40 Years of Spider-Man in the UK

By John Freeman on 17 January 2007 • ( 1 )

It’s an incredible 40 years this week since Spider-Man first made a regular appearance in a British comic, so cartoonist Lew Stringer has done a little tribute to that title, POW!, on his blog.

There’s a few entries about the weekly, including one spotlighting Mike Higgs fantastic The Cloak strip, which for Lew was the real reason he bought Pow!

The Cloak was the creation of Birmingham-based cartoonist Mike Higgs, a lifelong fan of comics and pulp magazines. Lew reveals that in 1964 Mike had produced a fanzine entitled The Shudder, a parody of pulp magazine legend The Shadow, and with a few tweaks this character became the inspiration for The Cloak strip that he submitted to Odhams.

“The editors of Pow! liked what they saw,” Lew writes. “Their line of comics already had serialized spy strips (Eagle-Eye, Man from B.U.N.G.L.E. and Wee Willie Haggis) but clearly they saw that The Cloak was something unique. The other strips were in the Leo Baxendale mold (more or less the closest thing Odhams had to a house style) but Mike Higgs’ work had none of that, being more influenced by Peter Maddocks and Elzie Segar. More importantly, his style looked very contemporary, very Sixties… and the one thing that set Odhams above their competitors was how much they reflected the “swinging sixties”.

Lew’s blog is rapidly proving a fascinating insight into some classic comics and, perhaps more importantly, the origins of British comics fandom. Well worth a look!

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John Freeman

John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.

He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.