The British Superhero

Chris Murray

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781496807380
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Popular Culture
• Index: Social Sciences

Chris Murray reveals the largely unknown and rather surprising history of the British superhero. It is often thought that Britain did not have its own superheroes, yet Murray demonstrates that there were a great many in Britain and that they were often used as a way to comment on the relationship between Britain and America. Sometimes they emulated the style of American comics, but they also frequently became sites of resistance to perceived American political and cultural hegemony, drawing upon satire and parody as a means of critique. Murray illustrates that the superhero genre is a blend of several influences, and that in British comics these influences were quite different from those in America, resulting in some contrasting approaches to the figure of the superhero. He identifies the origins of the superhero and supervillain in nineteenth-century popular culture such as the penny dreadfuls and boys' weeklies and in science fiction writing of the 1920s and 1930s. He traces the emergence of British superheroes in the 1940s, the advent of "fake" American comics, and the reformatting of reprinted material. Murray then chronicles the British Invasion of the 1980s and the pivotal roles in American superhero comics and film production held by British artists today. This book will challenge views about British superheroes and the comics creators who fashioned them. Murray brings to light a gallery of such comics heroes as the Amazing Mr X, Powerman, Streamline, Captain Zenith, Electroman, Mr Apollo, Masterman, Captain Universe, Marvelman, Kelly's Eye, Steel Claw, the Purple Hood, Captain Britain, Supercats, Bananaman, Paradax, Jack Staff, and SuperBob. He reminds us of the significance of many such creators and artists as Len Fullerton, Jock McCail, Jack Glass, Denis Gifford, Bob Monkhouse, Dennis M. Reader, Mick Anglo, Brendan McCarthy, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Dave Gibbons, and Mark Millar.

Chapter 1

PENNY DREADFULS, STORY PAPERS, AND PROTOSUPERHEROES (1825–1935)

Long before superhero comics appeared in America, a tradition of periodical adventure stories existed on both sides of the Atlantic. In Britain, the Victorian popular press was particularly lively, and a huge number of weekly and monthly publications appeared. They catered to a wide audience, although many of the most successful titles were aimed at adolescent boys. There were many kinds of stories featured in these publications, from detective fiction to tales of war and exploration, and some of the archetypes that would later feature in British superhero comics were formed here. These publications were not comics as such but, rather, were mainly prose stories with an illustrated cover and sometimes with some internal illustrations. These types of serial publications were enormously successful, and they created a new kind of popular literature for a new readership (which was mainly working class). Over the course of the nineteenth century, these serial adventures came in two forms, mainly distinguished by their content. There were the “story papers,” sometimes known as boy’s weeklies, that were usually wholesome adventure stories, and there were “penny bloods” or “penny dreadfuls,” which drew more overtly on gothic literature and were therefore much more gory and sensational. This chapter will examine these publications, their relationship with similar publications in America, and the heroic and villainous characters that appeared therein, with a particular focus on certain characters who, in retrospect, can be seen as protosuperheroes and villains. In many ways, these publications established the market and audience for adventure comics in Britain and influenced the emergence of a similar market in America, where dime novels and pulp magazines, which flourished there—along with newspaper strips—would later influence the rise of superhero comics.

The Emergence of British Comics

For the most part, the publications that were available in the early years of the nineteenth century offered stories that were intended to be morally educational, emphasizing good behavior and respect for parents. The idealized children who appeared in these stories, whom the children were supposedly to emulate, may have been a parent’s notion of the perfect child, but they were somewhat pious. However, the publication of William Clarke’s The Boy’s Own Book: A Complete Encyclopedia of all the Diversions, Athletic, Scientific, and Recreative, of Boyhood and Youth in 1828 marked an important change of direction. First published in London, it sold out its initial print run in a matter of months and was reprinted for the American market in Boston the following year, also to great success. The book was an illustrated compendium of rules for games and sporting activities, illusions, magic tricks, and puzzles, as well as containing information about nature and animals. This was a marked difference from previous publications for children, largely because it was actually aimed at children rather than at parents. Whereas previous publications operated on the assumption that parents would want to buy educational and improving reading material for their children, The Boy’s Own Book found a new balance between education and entertainment. This proved to be so popular that the book went through many editions over the course of the century and provoked a series of imitators. As sports historian Robert William Henderson observes, The Boy’s Own Book “was a tremendous contrast to the juvenile books of the period, which emphasized piety, morals and instruction of mind and soul; it must have been received with whoops of delight by the youngsters of [Britain and America].”¹

In September 1832, just a few years after The Boy’s Own Book appeared, The Boys’ and Girls’ Penny Magazine became the first hugely successful story paper for children. The Penny Magazine, published weekly by W. Howden in London, which was based in the Strand, ran from September 1832 until March 1833. As the name suggests, it cost a penny, and each issue was eight pages long and had a prominent illustration on the front cover. The stories were aimed at a pre-teen readership and were often based on fairy tales, but the magazine had a very broad appeal and did particularly well with its Christmas issue, which reportedly sold 835,000 copies. Clearly, there was a huge, largely untapped market, and publishers took note. Soon there were several similar story papers offering prose stories with some illustrations rather than compendia of games and sporting activities. The story papers marked a significant advance in juvenile publications and appeared at a time when the serialization of novels was a huge publishing phenomenon.

Indeed, in the 1830s the serialization of novels by the likes of Charles Dickens reached new heights of success and popularity. Dickens’s serialized novels initially appeared in 1836, the first being The Pickwick Papers, published by Chapman and Hall, which was based in the Strand alongside W. Howden, publisher of The Boys’ and Girls’ Penny Magazine. At this time, the Strand and nearby Fleet Street (where the newspaper publishers were based) were the center of British publishing, and Holywell Street, which ran parallel to the Strand at the east end of the street, was the center of the Victorian pornography industry, so literature, journalism, popular entertainment for children, and pornography sat alongside each other at the heart of London. It was a very exciting time for publishers who clamored to cater to the demands of the public. These demands were partly driven by the fact that about this time the concept of reading for leisure was becoming established as a new working-class pastime, and publishers were discovering the considerable profits that could be made by producing cheaply made serials and weekly publications for this readership. Before long the publishers recognized that the adolescent male readership was a particularly lucrative one and began producing adventure story papers that catered directly to this market.

In Britain the humor tradition that wove through Hogarth, Gillray, Rowlandson, The Glasgow Looking Glass, and Punch, delivered one of its first superstar characters in 1867 in the form of Ally Sloper, one of the earliest recurring fictional characters in comics. He first appeared in the British magazine Judy (which was a response to Punch) and was created by Charles H. Ross, and his French wife, the actress and cartoonist Emilie de Tessier (working under the pseudonym Marie Duval). As Roger Sabin notes,

Sloper was created by Charles Ross, formerly a writer of penny dreadfuls, though his wife Marie Duval soon took over cartooning duties and was certainly important in developing the character.… Sloper was possibly influenced by Dickens’s Mr Micawber and maybe certain characters in Punch (e.g. the cockney “Arry”), but soon developed his own conniving charm and became the most popular feature of [Judy].²

As with Töpffer’s Mr Wooden Head, there is a suggestion of influence from Combes and Rowlandson’s Dr Syntax, but rather than being a pompous upper class buffoon Ally Sloper is a working class buffoon with ideas above his station. This enormously popular character appeared in his own comic, Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday (1884), and for three decades he was widely merchandised and appeared in film versions. Sabin points out that there is some evidence that Sloper may even have been the inspiration for Charlie Chaplin’s “little tramp” character, as Chaplin was born in London in 1889 and in a revealing interview with journalist Victor Thompson in 1957 he noted that he enjoyed reading comics as a boy. He said,

Ah, those comics. The wonderfully vulgar paper for boys [Illustrated Chips] with “Casey Court” pictures, and the ‘Adventures of Weary Willie and Tired Tim,’ two famous tramps with the world against them. There’s been a lot said about how I evolved the little tramp character who made my name. Deep, psychological stuff has been written about how I meant him to be a symbol of all the class war, of the love-hate concept, the death-wish and what-all. But if you want the simple Chaplin truth behind the Chaplin legend, I started the little tramp simply to make people laugh and because those other old tramps, Weary Willie and Tired Tim, had always made me laugh.³

Sloper was also an influence on W. C. Fields, whose routines involved him performing as a drunken misanthrope. Clearly there was a strong transatlantic connection at work here, again pointing to a complex transnational relationship between texts, media and artists.

One of the key British publishers of the time was James Henderson, who released Funny Folks in 1874 and then Scraps in 1883. A strong transatlantic connection was evident in the latter title, which reprinted (some might say plagiarized) material from American publications such as Puck and Life. Seeing the success of Ally Sloper comics, Funny Folks, and Scraps, a young journalist named Alfred Harmsworth, who had been a writer for Henderson, revolutionized British comics by introducing weekly publications such as Comic Cuts and Illustrated Chips, both of which ran from 1890 to 1953. Crucially, Harmsworth was looking toward America for inspiration as well as at his competitors, as seen in the first issue of Comic Cuts, which—following the example of Scraps—opened with an issue that simply reprinted American material. Comic Cuts and Illustrated Chips were enormously successful, and Harmsworth soon shifted his attention to finding original British strips. He was also committed to making his publications cheaper, charging half a penny and thereby undercutting the penny publications, including the penny dreadfuls that had dominated the market. This, along with his notable success in establishing a range of newspapers and magazines, led to Harmsworth’s setting up Amalgamated Press in 1901. This would firmly establish the marketplace for British comics and make Harmsworth, or Lord Northcliffe as he became, extremely wealthy and powerful. Amalgamated Press became the largest publisher of periodicals in the world, led by Harmsworth’s unfailing business instinct.⁴ His innate sense of what the buying public wanted resulted in his being a pioneer not only in comics but also in tabloid journalism, in the latter field creating The Daily Mail and The Daily Mirror. Whereas America had Pulitzer and Hearst, Britain had Harmsworth, and all three would have a huge influence on the development of comics.

For several decades, Amalgamated Press defined the look and format of British comics, in which images typically were arranged in a grid, accompanied by text underneath. In many cases, the images merely illustrated the descriptions given in the text. This mode was shared by American publications for most of the nineteenth century, but their newspaper strips became much more dynamic and visually appealing toward the end of the century, which greatly influenced American comics. Strips like Richard F. Outcault’s The Yellow Kid (1895–1898) show a transition from one form to the other, significantly advancing the use of word balloons. But by the time Winsor McCay was creating Little Nemo in Slumberland (1905–1926), text had become secondary to fantastic, striking visuals and experimental use of form. The influence of McCay and others, like George Herriman in his Krazy Kat (1913–1944), took American newspaper strips in a new direction, perhaps influenced by cinema and later animation, and this meant less dependency on blocks of text to tell the story. This was made possible by the very profitable market for syndicated newspaper strips to fill the funnies and by the support from magnates like William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. The paper quality, reproduction techniques, and space given to the American funnies provided a much better platform than the one in Britain, and America took the lead, producing the best comic art in the world at this time, with humor the dominant mode.⁵ The influence of American comics was considerable. Indeed, the reason the medium is known as “comics” in the Anglo-American world is that this was the time when the medium was at the height of its popularity, and newspaper strips (or comics or funnies) where humor was the main genre were the dominant mode. But there were other successful branches of serial publication—the penny dreadfuls, boy’s weeklies, and pulp magazines—and it is in these publications that protosuperheroes began to appear.

The adventure publications aimed at adolescent male readers became known as the boy’s weeklies, and they dominated publishing for younger readers throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before being displaced by comics in the 1930s. However, the origins of the boy’s weeklies is very much tied up with the penny bloods (later known as penny dreadfuls)—appearing in the 1830s—which were decidedly less morally upstanding and much more sensationalistic, featuring prominent villains, many of whom proved to have a considerable influence on later British comics. The penny dreadfuls drew on one of the most successful and popular publishing sensations of the age—gothic literature. Given the widespread popular appeal of the gothic and its exploration of horror and sexuality, it was no surprise that in pursuit of adolescent male readers, publishers set juvenile publications on a direct collision course with the gothic. This resulted in some of the most thrilling and disturbing popular entertainment of the time, which played a considerable part in shaping the popular adventure genre that would go on to influence the development of the superhero.

Penny Dreadfuls

The term penny dreadful describes a type of lurid and sensational publication that became popular in the 1830s and often featured stories about real criminals or else reprinted popular gothic novels, often in the form of unauthorized versions. They were originally known as penny bloods in reference to their frequently violent content, becoming known as penny dreadfuls in the 1860s. These pulp periodicals featured highwaymen, pirates, and other disreputable types like Dick Turpin or supernatural creatures like Spring-Heeled Jack, while others were based on popular melodramas or were torn from the headlines of newspapers. This, along with the fact that they sold for a penny, was the key to their success, as they were relatively affordable and highly entertaining. They appeared weekly and were usually around eight pages long with striking covers, which were often sensational and carried strong suggestions of sex and violence. They served the urban working classes’ need for cheap, entertaining reading material. Later, in the 1880s, paper quality improved slightly, the typical page count rose to sixteen, and the quality of the illustrations improved, but the subject matter was the most important thing, and the more lurid the better.

However, despite their reputation, the periodicals that were lumped together under the term penny dreadful were actually quite diverse, covering several genres, but it was the ones that had a particular emphasis on crime and horror that gained the most attention. This focus on crime stemmed from a long tradition of “murder pamphlets” and other texts that gave detailed accounts of murders or other shocking crimes and often took the form of narratives based on (supposedly) transcribed confessions given by criminals shortly before execution. Variations on this theme had been popular for centuries, and there was a ready market for them. The emphasis on low crimes, dastardly deeds, and the activities of the authorities to ensnare criminals made for good entertainment value, much of it highly exaggerated to maximize public appeal.⁶

The other influence came from fashionable literature of the time, namely, gothic fiction. The huge popularity of the “literature of sensation” was linked to the murder pamphlets in that both reveled in gory accounts of murder and crime, but gothic literature added a concern with the supernatural, which sprung from myths and folklore. When serial publications became highly popular in the early nineteenth century, all of these influences were clearly in evidence, and while they initially appealed to a broad audience, as the century wore on they focused more on adolescent male readers and increasingly drew on gothic literature. As E. S. Turner notes in Boys Will Be Boys (1948), a study of boy’s adventure stories of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,

Popular fiction of the early nineteenth century was steeped in darkness and diablerie. Spectres gliding in a green phosphorescence, hags picking over the bones of charnel houses, deathsheads in closets, heirs to great estates chained in dungeons, forests stuffed with robbers and werewolves, graves creaking open in the moonlight to let the vampires out—these were the stock-in-trade of the Gothic, and the bogus Gothic, novelist. The vogue for these romantic horrors had been set by Horace Walpole (The Castle of Otranto), Ann Radcliffe (The Mysteries of Udolpho) and Matthew ...