British Heroes: An Occasional Series.

It is remarkable how no one really gave a damn about Platinum and Golden Ages British characters that were not associated with D.C. Thomson or Amalgamated Press for decades.  No information on the creators or their characters (outside of Denis Gifford and Alan Clarke's works).  Now I see these characters popping up everywhere and a great deal of the information I found as well as lost art is being used by others as their own.

But back in the 1990s I started the British Comic Book Archives (BCBA) to keep these lost characters and creators from being forgotten -via my blogs and the UKs oldest Platinum and Golden Ages comics Yahoo group.

I want to start an occasional series just briefly looking at some of the characters.  Not much original information for those "wikies" to steal but they might find out more if they purchased some of my reprint books and stopped stealing original work.

Here goes part 1...

Pre-1920s there are quite a few comic book characters that have fought evil and that is excluding the generational Silvermaignes and Purple Hoods. You cannot go wrong with a Spring Heeled Jack and there are a few to choose from...oh, and Mr Bat of course!


I covered the 1920s -1930s with these three (cameo in Return Of The Gods) and...

 And there was also The Society for the Suppression of Crime headed by Professor Radium. Members included....


...Freddie Fluence, Ronnie Roy The India Rubber Boy, Merry Marge the Invisibility Girl, Bob (aka "The Pet Navvy") and Abra and Cadabra -they played a small part in preventing the Selenites blasting Earth with their space cannon (in The Cross Earths Caper).




Swan Comics own Desperate Dan + was Cast Iron Chris who was mightily strong and seemingly near invulnerable and a true Working Class Hero (WCH) as he tackled anything including industrial jobs and ran a team of navvies (labourers -though the term originally applied to the railway labourers of the 19th century and was short for navigators) at one point.

I've posted on Chris before: http://britishgoldenagecomics.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/who-on-earth-is-cast-iron-chris.html




You need someone with power who can tackle the supernatural stuff, right?  Well, not so much Dr Strange as a character who could have starred in a Hammer Horror -Krakos (aka "Krakos the Egyptian").  He starred in some very dark stories and let's not forget he took out a German artillery unit when he first left Egypt for Europe -if you've read Krakos Sands of Terror you'll know WHY he left Egypt!

I first used him in the Graaxa story in volume 1 of Adventure back iin the mid 1980s and since then he has appeared as a fairly main character in Black Tower and has been more than ably drawn by none other than Ben R. Dilworth.






And these are only a very tiny few of the characters covering the 1899-1940s period and I have not even mentioned the Iron Warrior who was covered here: http://hoopercomicart.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/a-hero-or-villain-iron-warrior.html



To be continued…..