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This chapter examines contemporary British superheroes created since 1994. In the aftermath of the phenomenal international success of Watchmen, Arkham Asylum, and The Sandman, British creators and artists became some of the most influential and in demand in the field of comics. Grant Morrison produced his magnum opus, The Invisibles, and Flex Mentallo. The chapter first discusses The Invisibles and Flex Mentallo before considering a number of DC Thomson superheroes. It also analyzes various publications such as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Promethea, along with other series that revived some classic British superheroes and villains of the past. Examples are Brit Force, Jack Staff, and Albion. The chapter concludes with an overview of the second wave of the British Invasion and the resurgence of British comics in the city of Dundee.

This chapter examines the development of the revisionist trend in British comics as well as the so-called British Invasion of American comics and its afermath during the period 1981–1993. It argues that revisionism was a continuation and refocusing of the satirical reaction to the superhero genre that has been in evidence in British comics for decades. The chapter first considers Captain Britain, written by Alan Moore for Marvel UK, before discussing Marvelman and V for Vendetta, also created by Moore, this time for Warrior. It then turns to Watchmen (1986) by Moore and Dave Gibbons, one of the most influential superhero comics of all time; Paradax, a character introduced in 1985 by Eclipse Comics in Strange Days #3; Zenith (1987); and the satire Marshal Law (1987). It also analyzes publications that parody the superhero genre, including How to Be a Superhero (1990) and 1963 (1993).

England’s Elton John had US Top 40 hits for thirty straight years, from 1970 to 1999. Putting John in the Britpop godfather role often occupied by David Bowie substitutes a mainstream with secretly gay elements for art students performing gayness as a theatrics of disaffection; female listeners for male ones; and a working class consumerism that blurred the definition of middle class for a middle class consumerism that blurred the definition of working class. John idolized American music, particularly African American music, and he self-consciously chose to be less rock than Top 40. A first closeted, then openly gay man, he maneuvered fantastic consumerism to position himself outside demography and convention. The identification he felt for Top 40 reflected the format’s gateway role for non-countercultural social change secured through commodification. Top 40 meant youth in America, but it meant America itself in John’s postwar England, and to follow his career is to see how it evolved to represent Americanization, British Invasion, and ultimately globalization. Top 40 needs to be understood as a format of outsiders opting in, where rock prized opting out.

This book has explored the British superhero's long and complex history, even though many have now faded into obscurity. It has also highlighted the ever-shifting balance between parody and satire in British comics and comics produced for international markets by British creators such as Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. Furthermore, it has analyzed the changing industrial and social context of British publishing and the market forces that have shaped British comics. Finally, it has discussed the complex relationship between British and American comics not only in terms of the British Invasion of American comics in the 1980s and its aftermath that is still being felt, but also in the context of the transnational nature of comics and, in particular, the close connections between the American and British markets. In conclusion, the book describes changes in the mainstream British comics industry over the years.

This book examines the history of the British superhero. It shows that the British subversion of the superhero genre goes back to the 1930s, even as the best-known and most often cited examples of this appeared in the early to mid-1980s, when British writers and artists exerted a significant influence on American superhero comics, forming the first wave of the so-called British Invasion. The book also explores the relationship between British and American comics and the treatment of the superhero in Britain, as well as the various precursors to the superhero in British popular culture. It suggests that the British superhero is a parody of a parody, or at least, often parodies or reinscribes a genre and characters that are themselves decipherable as parody or reinscriptions of previous models. This introduction explains what a superhero is and highlights the key differences between American and British comics.

While the first albums packaged with the term “Cantopop” were released in 1952, the origin of Cantopop remains an unresolved issue. In the 1950s and the 1960s, Cantopop were not considered mainstream in Hong Kong despite the fact that Cantonese was spoken by over ninety percent of its people. Cantopop could be said to be popular among Hong Kong audience, but most people considered it to be inferior to Mandarin and English popular songs. In the 1960s, Cantopop, albeit gradually gaining popularity in terms of market share, was still very much marginalized. It was only in the mid-1970s that Cantopop finally came to the fore.

During the 1960s the music of the counterculture was transformed rapidly and repeatedly. This chapter traces these changes from the folk revival through the British invasion, Blues rock, psychedelia, etc., looking at the impact of key figures including Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Jefferson Airplane and Jimi Hendrix. It argues that the anti-modernist impulses of the early 1960s were replaced by an obsession with new technology and a corporate structure in which artists were able to hide their economic ambitions through the separation of musician and manager.

One of the most striking occurrences in the history of Billboard’s popularity charts was the disappearance of the R&B chart from November 1963 to January 1965. This chapter analyzes this event in depth in order to examine the relationship of R&B to the mainstream. R&B continued to have an active existence (illustrated by a discussion of radio formats) despite the disappearance of Billboard’s chart; the temporary cessation of the chart was due to conflictual understandings of genre based in part on different weightings of musical style versus the importance of audience. The “British Invasion” and the emergence of folk-rock during 1964-65 created greater racial division of the mainstream than had existed since the arrival of early rock ‘n’ roll. In the period immediately following, greater emphasis on black identity, musically and politically during the late 1960s led to the re-naming of the R&B category to Soul in 1969.