How can comics storytelling stay exciting and innovative? How can genres be kept alive? And what makes a successful comics creator? These are the questions writers and artists working in the highly competitive US comics mainstream have always had to ask. But they were especially pressing in the 1980s. As comics readers grew older, they started to call for more sophisticated stories. They were also no longer just following the adventures of popular characters-writers and artists with an immediately recognizable style and personality were in high demand as well. DC Comics and Marvel went looking for such mavericks, and they found them in the United Kingdom: creators like Alan Moore (Watchmen, Saga of the Swamp Thing), Grant Morrison (The Invisibles, Flex Mentallo, JLA), and Garth Ennis (Preacher) migrated from the anarchical British comics industry to the US mainstream and shook up the status quo.

This book explores the relationship between their works and the mainstream comic book style that was dominant at the time-how the British Invasion subverted the norm, but also the many ways in which the movement came to rely on the genius of the American system.