The History of Marvel UK and its Transnational Influences upon British and American Superhero Comics
The dissertation for my MLitt Comics and Graphic Novels degree from the University of Dundee was focused on Marvel Comics’ only attempt to open an international studio, Marvel UK, and how this impacted the British comics market. Below are several extracts.
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In 1976, Marvel UK advertised their first original character in the pages of The Mighty World of Marvel #210. This character was to be Britain’s very own, unlike previous British characters such as the Black Knight, who embodied British stereotypes in order to be a foil for the American heroes. Captain Britain Weekly #1 debuted soon after, featuring original, coloured material for the new hero, created by X-Men scribe Chris Claremont and artist Herb Trimpe. Despite the character being designed specifically for the British audience, it was created in America with American sensibilities, in much the same vein as Roy Thomas’ Union Jack who debuted in The Invaders #7 in July of the same year. Claremont and Trimpe were chosen to helm this revolutionary new character due to both creators having spent time in the UK, with Claremont even being born in London, a factor that Claremont attributes to the nostalgic feel that the comic has, “I was looking at Britain from the perspective of someone growing up in the 50s.” While this benefited the American publisher, it did not set the British character in good stead given the imminent rise of punk rock and creation of 2000 AD.
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The 1970s had seen a number of brief American stories that ventured into social commentary, such as Neil Adams and Dennis O’Neill’s analysis of youth drug addiction in Green Arrow/Green Lantern and Steve Englehart mirroring post-Vietnam America’s identity crisis when faced with the Watergate scandal in Captain America. This intensity was not carried over to the UK’s first Marvel superhero. The tales in Captain Britain Weekly share the naivety of superhero comics in their infancy, with both the protagonist and his sister having alliterative names (a common trope in superheroes from the late 1930s to early 1960s that had slowly been phased out) and romantic entanglements that rival the earliest Spider-Man love triangles. Claremont and Trimpe’s Captain Britain could have been used as a commentary on the changing nature of the superhero from saving cats in trees to political disenchantment, had it not been trying to represent an entire country. Instead, as the letters from eager Marvel fans show, the patronising nature of the comics did not go unnoticed by fans, whose concerns were readily printed by the London office, but seemingly went unheeded by the New York branch.
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Although Dez Skinn only stayed at Marvel UK for a short period the work that he started would revolutionise the British superhero industry. By the early 1980s, these changes were starting to blossom in a way that mirrored Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s unprecedented burst of creativity in the early 1960s, that revitalised superhero comics with the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, The X-Men and The Avengers all debuting within a two year period.
For British superhero comics, this breakout moment came in 1982, when in a matter of months Alan Moore debuted his celebrated runs on V for Vendetta, Marvelman and Captain Britain. Both V for Vendetta and Marvelman first appeared in Warrior #1, an exciting new anthology comic created by Skinn after leaving Marvel UK. The premise behind Warrior was to build upon the talent that Skinn had amassed at Marvel UK and unleash their creativity on licensed characters and original projects. By the end of the 1980s, Alan Moore became one of the most critically acclaimed comics writers in the country and looking at his time at Warrior and Marvel UK, it is clear to see that he was already exploring many of the themes that would redefine the superhero genre. As with much of British comics in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Moore’s work contains a strong critique of authoritarian politics. Marvelman, V for Vendetta and Captain Britain all deal with the dangers posed by the corrupting nature of power.
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Thatcher and the Conservative party are also critiqued in Moore’s Marvelman run, appearing both physically and metaphorically. The initial abuse of power is demonstrated by the hero’s former sidekick, Kid Marvelman, who in Marvelman #4 is shown to have been driven insane by his superhuman abilities. Moore plays on this by making Kid Marvelman a CEO and tying the character’s corrupted nature to the capitalist culture that he thrives within. Moore shows that Kid Marvelman lives for domination and until the appearance of a physical match for the villain, he exists by exerting his will upon the less successful. Kid Marvelman embodies the Thatcherite/Reaganite economics that pushed the short term success of the individual over the long term safety of the people, with Thatcher saying “I came to office with one deliberate intent: to change Britain from a dependent to a self-reliant society — from a give-it-to-me, to a do-it-yourself nation. A get-up-and-go, instead of a sit-back-and-wait-for-it Britain.” Moore’s Kid Marvelman is the physical embodiment of Thatcherite self-reliance and the young, upwardly- mobile/yuppie culture that came to represent the profit driven philosophy of the time. After the death of his role models and closest friends as a child, Kid Marvelman refuses to return to his human form, instead staying as an enhanced being for over twenty years and becoming a dark distortion of Marvelman, in much the same way that Moore’s Marvelman comics are a twisted appropriation of Anglo’s original characters. Just as Kid Marvelman has come to embody a self-reliance that stands opposed to Marvelman’s heroic nature, Moore’s Marvelman distorts the child-friendly nature of the source material. Moore’s Kid Marvelman was a child in a world of heroes, that became corrupted by greed and fear, allowing Moore to draw a comparison between his villain and the reader themselves, who have grown from forward facing children of post-war Britain into a generation that must face the highlighted threats of discrimination and nuclear war.
Moore demonstrates the ultimate downfall of the 1980s self-centred political and economic thought by showing how the character’s self-absorption and incredible power has left him devoid of all empathy and humanity. By becoming entirely self-reliant and with no ties to the rest of society, Kid Marvelman has come to see himself as a dark god, with Moore repeating the word “tiger”, in reference to William Blake’s poem The Tyger, something Grant Morrison further explored in Zenith.