Panel #38: #CaptainAmerica In London Part 2

Having spent almost two years curating this blog, I am delighted to open this post with an announcement: The Cartoon & Comic Book Tour Of London Blog is all set to become a real life London Walks tour! Pow! A Cartoon & Comic Book Walking Tour of London – Superheroes & Satire In The West End joins the London Walks repertoire on Saturday 15th September at 10:45am (meeting at Westminster tube exit 4). 

To celebrate, here's a two-part post on Captain America in London!

Looking For Captain America In London – Part Two

Captain America 253 Roger Stern & John Byrne, Illustrated by John Byrne (1981)

Cap is back in Blighty in 1981 to fight Baron Blood once more, and the first London icon to be referenced is the infamous Jack the Ripper case. At the top of the story, The Slasher has claimed his third victim and the reference point is clear. Here’s Byrne's opening page…

(You can buy digital versions of all the Marvel comics covered in this post here: marvel.com/comics) 

… and here’s the infamous Illustrated Police News from 1888…

The Tower of London makes a cameo appearance and in a lovely little flourish, writer Stern pauses between punches to delivery a quick history lesson…

Captain America #305 Michael Carlin (writer) Paul Neary (artist) (1985)

Four years later, Cap returns to the Big Smoke to assist Captain Britain in his darkest hour fighting the wicked Mordred The Mystic, illegitimate son of King Arthur and a thoroughly bad egg.

This being 1985, Concorde was the only way to fly…

(How Steve Rogers, a skint graphic designer, could afford to fly Concorde we’ll never know. Maybe in the same way that Wonder Woman can afford a central London pad in my earlier post.)

In one of my favourite details, Cap jumps on the tube – literally – at Heathrow…

(You can buy digital versions of all the Marvel comics covered in this post here: marvel.com/comics) 

Imagine that! Squeaky clean Captain America is a fare dodger! Are you reading this Mr Mayor? I’m loving the parallel between comic books and real life here. Captain America is a tube fare dodger, and the U.S Ambassador won’t pay the Congestion Charge!

(Transport pedants - and my colleagues Fiona & Harry – will notice that the train is going to Victoria. The tube for Heathrow airport at this point in time was Hatton Cross and trains did not go to Victoria from there.)

Cap gets inveigled into a fight with Mordred and in an epic, aerial punch-up (ah, they don’t make ‘em like this anymore) blows are traded over Tower Bridge, St Paul’s and Big Ben. But the location I’m choosing from Captain America 305, and making its debut in The Cartoon & Comic Book Tour Of London Blog is The Post Office Tower…

… where Cap finds respite from the fight and uses one of the satellite dishes as a decoy shield to foil the wicked Mordred.

The Post Office Tower – now the BT Tower – was opened in 1965. It looked futuristic then, it looks futuristic in the comic book from 1981, and, to my eye, it still looks futuristic today. 

Find the BT Tower here…

Captain America Steve Rodgers #9 Nick Spencer (Writer) Javier Pina with Andres Guinaldo (Artists) 2017

Cap’s most recent adventures have been turbulent indeed. And I, for one, have fallen in love with the character all over again.

In 2014 Steve Rogers lost his ability to remain youthful and the mantle of Captain America was taken by Sam Wilson who, as The Falcon was the first African American superhero in mainstream comics. The inaugural adventure of the first black Captain America opened with Wilson defending Mexican immigrants at the U.S border.

It is one of this reader's most exhilarating comic book experiences.

The AltRight, inevitably, blew up. “Captain America Has A New Enemy,” screamed a Breitbart headline, “Conservatives Concerned About Illegal Immigration.”

Then in 2016, with Steve Rogers back in the mask (and young again! Hey, this is comic books, anything can happen!) it is revealed that Captain America has been a sleeper agent of Hydra all along (!!!!!). Hydra, for the uninitiated, is a terrorist organization with deep ties to the Nazis – hence my earlier use of five exclamation marks!!!!!

It was the plot twist that, in that wonderfully daft, catastrophising millennial phrase, broke the internet. Everyone had something to say. If there was any remaining doubt about Cap’s status as a political figure, it was surely all gone

Captain America has been a symbol of heroism for years, that all appears to be a lie https://t.co/oi9RfUUoyc pic.twitter.com/0EnA9DwxXO

— CNN (@CNN) May 26, 2016

Writer Jessica Plummer, with clear-headed anger and a keen sense of heritage, wrote, “I am angry, because Steve Rogers’s Jewish creators literally fought in a war against the organization Marvel has made him a part of to grab headlines.”

Captain America's writer Neil Spencer speaking to The Daily Beast, said, “I’m the most hated man in America today.”

Me? I loved the whole thing. The furore was fascinating as it unfolded, with debates on anti-semitism and racism ignited by what many would still deem to be a mere comic book. The real life political context, in which Trump made his victorious run for the White House was something that Spencer and the commissioners at Marvel could not possibly have planned.

More than anything, though, I loved the bravura storytelling. Enjoy would be completely the wrong word. It was tough going sometimes, but at the end of every issue I was knocked out by the sheer audacity of it all.

And a London location? He turns up at The Shard in issue #9. Perhaps this is symbolic of a new era for London is comic books – no sign of Big Ben, here. Is this because London is finally acquiring a modicum of world class, signature modern architecture amid all the designed-by-Minecraft modernity? I do hope so.

Too right wing for some. Too wet-liberal for others. Too imperialist to even read for others yet. So… how DO you solve a problem like Captain America? Well, you don’t. Because he’s ALL problem. ALL the time. Which makes him one of the most fascinating characters in the canon.

Cap also turns up in 1602 an ingenious short series written by Neil Gaiman which transposes the beloved characters of the Marvel Universe to Jacobean London. 1602 will feature in a future post of The Cartoon & Comic Book Tour of London.

Panel No.37: #CaptainAmerica In London Part 1

Adam writes…

Having spent more than two years curating this blog, I am delighted to open this post with an announcement: The Cartoon & Comic Book Tour Of London Blog is all set to become a real life London Walks tour! Pow! A Cartoon & Comic Book Tour of London – Superheroes & Satire In The West End joins the London Walks repertoire on Saturday 15th September at 10:45am (meeting at Westminster tube exit 4). 

To celebrate, here's a two-part post on Captain America in London!

Looking For Captain America In London – Part One

(You can buy digital versions of all the Marvel comics covered in this post here: marvel.com/comics) 

How do you solve a problem like Captain America?

Me personally? I don't have a problem with the all-American, bullet-headed, Saxon mother's son type of a superhero.

I would have a problem if ALL comics featured such leading characters, not least on grounds that it would be ever-so-slightly boring.

But in this age of Graphic Storytelling Is the New Lit, there is a pressure on comic book writers and artists to do something radical with the old characters. So back to the question…

How do you solve a problem like Captain America?

First let's address the great contradiction at the heart of outwardly the most conventional, most squeaky clean, most pro-establishment of all Marvel characters (surely only Superman over at DC comes close to Cap for sheer, dull wholesomeness): for one of the good guys, Captain America sure gets up a lotta people's noses.

All political figures do. And if you're going to drape a fictional character in a flag, then he's going to become a political figure whether you want him to be or not.

His first deed on the public stage was political:

He punched Hitler in the mush.

The diminutive Austrian painter and decorator did, after all, have it coming.

So what's not to like?

Well…

The year is 1941, a full year before the attack on Pearl Harbor with the isolationist movement in the US a powerful force. As such, the comic came in for severe criticism and, legend has it, police protection was arranged for writer Joe Simon the comic's creator after serious threats. Grant Morrison's seminal Supergods: Our World In The Age Of the Superhero tells us that Cap artist Jack Kirby confronted American Nazi sympathisers in person with sleeves rolled-up. That's the spirit. 

Built for WWII, he immediately went stale in the early days of the cold war and lumbered along until the early 60s as Captain America – Commie Smasher.

In 1964 Stan Lee and Jack Kirby restored him to his former glory as head of super hero team The Avengers. Thus Cap rode out the so-called Silver Age of Comics.

It was during the following Bronze Age period that Cap returned to London.

The Bronze Age (roughly 1970 – 1985) is typified by a return to the darker, weightier subject matter of the Golden Age comics (1938 - 1950) – such themes as prejudice in all forms (see above) and social injustice.

And here’s Cap’s problem: how does a superhero draped in the livery of the ultimate Establishment go about representing the little guy? The trick  to take him back to the context when the villains were more clear cut, back to his heyday… the war years. Enter the mono-testicular house painter once more. Cap is always much more believable punching Hitler than socking, say climate change.

Tellingly, all three visits to London listed here in this two-part post reference his wartime backstory. 

Even the subtext of his London adventures – in support of two British Marvel superheroes, Union Jack and Captain Britain – calls to mind America's entry into WWII.

(I’ll come back to Captain Britain later in this series – and he’ll feature in the walking tour this September.)

Invaders #8 by Roy Thomas (words) and Frank Robbins (art) September 1976

Union Jack – James Montgomery Falsworth, a peer of the realm, no less, was a hero of WWI. Captain America (as part of WWII superhero team The Invaders with Sub Mariner and The Human Torch) comes to his family’s aid when Union Jack’s arch enemy Baron Blood – a vampire (yup, it’s rip roaring stuff!) – raises his ugly head once more.

The Tower of London features briefly as does the inevitable Big Ben*. But my favourite panel features all of The Invaders above the Thames…

(You can buy digital versions of all the Marvel comics covered in this post here: marvel.com/comics) 

… note the bridge in the background? Westminster Bridge. Check out the street lamps. Lovely, detailed touch this, greatly at odds with the often broad brush strokes that Marvel so often apply to non-American cities.

(*Yup. Big Ben. Just like Scooby Doo. And Spiderman. And Deadpool. And Disney. And Danger Mouse. This why I've chosen Westminster tube as the starting point for my Pow! A Cartoon & Comic Book Tour of London in September.)


Find Westminster Bridge here…

Part two will follow…

Coming Soon! The #Cartoon & #ComicBook Walking Tour With The Famous @londonwalks Company!

Very excited to announce that this blog is finally going to become a real life walking tour!

Here's a quick preview, more news soon!

Panel No.36: The Cartoon Museum (Again!) and #BigBen (Again Again!)

Daily Constitutional editor Adam takes us on a Cartoon & Comic Book Tour of London –  a metropolis-wide search for all things illustrated. 

The tour so far has taken in everything from Gillray and Hogarth, to Scooby Doo and on to Deadpool and beyond! It also features the best in London comic book stores as well as galleries that showcase the best in the cartoonist's art. 

Adam writes…

In Panel 36 I'm swinging by TWO locations already visited on this blog "tour" so far – Big Ben and The Cartoon Museum for the excellent show Future Shock! 40 Years Of 2000AD in search of Dan Dare…

 

The world is in grave danger. Evil stalks us at every turn.

Worse yet… it's a real life situation. We're not in the pages of a comic book. There are no superheroes to swoop down and save the day.

The future of our very way of life is at stake.

To whom can we turn?

Well how about the combined might of Winston Churchill, the Communist Party of Great Britain, the National Union of Teachers and the Church of England? That lot could surely put even The Avengers to shame.

And what monstrous evil could unite such disparate forces as those listed above?

Comics, gentle reader. Comics.

American comics. Lurid American comics. Violent American comics. Shocking American comics.

You know the ones… the REALLY GOOD ones.

Back in 1953 all of the above organisations, along with individual clergymen, magistrates and even representatives from the field of psychology and concerned parents up and down the country, joined forces to have so-called "horror comics" from America banned from British newsagent shelves – and thus from the clammy, thrill-starved hands of horrid little boys* everywhere.

(* No offence, readers. I blog this as a card-carrying Horrid Little Boy.)

One clergyman, the Reverend Marcus Morris, had fired an early salvo in the campaign with an article in the Daily Sketch newspaper in which he told of "a nearly 40 per cent increase [in crimes committed] among children aged 10."

"I blame much of this," he thundered, "on their 'comics'. As soon as a child becomes old enough to read, he enters a new world of horror and vice, where there are no apparent morals."

Crikey!

The Minister of Education, the impressive Scot Florence Horsbrugh (the first woman to hold a cabinet post in a Conservative administration), was of the opinion that the whole furore "was being overplayed". And that might have been an end to it, had the issue not ended up on the desk of the Prime Minister of the day…

Winston Churchill was elected Prime Minister in the general election of 1951. In February 1954, he asked personally to be appraised of "the sale of American type comics in this country and the social effects which they might be having".

The Home Office prepared a memo in which westerns and Tarzan comics are described as "harmless enough". But it also included prose so damning that every adjective pops with all the vim of the "Bam!" and "Pow!" flashes in a golden age Batman strip…

"Strong streak of sadistic cruelty"… "abound in representations of scantily dressed women"… "macabre supernatural scenes"… "frenzy of drug addicts"… "unwholesome"…

Stating that the comics are "Unlikely to be beneficial", it concludes: "the prevailing sense of values is shoddy and distorted."

Why was the Prime Minister involved in the first place? Why did such an issue get so high up the chain of command?

Legend has it that Churchill was advised by a close aide that the "unwholesome" comics in question were being published by Dundee-based firm D.C Thomson – a company that Churchill held in contempt because he believed that their editorials were instrumental in his losing the parliamentary seat of Dundee in 1922.

See my earlier post on DC Thomson HERE

See also my earlier posts featuring Churchill HERE (David Low) and HERE (Uber by Kieron Gillen & Canaan White

The bill introduced by Home Secretary Gwilym Lloyd George (son of David) came into law in 1955 as The Children and Young Person's (Harmful Publications) Bill. It set out to ban…

"...any book, magazine or other like work which is of a kind likely to fall into the hands of children or young persons and consists wholly or mainly of stories told in pictures (with or without the addition of written matter), being stories portraying—

(a) the commission of crimes; or

(b) acts of violence or cruelty; or

(c) incidents of a repulsive or horrible nature;

in such a way that the work as a whole would tend to corrupt a child or young person into whose hands it might fall."

The aforementioned Rev Morris was, however, absent from the populist campaign. He was busy having taken action of a different kind: the publication of a wholesome, British comic alternative.

In April 1950 Eagle was launched, with Dan Dare Pilot of the Future as its star…

In an early draft, Dan Dare was not a pilot but a squadron padre – the chaplain or vicar attached to a military unit  – named Lex Christian. The surname is a clear indication of the direction that Morris and artist Frank Hampson were taking: respectable British values of decency, fairness and forgiveness would be our hero’s superpowers.

Unlike its American counterparts, The Eagle also featured longer reads and pieces on history and science. The Christian ethos of the title is perhaps most clearly seen in one of the other works for which Hampson is celebrated, The Road of Courage, a graphic retelling of the life of Jesus which first appeared as the back page strip in the Eagle in 1960…

 

Legend has it that Lord Jellicoe, Leader of the House of Lords (and former First Lord of the Admiralty) read The Eagle in the Palace of Westminster library. Similarly Lord Mountbatten is said to have placed a subscription for his nephew Prince Charles and once found cause to ring the publisher to complain when an issue failed to arrive in the post.

My London Walks colleague Donald Rumbelow once told me that it was one of the great privileges of his schooldays to be dispatched by the head master to pick up the school's copy of the comic – not least because he would then have the thrill of being the first to peruse its pages.

My own introduction to Dan Dare came in 1977 when he was revived from his state of suspended animation to star in the newly launched comic 2000AD.

The Eagle had endured a miserable 1960s with budget cuts and the loss of the great Hampson and had been subsumed into rival Lion comic in 1969. But we hadn't yet heard the last of the great Dan Dare.

2000AD celebrated its 2000th issue in 2016 and looks forward to its 40th anniversary this month (February 2017). Back in '77, its editor was Pat Mills. Mills had worked on Battle comic and had created the legendary British classic Action comic, a publication noted for its sensational, violent thrills. Its publication created a panicked scandal unseen since the days of the 50s detailed above.

Mills took the decision to add Dan Dare to the mix of 2000AD with the idea being that Dan was still a much-loved comic hero. His presence, it was hoped, would help the new title establish itself in the market place.

Italian artist Massimo Belardinelli was enlisted to create the new Dan…

As you can see, by '77 he's less clean-cut, more of the period (suspended animation has worked wonders on his barnet and mutton-chops) – but the trademark squiggly eyebrows are still in place.

Last week I dropped in on Future Shock – the exhibition that celebrates 40 years of 2000AD at the great Cartoon Museum and was delighted to see some original artwork from Belardinelli featuring the London of 2077. Here's how the published version looks…

 

I'm particularly fond of the flying tour of London drone to the right of Big Ben. I wonder if I'll be leading those as a hologram 160 years from now? I like the "Scenic Walk Eezee" too!

And there's Big Ben. AGAIN. Big Ben is rapidly taking over The Cartoon & Comic Book Tour of London blog.

I've already covered the world's most famous clock in Spiderman & Deadpool, Danger Mouse, Scooby Doo, The Fantastic Four, Uber, Disney AND Wonder Woman.

The aforementioned Frank Hampson also gets in on the Big Ben act with his centre spread for the short-lived Marvel UK in the 70's…

 

… which pictured the Palace of Westminster in 2006.

In the 70s as in the 50's, Dan Dare's nemesis was The Mekon…

… and a right rotter he looks, too.

In the context of Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster, The Mekon holds a place dear in the hearts of cartoon and cartoonist fans in this country thanks to The Guardian's Steve Bell who used Hampson's famous alien as his jumping-off point for his take on former Leader of the Opposition and former Home Secretary William Hague… 

In fairness to Hague, unlike his 50s forerunner Lloyd George, never once in his tenure as Home Secretary did he seek to deprive us of our comics or cartoonists.

I have every confidence that I'll be back to Big Ben before long on this blog. I will certainly return to the topic of The Cartoon Museum, not least because they've got The Inking Woman, an exhibition of British women cartoonists from April 2017. 

Credits…

Frank Hampson's son runs an excellent website dedicated to the work of his father, with some excellent original boards available for sale. Visit the website here:

www.frankhampsonartwork.co.uk

The Cartoon Museum's current show celebrates the unprecedented 40 year history of 2000AD. Future Shock! 40 Years of 200AD runs until 23rd April 2017. Admission is £7, £5 concession and £3 for students. Their website is here www.cartoonmuseum.org

The exhibition is curated by Steve Marchant (the Comic Creators Project curator) - I blogged about Steve in an earlier post explaining why I started this Cartoon & Comic Book Tour Of London blog in the first place. Catch up with that post HERE.

For further reading on the social history of British comics I can highly recommend British Comics – A Cultural History by James Chapman. Mr Chapman's book was the main source for the political background in this blog. You can buy the book here.

This being a Cartoon & Comic Book Tour of London blog you will, of course, require a map. I think you'll now how to find Big Ben, but here's how to get to the Cartoon Museum…

I've collated all the previous 35 Panels in this Cartoon & Comic Book Tour Of London blog in one place. I hope you enjoy them: cartoonandcomicbooklondon.blogspot.co.uk/

Next time on The Cartoon & Comic Book Tour of London blog… Captain America and the Shard!

Panel No.35: Eisner Award-Winning Orbital Comics

Daily Constitutional editor Adam Scott-Goulding continues his Cartoon & Comic Book Tour of London…

You can catch up with the previous "stops" at the Cartoon & Comic Book Tour of London blog here cartoonandcomicbooklondon.blogspot.co.uk.

Panel No. 35. Eisner Award-Winning Orbital Comics

I'm making a second visit to Orbital Comics on my Cartoon & Comic Book Tour of London blog in the wake of some very good news from earlier this year.

Orbital Comics is the 2016 winner of the Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Award for best comic book store! Orbital was chosen from a list of nominees from across the globe.

Congratulations to all the guys in Great Newport Street! You can see the award in the store.

In my original post - Panel No.6 – I looked a little bit into the history of Great Newport Street itself. You can catch up with that post here.

The Eisner Award is the Oscar of the comic book publishing world and as such is a seriously big deal.

It is named for Will Eisner (1917 - 2005) writer and cartoonist who is widely credited with coining and popularising the phrase Graphic Novel. His 1985 book Comics & Sequential Art hanseled the modern era of comics as vehicles capable of carrying complex and sophisticated stories worthy of critical analysis.

If that all sounds a bit high falutin, here's Allan Moore to cut through the BS:  

"Eisner is the single person most responsible for giving comics its brains."

Stan Lee put it pretty well, too: 

"Will Eisner was to comics what Babe Ruth was to baseball."

(The work of Moore & Lee featured earlier in this Comic Book London Tour – see HERE, HERE for Moore and HERE for Stan Lee.)

Given that this is a Cartoon & Comic Book Tour of London, I'll point you not only in the direction of Orbital, but of Eisner's most famous London-themed work: Fagin The Jew.

Eisner's 2003 work takes the form of an interview conducted by Dickens with Fagin (of Oliver Twist infamy) on the night before the latter is hanged.

The narrative is a bold confrontation of anti-Semitic stereotypes in literature and, as such, is powerful indeed. Eisner's approach reminds me of that of a method actor getting into a role: where does the character come from? How did he get to be this way? 

As Fagin's journey is unfolded, we learn of the plight of the Ashkenazi Jews in London, the hardships and prejudices they endured. These, Eisner suggests, are the factors that shaped Fagin's character. The Fagin that emerges by the book's end is a far more complex individual than the villain in Dickens's original.

In encouraging us to walk a mile in another man's shoes, Eisner ends up penning a Graphic Novel not only for Fagin, nor only for the Jewish immigrant experience, but for every Londoner. If you are a Londoner who has ever been proud of the slogan #LondonIsOpen Eisner's Fagin the Jew is a must read.

Fagin the Jew is published by Dark Horse.

You can find Orbital Comics on Great Newport Street here…

In a post planned for 2017 I'll return to the work of Dickens through the illustrations of Cruikshank and the many artists who have brought the great writer's characters alive on the page

Panel No.34: Gillray

Daily Constitutional editor Adam Scott-Goulding continues his Cartoon & Comic Book Tour of London with a GUEST BLOG from London Walks Pen David Tucker!

You can catch up with all 33 previous "stops" at the Cartoon & Comic Book Tour of London blog here cartoonandcomicbooklondon.blogspot.co.uk.

Panel No. 34. Gillray

Perspective. Getting it into. And making connections.

So if you’re walking with us on either our Wednesday afternoon Old Palace Quarter walk or its Wednesday afternoon stablemate the Chelsea London’s Riverside Village walk – let’s make a connection, let’s get things into perspective.

Let’s spare a thought for James Gillray, arguably the greatest caricaturist of them all.

And why Gillray now? What’s the now connection?

That clip of Hillary Clinton leaving the 911 commemoration service early because she wasn’t feeling well and having the staggers when she got into the limo.

The thing’s of course gone viral. It’s in bad taste. It’s cruel – “this presidential campaign is turning into a weekend at Bernie’s”, that kind of thing.

But it’s a church social, near beer compared to the 192-proof vodka that Gillray trafficked in.  In the words of historian Andrew Roberts, Gillray’s oeuvre rejoiced in “disturbing sexual and scatological imagery…scenes of buggery, groping, excretion and flagellation…”

There but for the grace of 220 years goes HRC.

And quickly, let’s do the connections with our two walks. Gillray was born and grew up in Chelsea. His father, a Scot, had been a blacksmith. Gillray pere joined the cavalry, lost an arm at the Battle of Forteney. He became a pensioner at the Royal Hospital. He joined the extreme protestant second the Moravian Brotherhood. He was the sexton as their burial-ground at Chelsea for over 40 years.

I think there’s a fair chance that Gillray senior’s Moravian outlook “influenced” his son’s turn of mind. The Moravians were convinced of the fundamental depravity of man and the worthlessness of life; their cheerful reckoning was that death was a welcome release from life’s afflictions.

Those notions surely grist for the son’s artistic mill. A mill that ground out, for example, the celebrated print that showed Pitt as “an excresence – a fungus – alias a toadstool upon a dunghill.”

And as for The Old Palace Quarter… Gillray lived at 27 St. James’s Street. He lodged over the shop of Hannah Humphrey, the sister of his first publisher. She was a maiden lady, 15-20 years older than Gillray.

Stuff happened. A proposal of marriage was extended and accepted. The wedding was to take place at St. James’ Piccadilly, Wren’s only West End church. We visit it on the Old Palace Quarter walk.

The wedding almost took place. Gillray took fright at the church door and ran away.

He came back to St. James’s, though.

He’s buried there.

Find 27 St James's Street here…

Panel No. 33. Sidney Paget & Sherlock Holmes

Panel No. 33. Sidney Paget & Sherlock Holmes

Sidney Paget's most famous work. As you can see I'm looking suitably shocked as Sherlock Holmes falls to his certain death at Reichenbach Falls… Or DOES he…?

Describe a superhero without using the words super or hero or powers...

A fictional character with an outré costume who defends the world from evil.

or

A being with gifts greater than those of the average human.

or

A crimefighter – often with a sidekick – possessed with excessive courage.

Looking beyond the heroics, I might suggest that all superheroes have a weakness, an Achilles heel. Thor, for example, is just a dodgy-looking roadie for a heavy metal band without his Hammer. Kryptonite kills Superman, as any fule kno.

Going a little deeper, what does the superhero says about the society from which s/he springs? Back to Superman, it's difficult to separate him from the great liberal ideals of the American Dream: is he not the ultimate immigrant? He has TWO jobs and he's assimilated with such passion that he's practically draped in the flag. Ditto Wonder Woman.

Then take Batman, the libertarian face of the same silver dollar. The right to defend one's territory by any means necessary. Slow to anger but ruthless in retribution.

In this respect both Superman and Batman are personifications of the United States, the world's supreme super power. The World's Policeman.

Take this role and add it to the list above - costume, sidekick, powers, courage and one fatal flaw - and you have a pretty good picture of the colourful superheroes of Marvel and DC.

Now sepia-tint the picture. Remove the brash colours but keep all the other elements.

A courageous crime fighter with special powers, a distinctive costume and a reliable sidekick...

It's elementary, no?

Whenever I lead the Sherlock Holmes walking tour for London Walks, "Sherlock as Superhero" is one of my running themes. And is Sherlock not the personification of the old Empire? All conquering, firm-but-fair, the ever-so-English gentleman-amateur.

Origin stories play a big part in Superheroland – the incidents that made the heroes super in the first place: Spiderman was bitten by a radioactive spider; Wonder Woman was an Amazon and daughter of the gods.

Sherlock Holmes's origin story is one of the most fascinating in all of popular fiction. In the common conception of the great detective, he is the child of many fathers, including the actors who have portrayed him on screen.

The starting point is, of course, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who launched his first Holmes story A Study In Scarlet on the world in 1887. In terms of description, however, Doyle at first gives gives us only this…

In height he was rather over six feet, and so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller. His eyes were sharp and piercing, save during those intervals of torpor to which I have alluded; and his thin, hawk-like nose gave his whole expression an air of alertness and decision. His chin, too, had the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination.

In discussing Sherlock in graphic terms, by which I mean his look or image especially in the popular imagination, this gives us very little to go on.

It's at this point that I turn to Sidney Paget. 

If I may mix my pop-cultural metaphors for a moment, Paget is the Sherlockian equivalent of The Fifth Beatle – the third lodger at 221b, if you will.

Paget was born in London in 1860. His father was the vestry clerk at St James's in Clerkenwell. Having attended the Royal Academy Schools, he became an illustrator on the famous Strand Magazine, the picture paper published between 1891 and 1950.

It is through Paget that the famed deerstalker hat enters the world of Sherlock Holmes. It has become the great consulting detective's trademark. It first appeared in The Boscombe Valley Mystery in 1891…

… and has become such a part of Sherlock lore that a mere silhouette is enough to put us in the picture…

Baker Street tube station

Is there another character in all of fiction that can be conveyed so efficiently through illustration?

An often-repeated myth is that Paget used his brother Walter as the model for Holmes.

More widely accepted is the story that the original commission to draw for ACD’s stories had been intended for the aforementioned Walter Paget, also an artist, but landed in Sidney's lap in error. If that's true then it's the happiest accident in the history of graphic storytelling – for Paget, for Doyle and for generations of fans.

I remember drawing my own Holmes as a kid, during the school holidays when the old Basil Rathbone movies were played on TV. For this blog I tried to draw Sherlock Holmes again, for the first time in nigh-on 40 years. And when I scribbled my own version…

… I was surprised and impressed by Paget all over again. 


Following Paget's conventions (however roughly) I realised that when drawing Holmes one is essentially drawing a villain: the sunken cheeks, the downturned brow, the shadows thrown by the cape. The narrow eyes are pure evil. The domed cranium exaggerated by the cheekbones is The Mekon from Dan Dare and 101 mad scientists from strips and animation the world over.

With his illustrations, Paget instinctively tapped in to the dark side of Conan Doyle's famous character. In this, it is a most modern interpretation. It predates Frank Miller's landmark, dark reimagining of Batman in 1986 by 100 years. It's thrilling to think what Paget could have done in the field of graphic storytelling today.

The most recent screen Holmes, the cadaverously handsome young Master Cumberbatch, has breathed yet more new life into the character. And the hand of Sidney Paget is still present. His deerstalker becomes something of a running gag…

(Pic source The Personal Blog of John Watson: www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk)

Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman (Watson) feature in a recent comic book incarnation of Holmes, a Manga version of Sherlock A Study In Pink, published in English but with the convention of reading right-to-left still in place…

This English translation of the Japanese hit comic takes the TV script of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss and presents it in a highly-stylised comic book form by artist Jay. And the London locations are expertly captured…

Sherlock: A Study In Pink is published by Titan titan-comics.com

There's also a lot of really tremendous fan art out there, inspired by the Cumberbatch/Freeman twosome…

… much of it exploring the nature of Holmes and Watson's relationship…

The much-analised gay subtext is an area thoroughly out-of-bounds to Paget and Doyle back in the late 19th Century. But liberated 21st Century Sherlock fans (and scriptwriters) are having a field day.

Check out LOADS more Sherlock fan art here: pinterest.com/explore/sherlock-fan-art

Holmes is a natural comic book hero. As well as being a prototype for the 20th and 21st Century superheroes we know and love, he's also worked with Batman…

… fought The Joker…

… and even starred in his own title, all for DC.

But far and away my favourite of Sherlock comics has been the recent all-ages romp The Baker Street Peculiars written by Roger Langridge and illustrated by Andy Hirsch…

The action takes place in 1930s London where one of the Trafalgar Square lions comes to life and runs amok through the city! Only Sherlock Holmes can save us now!

The Peculiars are, of course, an update of the Baker Street Irregulars, Holmes's band of street urchins who function as his eyes and ears in the darkest corners of London. The Peculiars differ from the Irregulars in that they drive the story and have a wider race and gender mix, much more accessible to the young modern comic reader. It's really lovely stuff, both words and pictures. The imaginative adventure rages through London from posh West…



…to wild East…

… and has some great villains (scary AND funny) and a wonderful twist on the oft-neglected Mrs Hudson. (I'll say no more! But you can buy the comic HERE or, better still, make an enquiry at London's Eisner-Award-winning comic book store Orbital Comics - their website is: www.orbitalcomics.com.)

There are no less than six portraits of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle held at the National Portrait Gallery – four photographic, one oil on canvas (by Henry L. Gates) and, my favourite, a Punch cartoon from 1926 by Sir John Bernard Partridge.

Like Paget, Bernard Partridge was born in London, son of the president of the Royal College of Surgeons and nephew of John Partridge, portrait painter to Queen Victoria. In a varied career (he was also, briefly, an actor) he worked as a designer for Lavers, Berraud and Westlake, the stained glass window makers. You can still see their former building today in Endell Street, Covent Garden…

Holmes and Paget were no strangers to Covent Garden themselves. Here's Paget's illustration for a The Blue Carbuncle, a Christmassy tale with a very important scene played out at Covent Garden Market…

Partridge joined Punch in 1891, the same year that Paget joined The Strand.

It was for Punch that he made the portrait of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that is now part of the National Portrait Galley archive.

It depicts the writer with his head in the clouds, dreaming perhaps of fame among the pantheon of the great intellectuals. But the clouds turn out to be merely wreaths of smoke belching from Holmes's pipe and the great detective is portrayed as a ball and chain tethering Conan Doyle's literary ambitions.

How attitudes change.

In the 21st century popular writers such as J.K Rowling, Ian Rankin and Val MacDiarmid are called upon to hold forth on the affairs of the day in the media with graphic novels discussed alongside Booker Prize nominees in the arts pages of the quality press. Doyle and Paget would have thrived in such a climate.

In terms of choosing a locating for this panel of my ongoing Cartoon & Comic Book Tour of London, I absolutely LOVE Roger Langridge's Cambridge Circus and Palace Theatre (pictured above) but given that this is an homage to Sidney Paget, I'm going to direct you instead to the great illustrator's final resting place in East Finchley Cemetery on the East End Road in North London…

He may well be buried there but, as we have seen, his work lives on.