Marvel U.K.
Marvel Comics has a long history of creating superhero characters. After initially licensing their stories to be reprinted in the U.K. in other companies titles (with one original story for the Hulk, "The Monster and the Matador", appearing as a filler when the reprint material fell through), Marvel created a British branch, Marvel U.K. The first "new" material Marvel U.K. produced was for Planet of the Apes Weekly. Having temporarily run out of U.S. P.o.t.A. material to publish, someone decided to use re-drawn versions of Marvel U.S.' Killraven. Thus was Apeslayer born!
Apeslayer
In the late 1970's the decision was made to create the first Marvel hero specifically aimed at the British market: Captain Britain.
Captain Britain (First Run - the 1970's weekly)
Over in the U.S., the Invaders series sought to tell new superhero stories set in the Second World War. Needing British superheroes to fight alongside the American ones, Roy Thomas created several. Though strictly speaking U.S. creations, I'm including them here because they were "adopted" by British writers when the U.K. original material started expanding.
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Captain Britain's ongoing story was next taken up in
Hulk Comic (The Black Knight Otherworld Saga)
Captain Britain wasn't the only original U.K. character created by Marvel for Hulk Comic, as new editor of the line, Dez Skinn, commissioned several new strips for the launch of Hulk Comic, which met with varying success.
Seven months after Hulk Comic another Marvel title launched with new, U.K. originated material. While Doctor Who Weekly (later Monthly, then Magazine) was a licensed product and set outside the mainstream Marvel Universe, several characters who appeared there would cross-over with Marvel superhero-types, including the Doctor himself.
Two characters would escape the cancellation of Hulk Comic and went on to appear elsewhere. Captain Britain regained a strip of his own when he departed the Black Knight's company and was sent by Merlyn to an alternative Earth, in the pages of Marvel Superheroes Monthly.
Earth-238 - The Crooked World Saga
Meanwhile Night-Raven, the thirties vigilante, was being re-invented in text stories by Alan Moore (and others), who turned him into a tortured immortal, carrying out a battle with his villainous nemesis over decades.
While Captain Britain fought for his life in the Crooked World in the pages of Marvel Superheroes Monthly, and Night-Raven battled his immortal enemy Yi Yang, over in Rampage Monthly there were a few tentative attempts to create yet more U.K. characters.
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Time-Smasher |
U.K. Annuals around this time also started to produce new material and new characters, at least in text stories in said Annuals.
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Seth Youngblood |
Sleeper |
Lightmaster |
Having left Marvel Superheroes Monthly shortly before that title was cancelled, to go his new home in The Daredevils, the U.K.'s national hero was revamped by the definitive creative team of Alan Moore and Alan Davis. They took Captain Britain to new heights of storytelling excellence, and introduced us to Captain U.K., the Fury and the Special Executive, amongst others.
After the departure of writer Alan Moore, artist Alan Davis was joined by Jamie Delano in chronicling Captain Britain's further adventures. Shortly after this changing of the guard, the hero regained his own title.
Captain Britain (second run - 1980's monthly)
Shortly after Delano came on board writing C.B., but before Captain Britain Monthly was launched, Spider-Man Weekly ran a non-reprint strip for the first time since Captain Britain's original title merged with it, with the wall-crawler having an adventure in London, meeting a couple of new characters along the way.
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Assassin-8 |
In 1984 Transformers Weekly was launched. Swiftly using up the available American material, Marvel U.K. began to intersperse home grown tales between the reprints. Shortly after the cancellation of Captain Britain Monthly, Transformers #113 saw the first appearance of one of Marvel U.K.'s best known characters, a creation which would jump across titles and universes several times.
After the demise of his own title again, Captain Britain eventually returned in the U.S. title Excalibur. Since that series often had British writers and artists working on it, several of the characters who debuted in it remain entry-worthy for this site.
A couple of years later, Marvel U.K. launched the first of it's U.S. format titles, testing the water for this new style.
Deeming the new style to be a success, Marvel U.K. did a major relaunch. They planned a slew of new, superhero heavy, titles, to be published in two formats: in the U.S. they would be printed as if they were regular Marvel titles under the Marvel U.K. imprint, while in the U.K. the same stories would be printed in the anthology title Overkill. Given the sheer number of comics launched, and the varying quality of same, that proved to be an unwittingly accurate appelation.
With the collapse of the Marvel U.K. line, and the handing over of the U.K. reprints titles to Panini, there has been less new material in the last decade or so. Spectacular Spider-Man comes out monthly, with new material apparently set in the universe of the 1990's Spidey cartoon, but I'm not aware of any new characters who have turned up there. However U.K. creators still got new titles and characters set in Britain up and running, usually published as mini-series by Marvel U.S.
Bloodstone mini-series by Dan Abnett
Union Jack mini-series by Ben Raad / John Cassidy
Excalibur mini-series
Sir Benedict
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