Why the UK Is doomed
It just so happened that while I was agonising over what to
write about for this article that I happened to be watching Misfits on DVD and
seeing the newly released trailer for Iron Man, which inevitably led me to
think of The Avengers and refer back in my mind to a post I made not so long
ago on my own blog about a UK based Avengers style team (
LINK). So, of course, I was led to consider what might happen if something as huge
as the Tesserect event from Avengers were to happen in the UK...
Bear in mind, the Tesserect event was major. It was an
invasion from an alternate dimension which completely trashed a major US city.
Luckily, this damage was mitigated by a brave team of superheroes (who, also
caused a lot of damage themselves but, hey, they probably caused less than
would have been caused if the alien invasion had actually happened... probably)
and thus the world was saved.
So, what if that happened in London? How would our homeborn
Superheroes deal with the threat?
Well, things are not looking good. For one, the UK does not
do superheroes. When you compare what America has to offer – Superman, Batman,
Wonder Woman, the X men, Spiderman, Iron Man, the list is endless – with what the UK has to offer you can see
how we do not compare. So far as I can work out, our ‘superhero’ team consists
of the ASBO kids who make up the cast of Misfits and
Thermoman, a comedy character played by Father Ted’s Ardal O’Hanlon. There were also two
collections of short stories (
Temps and Eurotemps )
in which British people who develop superpowers end up lost in an overly
bureaucratic and dull branch of the Civil service where they are exploited. In
the UK there are no eccentric billionaires who use their vast resources to fight
crime and save the world and the patriotic aliens akin to Superman are seen in
a lighthearted manner such as Thermoman.
Secondly, our heroes are rarely patriotic. If a Nick
Fury-esque character stomped into the lives of the characters from Misfits to
recruit them for a mission to save the world, they’d ignore him at best. As a
symbol of authority and the state which convicted them of crimes, they’d resent
him and, like all of their probation workers to date, there is a good chance
he’d end up murdered. Thermoman might step up to the plate to save the world
but there is a chance he’d also mess it up in some amusing manner. As for the
many and varied heroes of the Temps universe, well they’d follow the orders of
whatever government civil service was appointed to oversee them but they’d make
damn sure that they got their expenses claim in first.
Finally, there is the issue of relative power levels. While
Thermoman is up there in the same league as Superman, the rest of our heroes
are somewhat lacklustre in the powers department. If a horde of
trans-dimensional aliens were ripping up chunks of Oxford street and an alien
god were throwing beams of energy that destroyed Black cabs, it would be nice
to know that a force as powerful and unkillable as the Hulk were on hand to
oppose this threat. Instead we have relatively minor forces with the Misfits
characters packing such gems of power as the ability to change gender, mind reading
and understanding how electronics work. OK, that last one is sort of what Tony
Stark has as Iron Man because it is what allows him to build the suit, but in
the UK it is not applied in the same way. The Temps characters are even worse
with one character being an ex drug addict able to detect the presence of
illegal drugs and another a Vicar who can control the weather so that it is
sunny on weddings and rainy on funerals. None of these powers are really up to
the task of stopping a horde of trans-dimensional aliens. In Misfits, the
characters have a hard enough time taking care of a frenzied, un-dead cat.
OK, I am being flippant here but it is all in the cause of
making a point. In the UK we came into writing superheroes late. The golden and
silver ages were largely dominated by US patriotic heroes who did the right
thing for the right reasons. We imported our superheroes from there and largely
left it to them, occasionally letting them have a writer or two who largely
maintained the ethos. By the time Temps came about, a degree of nihilism had
hit the genre and it was all about realism – in the case of Temps the idea that
any UK superhero would be mired in dull paperwork. By the time Misfits hit TV
screens, we were revelling in the ASBO generation and chavs were cool, so cool
that they even featured prominently on Doctor Who. Now, instead of heroes who
were cheerfully patriotic we have heroes who are moodily apathetic and more
likely to shrug at injustices and head off for a pint than actually do anything
about it. We in the UK are good at this sort of thing – giving a hero a punk
rock, hard drinking demeanour and an attitude of louche selfishness yet still
having them do the right thing. Look at John Constantine.
Luckily, it seems as if the universe has a sense of setting
an appropriate challenge to heroes. When you hero is the Hulk you get
situations which require a whole building to be demolished. When your hero has the ability to create
paperclips out of thin air, the plot will likely involve a situation where an
office really needs some paperclips. Now. Or the world will end. This is a good
thing because it means that the UK is unlikely to get a world shattering
disaster that requires superheroes of the calibre of US ones to deal with. If it did, chances are our last best
hopes will either be in New York (because they are incompetent and got the
address where things were happening wrong), in the pub or hanging out on a
street corner drinking special brew and wondering what the hell is going on
with all that noise over there.
I suppose it is therefore very fortunate that The Doctor
seems to spend an inordinate amount of time in the UK rather than flying off
elsewhere in the Universe...
Transitions takes us on a journey through time. In modern day Birmingham , a group of university students become embroiled in a love story almost 2,000 years old as the ghost of Gaius Lucius, a Roman officer tries to reclaim his lost love.
What can Helen, a driven and ambitious student with high hopes for the future, do to solve this ancient riddle? And why is Brandon making late night visits to her house with tokens of love?
Author bio
D.A Lascelles is a former clinical scientist turned teacher who writes to stop himself from going insane during the long holidays. He is only just starting out as a professional writer with his first publications. In 2011 he released a short story entitled ‘Gods of the Sea’ in the Pirates and Swashbucklers anthology by Pulp Empires. He is also the author of Transitions, part of the Shades of Love series by Mundania press, a paranromal romance. He contributed the background to
Realm: fantasy warfare.
He lives in Manchester in the UK with his wife and a fox terrier cross called Eddie. You can find his
blog Lurking musings. He has also been known to write on other sites such as
Am writing blog and
News from the spirit world and do reviews for
epublish a book and
Cult Britannia.
Be sure to check out
Book passion for life today for a guest post from Tom Clempson, author of
One seriously messed-up week.
