The politics of the 80s, in the US and UK weren't necessarily as disparate as it may seem to some. You had much the same dynamic going on: a very conservative government brought in after a steep economic decline, lots of talk about "traditional values", while investment brokers run wild with questionable and often illegal practices. Labor lost much status and whole industries disappeared as they were taken overseas, to exploit cheaper labor. Military operations that looked like a 900 lb gorilla swatting a kitten which boosted the public profile of the head of government.

Where a lot of the difference comes is in the media presentation of the times. In the UK, you had a much larger satire world, on the publicly funded BBC, as well as the privately controlled ITV and the brand new Channel 4. In the US, you had SNL, which wasn't nearly as biting, in that period, under Dick Ebersol, and you had Mad, which also wasn't nearly as on point as it had been in the 50s and 60s (and even 70s). National Lampoon was still going; but declining from what it had been and Spy would start up . In the UK, you had a lot of attacks on the government via things like Spitting Image, sketch comedy shows, alternative comedy outlets (especially stuff like The Young Ones). You also had a real Labor Party, with access to the media. The US media was pretty much corporate controlled (or consolidating under conglomerates) and very cozy with the Reagan Administration, until the Iran-Contra revelations gave them a juicy story.

I think it is more people in the US were less likely to follow British news and politics and not know the specifics of things like the Miner's Strike or even the Falklands; but, they probably had some passing idea of the Thatcher government, based on network news. It didn't take much insight to recognize that there was a lot of similarity between Thatcher and Reagan, apart from the style of their public speeches.

The Moorcock Road is very significant, as Michael Moorcock is one of the large influences on that generation of writers. His work as both editor of New Worlds and his own writing had great influence, particularly his counter-culture heroes, like Jerry Cornelius, and his concepts of a multiverse, via the Eternal Champion. Neil Gaiman paid homage in a short story, "One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock." Morrison worshipped Cornelius and cribbed from him, Moore also was greatly influenced, along with similar authors from New Worlds.

I was never a huge fan of the proto-Vertigo comics, since the supernatural never held a ton of intertest to me. I sampled it and read Moore (more later, than during, with Swamp Thing); but, stuff like Doom Patrol always felt weird for weirdness sake and I had other alternatives to that and superheroes, with indie comics. So, this issue was more like a trip through the British invasion and Ellis' take on Thatcher. I enjoyed it more for the nostalgia trip of the 80s, much like the spy homage, the pulp heroes and such, though those had more resonance with me, as those are favorite genres of mine.

It doesn’t homage any particular film, but Hong Kong action films in general. If you want a good single recommendation to correspond with this issue it’s probably John Woo’s “A Better Tomorrow” from 1985. It’s arguably the high point for the heroic bloodshed genre.

I, and Ellis, will be circling back to this with issue #8 which I will be writing up sometime before close of business Monday. 

The Hong Kong one was an homage to the action films of the 80s and early 90s, in HK Cinema. It's not just John Woo, but also Ringo Lam, the two most high profile. I got pretty heavily into that stuff in the early 90s, after reading some criticism of Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, which remarked about scenes and characters he cribbed from City on Fire and A Better Tomorrow. City on Fire is directed by Ringo Lam and is a great action/character film about a robbery that goes wrong and ends up in a siege situation, while A Better Tomorrow is more of a character study about a criminal and his real brother, a cop, and his spiritual brother, another criminal, played by Chow Yun-Fat. Woo and Chow Yun-Fat were synonymous, as he also appeared in The Killer (as a hitman, largely inspired by Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai, with Alain Delon) and Hard Boiled (as a cop). Those films got a lot of international attention, leading to Woo coming over to do Face Off and Hard Target, and CYF also came over and did The Replacement Killers and Bulletproof Monk.

This period also saw a revival of the period kung fu films, with Jet Li as Wong Fei Hung, directed by Tsui Hark. Hark also directed Chinese Ghost Story, which mixed kung fu and the supernatural.

Other filmmakers followed in their footsteps, with other action heroes, like Donnie Yen.

So, Ellis is mixing a lot of that. Each of these has been an homage to specific genres or subgenres. Issue one deals with pulp heroes, the antecedents of the superheroes. Issue 2 has the kaiju of Godzilla and his buddies and rivals. 3 is the Honk Kong tribute, while 4 is Captain Marvel (the real one). 5 is more pulp, 6 is The Fantastic Four (and Challengers of the Unknown), 7 is the Vertigo bunch and their creators/writers. 8 is 50s sci-fi movies (atomic monsters and the like), 9 gets into the past of Planetary, while also mixing in Men in Black conspiracy theories and more vintage sci-fi. 10 is a sort of JLA homage and 11 is a spy romp, with homages to Steranko Nick Fury, Bond and other 60s icons. 12 serves as kind of a summary and answers to some questions that have been built up.

Issue 13 is one of my favorites, as it explores the Victorian scientific romances, horror stories and other genre fictions that inspired modern SF/horro/pulp novels and comic books, with homages to Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes, Dracula and others of that world, much like Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Lot of meta-fiction stuff in this, like LOEG and Philip Jose Farmer's Would newton Universe.

Hard part of all of this was how long a gap there could be between issues.

I much preferred this to The Authority, both in the writing and the art. Cassaday is a bit more versatile an artist and storyteller than Hitch, for my money. Also, Ellis on the Authority had a tendency to repeat the same story beats, as the group would kick butt, then get their butt kicked, then suddenly defeat their enemy. It didn't always feel earned, to me. Planetary seemed to be better thought out, long term.