact, for my graphic novel featuring many old IPC and Fleetway costumed characters, The Looking Glass, I noted several times that the characters were not super heroes. In the UK we tended to call them “costumed adventurers” or even “masked crime fighters” but not super heroes.
Some, of course, were…uh..”revived” for the Wildstorm Studios Albion mini series which had great art but, sadly, showed a lack of any real knowledge of the characters by the writers –which they admitted to. In comics you get paying work you take it!
Characters such as Adam Eterno, the focal point in the Looking Glass story had no choice and were at times almost anti-heroes. Whereas The Spider had a choice of being a master crook and then changing sides (basically all ego driven), Eterno did not. He was cursed to be taken by the mists of time from one period to another where he encountered Spanish Conquistadores, pirates, sorcerers and even modern day (well, 1970s) crooks.
Olaf (“Loopy”) Larsen a rather meek school teacher found the Viking helmet of one of his ancestors and, donning it (that’s putting it on his head) became a super strong, flying Viking hero…The Phantom Viking. There are stories of The Phantom Viking rescuing ships and much more and not a skyscraper in sight.
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The great exponents of British roof-top crime-busting were, first, Billy The Cat and later Katie The Cat. Running across the rooftops and leaping the often not so great gaps between one row of terraced houses and another, the duo were the fictional ancestors of today’s urban free-style runners/jumpers –examples found here:
To most people who never get to see the rooves of terraced houses they assume they are all steep and sloping. However, having on two occasions chased someone across terraced root-tops I can tell you there is plenty of room to move about (though at my age I now look back and get nauseous over that memory!).
Later, in the 1970s, William Farmer became the costumed crime-fighter known as The Leopard From Lime Street. As one Fleetway boss told me (later confirmed by artist Mike Western) “Thomson had a schoolboy who fights crooks in a costume and if Billy the Cat was popular I was sure we could do better!”
Interestingly, in the Billy The Cat series he was later to be hunted as a vigilante by authorities who did not like what he was doing. Likewise, The Leopard was also hunted down at one point. In fact, a number of British comic crime-fighters found themselves not just ducking the crooks out for revenge but also the very side they were fighting for!
Towns, cities, villages, countryside, coastal locations –all featured in some very fun stories that endure in the memory to this day. And not a bloody skyscraper in sight!
When UK creators were recruited to save the ailing US comic companies such as DC in the 1980s (I was at those UK comic art conventions watching how desperate they were to recruit British talent –and in some cases introduced both parties to each other) the idea of outlawing super heroes and tracking them down so they could be arrested was a new concept. In the UK we’d been doing that since the 1940s ( thanks to the creators who churned out material for publishers such as Gerald Swan)!
The mistake in the minds of publishers is that they equate costumed crime-fighters with skyscrapers and the United States. Despite the long history of such characters in the UK going back to the Boys Papers of the 1900-1930s.
What it says, really, is “This is just a job. I don’t care about comics history.”
D. C. Thomson (may they be forever cursed in the hallowed halls of British Comics Hell) have enough characters to produce good costumed-crime-fighter comics. The same applied to IPC who appear to have now taken the stance (a letter to me from senior management dated 19th July, 2011) “We were once publishing comics but that was over 30 years ago and have no further interest in comics.” Of course, had a rich stable of characters.
I have no doubt at all that a good “super hero” comics could work in the UK but so few Independent Comics writers/publishers seem to be able to produce an obscenities free script that does not also include over the top violence and rape –the “Millar-Ennis-Morrison Legacy (MEML).” I may not like it but it sells...obviously!
But let’s mention, I really must, two shining examples of British “Super Heroes” by British creators that have excellent plotting, story and action without having to resort to the MEML.
The first is, naturally, Paul Grist’s Jack Staff. Okay, he’s never accepted my offer to interview him in the last decade but I’ll not hold that against him! When I first saw Jack Staff I thought “**** that anatomy is really off!” I bought a copy. I’m a comics bitch, I just can’t help it.
I read through issue 1 and do you know what? I..I..deep breath…I enjoyed it! There it’s out now! The anatomy did not put me off and, as the manager of Forbidden Planet (Bristol) said “It doesn’t make a blind bit of difference –it’s so enjoyable!” With references to old British TV comedy series and so much more each issue of Jack Staff was a must read. There was, I must point out here, a major flaw in each issue. There were not enough pages!
And while Grist takes a break from Jack Staff he came up with a new series –Mud-Man (which should not be confused with my German character Schlamm Mann –mud-man!). Lovely stuff but, again, the major fault of not enough pages but maybe that is why this works: it is almost episodic like old British weekly strips…but with more pages…okay. Grist wins.
Then we have, and I have to say this on bended knees and in very humble tone…Nigel Dobbyn. When someone told me that he was drawing Billy The Cat I remember thinking to myself “I wonder whether his art style is any different than when he was drawing for Super Adventure Stories?” (a 1980s comic zine). I opened up the comic and a big thought balloon appeared above my head in which was written in bold Comic Sans “WOW!”
To this day Fish Boy is still hunting the serial killer who committed multiple murder and then placed his victims in tin cans.
Forty years on the Sardine Can Killer has never been caught!
The style and colouring I had not seen outside of European comics (say Cyrus Tota’s work on Photonik). After that I never missed an issue and I made a point of grabbing The Beano Annual as soon as it appeared in shops. But with this incredible talent working for them did Thomson take advantage? No, they did something ensuring he would not work on new strips for them. The story can be found here:
You want to see how good Dobbyn is? Visit his website which has great art on show including Billy The Cat colour pages:
http://www.nigeldobbyn.com/
Dobbyn even re-introduced (with help from scripter Kev F. Sutherland, of course) General Jumbo but as The General. In fact, you go over those issues and I can see why so many people were telling me that they only bought copies for Billy The Cat. I could drool on and wax lyrical for hours about Dobbyn’s style and colouring.
A giant spider lives in my electricity meter box. I'm being cautious -he says that he has "connections"!Now here is the real kicker. Two talents such as Grist and Dobbyn whom any UK publisher (I know –“Who??”) should be fighting, spitting and kicking to get their hands on but are they? Nope. And while Grist publishes his books via Image Comics you have to wonder why Marvel or DC have not tried to get him on a title?
Could it be his style is just not understandable by people in US Comics?
Robot versus dino...where are the RSPCA and Humane Society when needed?? Well, SJWs -WHERE??
I know that if as a publisher I had the money I’d be employing both full time!!
I need to stop mentioning Dobbyn now as my knees hurt (a lot) and it’s hard typing from this position.
Walking over terraced rooves in a colourful skin tight costume can get you into trouble with the authorities. I was lucky to get off with a fine after, uh, accidentally landing on that woman's window ledge.
What both creators have shown is that there really do not have to be skyscrapers for a “super hero.” There is enough car crime, drug crime…violent crime of most types going on in the UK and believe it or not none involve a single skyscraper. Incredible, isn’t it?
Also, the UK is rich in legends, myths, fairy tales and much more that are just crying out to be included in storylines. The reason the Americans and other comic readers world-wide like UK strips is because they are uniquely British. In India, particularly in Southern India, The Steel Claw, Robot Archie, The Spider and many others are still very popular in reprint form over 35 years since they last appeared in print here.
One of the better British comic super heroes was Zenith and I still look through the Titan Books collection every so often!
Black Tower Comics has published a wide range of comics and the costumed crime-fighters (or even non-costumed in the case of Krakos) are the most popular.
So the market is there but where are the moneymen, the backers needed to help revive the corpse that is British comics so that it can proudly boast an industry once more that takes advantage of talents such as Grist, Dobbyn et al?
However improbable British super heroes might seem to some I can tell you they are not. There is a history going back 80 years and even longer if you include the Penny Dreadfuls of the Victorian era.
And there is a point I need to make: just because I do not like something does not mean it is no good. And vice versa because comics, ultimately, are there to be read and enjoyed from the professionals to Independent right down to Small Press creators. Read and make comics but always HAVE FUN!
And remember British characters were popular enough in France to have long runs in various titles:
And when the UK Vulcan weekly became Kobra in Germany its run outlasted that of its British counter-part:
What I forgot and highly recommend is Accent Comics and Whatever Happened To The World's Fastest Man? involved no costume. No mask. In fine British tradition....some times.
It really was great to read but it was a while ago so my review was on the old CBO and I never saved it!
According to the Forbidden Planet blog:
Yep, that’s it. Bobby Doyle can stop time. He’s the mysterious “World’s Fastest Man” that all of the papers have been talking about ever since he carried all of those people from that train crash. But he’s not fast, not in the way they think. He just has this strange power where he can stop time for the world and carry on with his life inside his own time-zone. Bobby’s no hero, not in the way people think of them. He’s just an average 25 year old bloke who wants a normal life. But that’s not his fate. He may have saved people before, may have been the hero before, but never on this scale. And he knows what’s coming, he knows the end result. That’s why he looks so resigned to his fate in the artwork above.
I think the book is still available: http://www.accentukcomics.com/index.html
Here endeth the sermon.....
Your Ally Against Crime.......
(c)2019 T. Hooper-Scharf/Black Tower Comics
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