The British Superhero

＂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, but Murray demonstrates that there were a great many superheroes in Britain, and that they were often used as a way to comment on the relationship between Britain and America. British superhero stories sometimes emulated the style of American comics, but also frequently became sites of resistance to perceived American political and cultural imperialism, 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 are quite different from those in America, resulting in some different approaches to the figure of the superhero. He looks at the origins of the superhero and supervillain in nineteenth-century popular culture and in science fiction writing. From the penny dreadfuls of the 1830s to the emergence of British superheroes in the 1930s, 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 the British superheroes, and the comics’ creators who fashioned them＂--