Member-only story
By Jove! You scoundrel! Take that!
The British superhero -underpants inside the trousers!
“If Superman is so clever,” my schoolfriends and I used to ask, “why does he wear his underpants outside his trousers?” It’s a question that nobody could answer satisfactorily. Superman and his ilk, brightly-coloured costumed superheroes, were always associated with America and the American comics one could sometimes obtain from the newsagent.
Our home-grown comics were different. Weekly, each containing several stories and, for the most part, in black and white. The most popular, and long-lived, were the humour-based comics such as The Beano (1938-present) and the The Dandy (1937–2013). Both of these featured characters who had ‘super-powers’ which were used for comic effect, thus Brassneck the Robot Schoolboy, super-strong Desperate Dan, Pansy Potter (“The Strongmans’ Daughter”) and super-fast Billy Whizz. In later decades, superheroes were parodied by, among others, Bananaman.
But there were also adventure comics with names like Eagle, Valiant, Lion and Thunder. Most of these featured super-powered characters, and while some of them were clear, and inferior, imitations of American superheroes, others were completely (and somewhat eccentrically) British. Let’s go through the decades and highlight a few.
