In the late 70s, boys comics were a bit crap in the UK, The Beezer, Beano, The Dandy to name a few. Weak comedy with wacky characters that involved sweets, money or food, and avoiding corporal punishment at school or home. Girls comics were even worse. Bunty. Theres no punchline to that unadulterated horseshit.
Victor and Commando etc were lazy WW2 formula based stuff at best, brave tommy takes on machine gun nest with biceps bulging, Doc Savage type ho-hum. Add to that some non-fiction picture stories to enliven it, but not much to get repeat buyers. Action and a few others attempted to add some sci-fi but it seemed half arsed at best.
Marvel Comics were far superior items, better artwork, content, and story writing, when Star Wars weekly was released, the added stories were mixes of Asimov and Ray Bradbury, Twilight Zone and Roald Dahl, many of them from earlier US titles like Amazing stories and Astounding. The success in the UK of Marvel allowed them and DC comics to import titles like The Hulk, Iron Man, Fantastic four, X-men, Spiderman, Silver Surfer, Justice League and so on. There seemed to be a bias, you either like DC or Marvel characters, and they took swipes at each other, some characters and artists even switched publishers.
Then something changed. 2000AD was launched early in '77 and suddenly there was a comic with intelligence and wit, with characters, story and art to match Marvel. The printing wasn't up to it at first, colour comics were a novelty then reserved for central pages stories, but the writers held it together while the artists were shuffled round. Judge Dredd cemented the comics future despite changing hands and being cancelled in its original format. Strontium dog and Star lord joined the lineup, and even the "future shock" denoument stories have been re-told in film and TV scripts.
Fast forward to today and British writers and artists regularly cross over with their American cousins, prized for their darker style and irreverent sarcasm. UK only versions of Aliens, Predator, Dark Knight etc have become "graphic novels" with 18 ratings for gore and violence and sought after in the US as they are practically pR0n by US publication standards. Nothing compared to Japanese Manga but a new era in US comic book stores with "over 18" sections.
"Comics" have become shows like South Park, Family guy, The Simpsons and Drawn Together, with heavy Brit influences like Monty Python, Douglas Adams, Steven Hawking, Ricky Gervais etc. The rubbish earlier versions of movies like Batman are being remade as Marvel can afford to buy back the rights to its characters and put out stuff like X-men, and the forthcoming Wolverine, Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk with the effects less important than script, character development and occasionally some acting(!)
