The British Comic Book Invasion

What makes a successful comics creator? How can storytelling stay exciting and innovative? How can genres be kept vital?
Writers and artists in the highly competitive U.S. comics mainstream have always had to explore these questions but they were especially pressing in the 1980s. As comics readers grew older they started calling for more sophisticated stories. They were also no longer just following the adventures of popular characters--writers and artists with distinctive styles were in demand. DC Comics and Marvel went looking for such mavericks and found them in the United Kingdom. Creators like Alan Moore (Watchmen, Saga of the Swamp Thing), Grant Morrison (The Invisibles, Flex Mentallo) and Garth Ennis (Preacher) migrated from the anarchical British comics industry to the U.S. mainstream and shook up the status quo yet came to rely on the genius of the American system.

Jochen Ecke is a lecturer at the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany. He has published extensively on popular culture, particularly U.S. and British mainstream comic books.