Panel Borders: eXpat Heroes

September 2, 2010 — The British Invasion

Panel Borders:

 – eXpat Heroes

Originally broadcast 2nd September 2010 on Resonance 104.4 FM

New Mutants and Captain Britain by Chris Claremont and Alan Davis

Starting a new podcast series of the UK’s only weekly radio show about comics, Panel Borders has a month of shows looking at the ‘British Invasion’ of UK creators who have worked on American and American-style superhero titles.

Alex Fitch talks to Chris Claremont, a veteran comics writer born in London who became one of the most prolific and popular American comic book writers of the 20th century, most famous for a 16 year sojourn writing the Uncanny X-Men from 1975 – 1991, with his last few issues selling in the region of eight million copies each.

In this episode, recorded at this year’s Bristol International Comics Expo, we’re focussing on a superhero Chris created for the UK market – Captain Britain – in 1976, the character’s relocation to America via the monthly comic Excalibur in 1988 and his more experimental X-Men spin off – New Mutants – which Chris created in 1982 and returned to writing last month.

For more info about this podcast and a variety of formats you can stream or download, please visit the home of this episode at www.archive.org

Links: Wikipedia pages on Chris Claremont and Captain Britain
Article on New Mutants Forever at newsarama.com

Listen to Alex’s interviews with Alan Davis and Paul Cornell about drawing and writing Captain Britain respectively

Recommended events:

Pat Mills’ Electric Picnic

Graphic Content: The Big Comics Chat… A chaotic and fun-stuffed rocket ride through the inner and outer reaches of the comics and cartooning universes. Our intrepid and esteemed panel – Pat Mills (2000 AD), Steve Bell (Guardian), Emma Vieceli (Manga Shakespeare), Phil Barrett (Matter) and Mel Gibson (Northumbria University) – will cheerily dissect and debate the “sequential art” scene as it and was: offering thoughts, opinions and recollections on a wide range of topics, including: Classic British comics, Manga, Bande dessinée, Girls’ comics, John Major’s underpants, the Irish small presses, and much, much more. Masked and caped crusaders may also get an occasional mention…

Friday 3rd September, 5.30pm, Stradbally Hall Estate, Stradbally, Co. Laois, Eire