Are there any British superheroes with superpowers?

Cafe Society
1

We were talking about this in the pub last night and we couldn’t come up with any.

British literature is full of blokes who can do some pretty super things (James Bond, Biggles, Richard Hannay, Sherlock Holmes etc). But they are ordinary mortals.

American superheroes on the other hand can fly, have super-strength, see through walls etc.

We didn’t count Harry Potter - as hes a) a wizzard so we’re into a different genre and b) he’s a four eyed weed.

Nor did we count supernatural types like the Green Man or any other boggarts as they tend to be a bit villainous.

I should point out that whilst we were interested in this we do all have girlfriends/wives and do not talk like Comic Book Store Guy from the Simpsons.

So are there any we’ve missed?

2

There obviously aren’t as many as there are American ones, but off the top of my head you’ve got Captain Britain and Excalibur from Marvel.

There’s a few by British Writers too, but nothing leaps to mind straight away.

3

You might find a few more respondents in Cafe Society.

[ /Moderator Mode ]

4

Marvelman who was renamed Miracleman when brought to the U.S.

And from the same comic you had Kid Miracleman, Young Miracleman, Miraclewoman, British Buldog and the Firedrake.

5

2000 AD has a bunch.

Marvel had a whole line of comics for the UK, mostly set in the UK, written by writers from the UK, drawn by artists from the UK - although several of the characters were created by American writers, I believe.

Due to some recent troubles with the American rights, one of the more famous UK-created superheroes over on this side of the Atlantic is Marvelman (AKA Miracleman, although apparently things have been resolved to the point that it’ll be reprinted under the original name in the forseeable future). Granted, he started as a Captain Marvel knockoff to replace CM when the rights to same became tangled (the irony of this occurs to me just now…), but he is a British created superhero of Superman levels.

Then, of course, there’s all the characters created by UK writers for American companies.

There’s probably lots more that I don’t know of - actually, there ARE a lot more I’ve heard of, but have no personal experience with, so I don’t want to comment on.

And comparing Bond or Holmes with with Superman or Spiderman is doing all the genres in question something of a disservice, I think. Bond, Holmes and Biggles aren’t SUPERheroes. Bond is by far the closer of the two to a Superhero, and a lot of superhero books owe a lot to both, but we’re talking 3 completely different genres.

The American equivelants to Holmes or Bond are a lot more like Holmes or Bond than they are like Superman.

6

Would earlier ‘heroes’ count?
Merlin and Arthur for example? Or are we dealing only with comic books?

For that matter, was Beowulf written in the British isles?

7

DC Comics has two important British characters with powers, although both are magical/mystical in origin, and neither wear costumes.

Tim Hunter, the protagonist of The Books Of Magic, is a young British boy who is destined to become the world’s greatest mage. He wears glasses and has a pet owl, but believe it or not, the comic (originally written by Neil Gaiman) predated Harry Potter by several years.

Then there’s John Constantine, the antihero of the comic Hellblazer, and soon to be star of the upcoming movie Constantine, starring Keanu Reeves. John is a smug, smarmy, cynical con man and a right bastard, but he has been known to save the world more than once, trick the lords of Hell, and work alongside such heroes as Swamp Thing and Zatanna (his ex-lover).

Jenny Sparks was a British superheroine, a creation of Warren Ellis from his comics Stormwatch and The Authority (of which she was the founder and leader). The ageless Jenny had electrical powers and was considered “the spirit of the 20th Century,” since she was born on January 1st, 1900, and stopped aging at some point in her 20s. The closest she came to a costume was her usual look of a Union Jack T-shirt with a white suit over it. She sacrificed her life at the turn of the 21st Century after living 100 years of adventure, excitement, and heroism, saving the world from a Cthulhu-like “god.” (See Authority #9-12, reprinted in the “Under New Management” TPB.)

Finally, the purple-haired telepathic ninja Psylocke from the X-Men (Betsy Braddock) is British, and sister to Captain Britain, Brian Braddock. Of course, there’s a new female Captain Britan now, but who can keep up?

8

Banana Man.

9

Manchester Black… though “anti-hero” might be a better description, since his ideology put him at odds with Superman. He’s supposedly dead now although his sister, Vera Lynn Black, aka Sister Superior, is around.

10

DC also had Godiva, who could grow and control her hair (but she’s lost her power, IIRC), and Mayflower (now deceased), a British expatriate who worked for the US government with the Force of July and could control plants.

Non-powered British heroes at DC inlcude Knight & Squire (of the Ultramarines), the Hood (appeared in the Bat books several years ago during the KnightQuest storyline) and the Crusader (appeared in Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt).

11

Curiosity here, with a vagrant memory of hearing about this: Didn’t the original Captain America series – where Steve Rogers is fighting the Nazis during WWII, have a colleague/sidekick (besides Bucky, who was American) of British origins? This would take someone with in-depth knowledge of 1940s comics, but ISTM that there was somebody in that role.

12

How much different is James Bond from Batman?

No tights/spandex.

13

Well, James Bond has all sorts of sexy women as his sidekicks during the movies, while Batman has Robin. :smiley:

14

Batman doesn’t need a new Batmobile every issue.

How about Pyro, from the League of Evil Mutants? Not a hero, but super, nonetheless. X-men 2 notwithstanding, of course.

15

You may be thinking of Union Jack, who wore a black costume and mask that covered his entire face, emblazoned with the red, white, and blue “X” of the British flag (my apologies for not knowing the official terminology). I think he was “retconned,” or added to stories set in the '40s by later writers, rather than actually being a creation of the '40s comics. Those WWII-era Captain America adventures featured a team called The Invaders, also starring Namor the Sub-Mariner and the original Human Torch (the android), both of whom actually date back to the '40s.

Writer/artist Paul Grist also has a British superhero named Jack Staff, who wears a costume very similar to Union Jack.

Peter Wisdom, who hung out with Kitty Pryde and Excalibur, is one of Warren Ellis’ many cynical, chain-smoking, non-costumed British heroes in the John Constantine tradition.

What about Lionheart, one of those ill-fated new characters that came about as a result of DC’s “Bloodlines” Annuals? And then there was The Beefeater from Justice League Europe, but he was more of a parody of Basil Fawlty than anything else.

16

As Polycarp mentions in the original WWII Invaders there was a British member by the name of Union Jack - a non-superpowered adventurer wore a costume completely made up of a union jack design. As I recall there seem to be occasional appearances of current characters with the same name in more recent Marvel comics.

17

Checking my own link I see that I was wrong and the Characters first appearance was not in fact till 1976.

18

When you say “British superheroes,” do you mean characters based in Britain, characters created by British creative teams, or both? Marvelman fits the bill on all counts.

I guess it’s a confusing question because British comics tend to either reprint American comics or come from a wholly different tradition (like Beano). In the 70s, British creators started creating British characters for titles like 2001 AD, and in the 80s these creators started writing and drawing American comics as well.

Most British characters created by British creators for British audiences are not superpowered, but some are. Marvelman and all derivative characters, Axel Pressbutton, Big Ben (“The Man with No Time for Crime”), etc. Some non-powered characters in the superhero mold include Judge Dredd, Dan Dare, Strontium Dog and Halo Jones (as well as James Bond and Harry Potter; you have to split a lot of hairs to exclude these two).

19

You may be thinking of Citizen V, a Timely Comics character who was a British subject. Not sure if he ever met Cap in WWII-published comics, though.

20

Nudge, nudge, how about “Bicycle Repairman”? Wink, wink.