British Comics: The Great Grandpa of Modern Comics
Is this the part where I say, get some tea with some comics? Oh great, now I sound nationally biased. Just go straight to the details already. My earlier comic post on American comics brought how they have origins in the UK. Well that's the start not the end of British Comics. Unlike their American counterparts there is a sense of sophistication in these pieces.
Penny Dreadfuls: The First British Comics
Comics started as story papers called Penny Dreadfuls since that's all they cost; back then I'm pretty sure that was a good fraction of average pay, pretty dreadful if you ask me. They tended to put a supernatural taste in these publishes like Varney the Vampire. Comic strips then started pretty soon, costing the same price but these were mainly aimed at adults.
Newsprint to Magazines
Youth tended to be more profitable, let's face it kids like to laugh more than adults. Dennis and Gnasher, the arguably most persevered British comic of all time can vouch for that. What makes British comics different from their American counterparts? For one thing, they tend to be anthologies, magazines with multiple stories. Makes me wish Marvel could do that (DC recently went back to its roots thanks to a deal with Wal-Mart), that could save me some money, still bit of a pretty penny but subscriptions are cheap compared to the dreadful... Okay I'm done!
Influence To and From
British comics are also known for a few other things that have fallen out of favor except for a minority. The annuals are released around a certain time, especially around Christmas even after their regular weekly series are done and over with. They're pretty much the only place left that use photographs in their serializations after they fell out of service in the 80s. Weird I'd think that would be cheaper than just pen and paper all the time. Some comics even merged together after a while for different reasons. I guess that's just British humor for you, no big breaks just a mundane work shift that gets old.
American comics started to influence British ones, but just the horror and crime comics for the time. Magazine format started to get more expensive, just when pennies were getting to be chicken feed. British comics mainly relied on some humor magazines like The Beano while later developments brought in heroes. Still since American comics pretty much had control of the Superhero genre, the closest things the UK can bring is adventure heroes with sci-fi, war, and football (in US terms soccer). The most famous of these examples would easily be in 2000 AD with Judge Dredd. It's also safe to say some Marvel UK characters like Night Raven get their influence from this movement.
Evolutionary Pressures of British Comics
Throughout the 20th century, the UK started to do things that's rather common in the comic industry today: Tie-in comics (like the works of Gerry Anderson the creator of Thunderbirds), international branch companies (Marvel mostly), and influence from Underground comix. A lot of comics even started to merge their characters and universes together to play with Marvel's formula as well. At the very least they didn't have too big a competition and were more self-contained. Girls got their own comics that often had ballet, school, and fantasy and sci-fi elements at least until the 80s with comic strips dropping.
Stepping into the Modern Era
By the 21st century, because of the British market decline there wasn't a lot of growth in the mainstream and even that was prevented from getting new launches. But that didn't stop British comics completely, some of them got owned by companies willing to keep them like what Rebellion did with 2000 AD. It took a while for original graphic novels to get on good grounds. In fact the only British publisher I see that gets a regular update aside from 2000 AD come from Titan Books with regular contributions from Doctor Who, Tank Girl, acquired licenses like Fighting American, and a few video game adaptations like Bloodborne. Even original manga made for English came in pretty quickly (man this is coming up a lot).
Digital Dominance
For that matter, there are plenty of webcomics like Scary Go Round that have even gotten serials in print stateside. All the British humor like you'd see on a sitcom with the fun interactions but mundane solutions. Even the surreal happenstances are little more than backdrops for the small everyday drama that comes around.
A more recent development came in the form of The Phoenix The Weekly Story magazine. It is an anthology series aimed at kids that brings in stories from all different kinds of creators. Thanks to a subscription service that includes international shipping, fans were able to get new fun stories to enjoy. A couple of stories are also enjoyed by adults, the content is that great. A deal made with Comixology even allowed the publisher to continue on a digital front. Recently published comics funded on Kickstarter made waves like Maddy the Monster Slayer. One graphic novel series called Hilda proved so popular that it was given a show on Netflix.
Cheers
It's still hard to believe that Great Britain actually started up the concept of comics for the US . Some can look as serious as the action in Judge Dredd or as whimsical as The Deanu. All that really matters is finding what strikes your fancy. Hopefully, British comics can be as enjoyable to everyone and broaden their horizons a bit.