I've been re-reading this one, lately. It's a fun read. It helps that I had some familiarity with some of the characters - when I was a kid, my parents would go up to Canada, and they'd bring me back copies of <i>Lion<i/>, <i>Tiger</i>, <i>Eagle</i> and <i>Valiant</i>. Those old British comics were, in their way, as different from American comics as any Japanese manga. As with manga, while the British did do "super-heroes", they never got tied into it the way American comics did.
How well I remember them all - Captain Hurricane, Kid Pharaoh, Robot ARCHIE, the Football Family Robinson, Sylvester Turville, Zip Nolan, the Steel Commando, Adam Eterno, so many others.
But even if you've never heard of any of these characters, the book is well worth a look - it's like a gateway to a very different kind of comics world.
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Isn't it written by Alan Moore's daughter? That's kind of what put me off reading them. Wasn't sure it was being published on its own merits.
She is younger than me, I think, and I don't rememebr reading any of those characters, so I don't know how she knew them!
Britain was dealing with heavy stuff about the breakup of its Empire and the dissolution of all their dreams when those characters were originally published, whereas at that time the US was awakening to a bright new future as the atomic-powered master of the Earth.
That's probably the main reason for the differences in tone. Also a young country like the US could be optimistic about things, but back in the old world, we're too cynical about the ways of the world to create bright shiney heroes.
The Watchmen are as much descended from these somewhat freakish and grubby heroes as from US heroes.
I had no love for the characters so the series did absolutely nothing for me. I don't think I even finished reading it. Plus, it was a 6 issue monthly mini series that took over a year to complete if memory serves.