Captain Britain Omnibus

Product Information

Yet both of these runs birthed something extraordinary into the comic lexicon, for a fleeting handful of years. Picking up the pieces of a confusing and meandering story arc, Alan Moore came in and gave the series a new sense of purpose and a very real sense of danger. Understanding Captain Britain as a fantasy character more than a superhero is key to what makes him work. There are a few printing spots on some of the pages that reproduce the cover pages, posters, promo stuff etc. I have to admit that I didn't have much knowledge of Captain Britain's early adventures, so reading them was kind of fun.

So, this book is like a snapshot of a culture when it was still possible to be anti-facist, patriotic and good, a self-questioning fighter against intolerance, all at the same time, before cultures started to divide. The truly gonzo material unfortunately runs out leaving us with stories that are simply very bad (mostly by Larry Lieber) but ropey plots aside this is an attempt to do a Captain Britain that owes something to the Avengers TV show and James Bond - a British take within the Marvel formula. But the core story line stands and could even have future legs under a serious creative hand who could escape the 'woke'.From a British perspective, I suppose we can see 'Captain Britain' as a noble failure and, if we were sour, as both the product and victim of American cultural colonialism. Yes, he still appears and is dealt with creatively when he does even if he is not the figure that he was in the early 1980s. With Moore, Jim Jaspers and The Fury became forces to be reckoned with and he-reintroduced Betsy (now with purple hair) and Slaymaster who was to be taken a lot more seriously as a threat now. The three in-between tales by Davis and others are OK, bringing Captain Britain back down to Earth, but not exceptional [6/10]. To be true to his creation could place him unwittingly somewhere on the nice side of the national populist camp but to deny his 'national meaning' could be to make him a laughable 'woke' nonentity, an add-on to a plethora of US heroes.

Grant Morrison subverted this with a prose horror story about Captain Gran Bretan (1986) where the magic is malign. What knocks the omnibus down considerably is the closing chapter Captain America/Captain Britain team-up. Jamie Delano tries to make keep things interesting, even using threads left by Moore's run, but ultimately comes up with 14 issues of just okay comics. In one of them, Brian Braddock gets tempted with his heart's desire - a quiet, boring life as an English Dad. And when the events that destroyed that world begin to repeat themselves on his own, Captain Britain faces a destiny that he cannot avert.Delano's biggest contribution would really end up being the bringing of Betsy Braddock into prominence—a character which would eventually become the immensely popular X-men character known as Psylocke under the guidance of Chris Claremont. This was an adventure from the early 80's after they revived the character and gave him a new uniform, and dispensed with his 6 foot staff.

The whimsy and fantasy of his 20th Century appearances probably should be seen, at least partly, as a way to avoid crossing those lines. Follow the United Kingdom’s greatest champion from the streets of London to the mystic realm of Otherworld! Despite Captain Britain's atrocious original costume, I really enjoyed all of the early stories written by Chris Claremont. A character who has occasionally popped up here and there over the years, being butchered, retconned and generally destroyed, especially in more recent times.Claremont's early collaborations with Davis, an X-Men and a New Mutants annual, finish this vast book. The final two entries have Chris Claremont (Captain Britain's creator) giving Captain Britain a role in exploring the X-juniors' 'teenage angst' in creditable stories whose main purpose seems to be transfer Braddock's sister to the New Mutants story line as Psylocke. The extra features in the back are a treasure trove of history, and a wonderful look into the past, all of which lead to one conclusion: Alan Davis is the fucking man. Claremont's fertile attempt to Anglicise Captain America and trigger a British allegiance to the Marvel Universe was only a very small part of his formidable output but we should note that, out of it, he created a 'plausible' narrative for Psylocke that enhanced his X-men Universe.

Now, thrill to a complete collection of Captain Britain's iconic UK adventures - from questing alongside the Black Knight to battling Jim Jaspers and the Fury to prevent Earth from becoming a crooked world! This is an expensive and rather unsatisfying omnibus that neverthless would deserve at least one more star if it had focused on Alan Moore's contribution to the story. Ok I'm lying—the omnibus actually ends with two Captain America issues guest starring Captain Britain and one of his old baddies, but these are on the whole pretty forgettable. Friends bought it occasionally: it was beautiful but baffling, lyrical in a way the American comics just weren't, full of surreal characters who bore no relation to anything I'd seen in Spider-Man or Secret Wars. Now, thrill to a complete collection of Captain Britain's iconic UK adventures - from questing alongside the Black Knight, to battling Jim Jaspers and the Fury to prevent Earth from becoming a crooked world!

The Alan Moore and Alan Davis penned stories are the aforementioned gems, the rest ranges from decent to dear-God-let-this-end-already. I love the introduction of the Captain Britain Corps, Otherworld, the Fury, Megan and so much more that added to the mythos.