If you'd like to explore the locations that feature in this series, drop me a line to enquire about tour availability – you can book a one-hour tour (ideal for kids) or a two-hour version of the tour. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these reposts…
Panel 10: Marvel in London
As we saw in an earlier post, Disney has long-loved London. In recent years Marvel has grown to love us, too, with film adaptations of The Fantastic Four…
The Silver Surfer above the London Eye
And Thor…
The God of Thunder catches the tube
… being filmed here in the capital.But using film adaptations on my tour is cheating a little bit. I'm looking for cartoons and comic books. And, as with Disney, Marvel seems to be in love with Big Ben…
I absolutely LOVE this cover from 1975! There's Big Ben plopped down right where the Tower of London should be! One London landmark just wasn't London-y enough. The red double-decker pushes the point home. Great stuff.
Inside the book, our tale sees Spidey battling with the Green Goblin on a bridge that looks a little more like the Brooklyn Bridge than our own dear Tower Bridge.
Tower Bridge also features in a more recent Marvel book, Deadpool: Dracula's Gauntlet. In fact, here I am at my desk reading said publication instead of working…
Deadpool is a sociopathic mercenary with a mordant line in wisecracks. His superpower – to remain almost un-killable thanks to special regenerative powers – is also his undoing. His moral dubiety and bleak worldview seem to stem from his invincibility. His life is truly relentless and he is duly jaded. The process that turned Wade Wilson into Deadpool has left him physically as well as mentally scarred. Complicated, deeply politically incorrect, and very funny, he's my favorite Marvel character by quite some way.
At the commencement of Dracula's Gauntlet we find Deadpool spiralling toward London in an out of control helicopter. And here we go again with the Big Ben/Tower Bridge thing…
The drawing of Tower Bridge here seems to have been based on source material dating from the mid 20th Century, with almost industrial surroundings (it's all clean and shiny today).
There's also a great fight scene with a vampire at the base of the Victoria Memorial as a guardsman looks on impassively from his sentry box and, as with Spiderman, that third London icon, the red double decker, makes a cameo appearance…
Tomorrow… V For Vendetta
•••
If you'd like to explore cartoon and comic book locations in London, book me as your guide for a Cartoon & Comic Book Tour of Westminster – available in both one and two hour versions. Click the email button at the foot of this post to enquire.
If you'd like to catch up with entire series of posts in this series (38 in number as of September 2019) then click here: cartoonandcomicbooklondon.blogspot.com
Keep In Touch…
