I've got a couple of posts about Jackpot characters in the pipelines and here's the first one, about a very unusual strip called The Amazing Three. The Amazing three first appeared in Jackpot in the late September/early October of 1979 (I don't know the exact issue number or date). Illustrated by Trevor Metcalfe it was a strip surrounding the adventures of Susan, Craig and Sam who were given magical powers to protect Earth, as you will soon see. Here is a special strip from Jackpot #27 that explains how and why the trio has their superpowers
It is a very unusual strip as superheroes in Britain are scarce, especially those that follow the American style of the good guy always coming out on top. An example of a typical British superhero would be fellow Jackpot character Freddie - the star of Full O' Beans. He often dealt with small situations such as getting the washing done or bringing the shopping home in the rain, never dealing with a terrorist attack or any other equally serious scenario you'd be likely to see in Superman. Here's the strip from this issue, with art by Tom Paterson.
I'm not going to go too in depth about either the Superhero genre in Britain or the difference in British and American humour but I think comparing Full O' Beans to Batman shows that the British sense of humour puts the subject (in this case Freddie) at or below the average person, in ordinary day-to-day situations, whereas in America the subject would generally be above the average person, always with the perfect line to say or whatever. I won't explain in any more detail here but it is definitely an interesting post for another time.
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