As much as I like comics and like to think I know about their history, I’m woefully Americentric. For the most part, European and Japanese comics don’t appeal to me.
So, who are the great characters of non-American comicdom? By this I mean, who are the Superman, Spider-Man and Batman of their respective countries - the characters that everyone on the street knows (if that’s even the case, or the characters that “every” fan knows and/or reads).
Here’s what I’ve got:
Rin Tin-Tin
Judge Dredd
Lone Wolf & Cub.
Of course, my experience is completely limited to trades I see in the store, so this list is likely incorrect.
Most other cultures that do comics don’t typically focus on the same characters issue after issue, year after year. There are certainly exceptions, and there are also long stories that take years to tell, but the bulk of non-U.S. comics that I’ve encountered have an ending.
Golgo-13 aka Duke Togo has been the star of a long running manga, it’s been published since the 70’s. Although best known here from a couple anime and nintendo games, he is widely read and merchandised there.
A related question that occurred to me when reading the OP:
Was there ANY comic/cartoon entertainment produced for kids in the old Soviet Bloc countries? It was easy to parody them as being “everything propoganda” (e.g., the Simpsons’ joke that the top cartoon cat-and-mouse team there was “Worker and Parasite”), but now that the Iron Curtain is gone, are there any works in that genre that we now know about? Any Soviet-created “Soviet Super-Soldiers”?
Older UK characters
Dan Dare, chissel jawed pilot.
Dennis the Menace and Gnasher (completely unlike USA’s Dennis the Menace)
Desperate Dan, USA fronteersman who ate pies with a whole cow in them.
I’m mainly familair with Franco-Belgian-Dutch comics, off the top of my head:
Well known:
Tin Tin (Herge)
Asterix (Uderzo & Goscinny)
Spirou and Fantasio (Franquin)
Gaston (Franquin)
Lucky Luke (Morris)
Michel Valiant (Graton)
Suske en Wiske (van der Steen)
Not as famous but still pretty mainstream:
Ric Hochet (Tibet)
Yoko Tsuno (Leloup)
Blake and Mortimer (Jacobs)
Les Tuniques Bleues (Lambil & Cauvin)
Storm (Don Lawrence, English but I think he had more succes on the mainland)
::raises a hand::
Well, technically I’m not from behind the iron curtain since Slovenia, as a part of ex-Yugoslavia, was a member of the nonaligned nations but we’ve had a similar situation to a degree. We didn’t have any superhero comics as such but had a few comics featuring the partisans (having almost superheroic powers), the most known being Mirko and Slavko. But they didn’t stand the test of time and are not known among the young generations.
The comic which everybody in Slovenia knows is Zvitorepec, Trdonja and Lakotnik. The adventures of Zvitorepec (Cunningtail, a fox), Trdonja (Hardhead, a turtle) and Lakotnik (Ravenous, a wolf) were created by Miki Muster (short bio) and were published as a comic for children/teenagers. This gave the author the possibility to include elements of satire and therefore made it popular also among adults. Of course this wasn’t the only reason for its popularity. The stories of three friends travelling around the world and also in time were inteligently funny, had a good structure and also carried a moral value which was never forced. There are some samples from the comics:
Another comic, known by virtually everybody in former Yugoslavia is Alan Ford, a creation of the Italian duo Magnus & Bunker.It is a spoof of the secret agent genre featuring what is probably the most incompetent secret service of all times with headquarters in a dingy New York flowershop led by a senile guy in a wheel-chair who’s been around since the dawn of time, and an array of bizzare villains, the most famous undisputably being Superhick, a street-sweeper turned supervillain with the deadly alcoholic breath who steals from the poor and gives to the rich.
Bippy the Beardless beat me to Dan Dare, who’s the first one I thought of … the second was Modesty Blaise, the third was Garth. (Though I haven’t seen much of Garth lately. But both Dan Dare and Modesty Blaise are being reissued in nice big books, of late … )
Marvelman, Ranxerox, D.R. & Quinch and Arzach are all pretty iconic. So is Lt. Blueberry, but since he’s set in the US, I have trouble including him. (But then, so is Judge Dredd…)
There was quite a bit of animation behnd the Iron Curtain. Gene Dietch (of Terrytoons fame) moved to Prague in the late 50s to work at an animation studio there. George Pal was an animator in Hungary in the 30s but moved to England and then Hollywood during the war; I don’t think he ever went back during the Communist era.
Can’t believe I screwed the Tintin thing up. :smack:
Even if “foreign” comics aren’t necessarily neverending serials, I see no reason why one wouldn’t have captured the public’s imagination. Especially in Japan where they make two “47 Loyal Ronin” movies a year (do they still do that?).
Surprisingly, I’ve heard/read a lot of these, but had no idea that they were particularly popular in their home countries (then again, I understand that Humanoids’ European sales dwarf Marvel’s US sales (not sure about the truth of that).
Well, I don’t know how iconic she was, but there’s Argentina’s Cybersix.
I guess I wouldn’t expect a lot of “superheroes” in hardline-communist countries. It probably wouldn’t do to have a character with powers or abilities that make him better than everyone else saving the people when the normal authorites can’t. :smack:
And you know how hard comic fans can be on writers and publishers…can you imagine what Stalin or Mao would have been like?
Ranchoth
(Retconning from hell. Send Ben Reiley to Siberian “reeducation,” and airbrush him out of all backissues!)
Their creation was wholly influenced by the pre-existing American superheroes, but England’s Marvelman family – Marvelman Young Marvelman, Kid Marvelman, etc. – seems to have gotten short shift. Possibly the most litigated superhero of all time, his “rights” and ownership splt up among several people who can’t agree on anything.
Ditto the UK-produced, Nigerian and South African-sold African superhero Power Man (circa 1975) drawn by young pros Dave Gibbons and Brian Bolland.
Probably the best known manga/anime character in Japan right now is Doraemon, with Sazae-san running a close second. Everyone in Japan knows who they are. People are quite surprised when I tell them that in the States, almost no-one has heard of these comics, even though everybody knows who Pikachu is.
Doraemon’s TV show has been running continuously since 1979, and Sazae-san’s show has been around since 1969, with new shows of both still in production. (They recently announced that after 25 years with pretty much the original voice cast, Doraemon will be re-cast next season.)
Doraemon is the name of a vaguely cat-shaped robot from the future, sent to a hapless young boy named Nobita. Nobita is such a loser that his descendants in the 22nd century are still impoverished by his screw-ups in the present. So, they send their robot servant back in time to him, to help improve his lot. Unfortunately, Doraemon isn’t all that much better than Nobita at coping.
“Sazae-san” is the story of an extended family living in suburban Japan. The original comic was created not long after World War II, so the early stories told of the difficulties of living in Japan during that time. The TV series has pretty much kept up with the times.
Hello Kitty, while ubiquitous, doesn’t seem to have a television show or comic book running at the moment. “Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon” just finished up a one-season live-action series, and although Takeuchi Naoko hasn’t drawn any new PGSM manga since 1997 or so, the original series is being released again in a somewhat updated form. Mach Go-Go-Go (Speed Racer) has pretty much dropped out of the public consciousness here – at least, among young people. Most people I’ve talked to about it barely remember it.
The actual theme song lyric reads “Maha go, go! Maha go, go! Maha go, go! Go!” (Mach 5, Go!) I think Go Mifune is a better name for a character than Speed Racer, ne?
Other iconic Japanese characters include Black Jack, Nausicaa, Totoro, and the Gundam robots.
