1976 – 11 years old.
I’d just started senior school, and it was a time when “growing up” was
all the rage, as well as the Bay City Rollers, French lessons and tennis
shoes. It would not be long before my
life would be taken over by the British Comic Movement, but at the time Marvel
& DC were the only game in town for a young adolescent.
In the US, Marvel had decided to expand to the UK, and had
recently created the Marvel UK publishing house. As part of the remit, it was decided to
create a new superhero just for the British market. The title would be written and drawn in
America, but published in the UK – an almost certain recipe for disaster but
one that Marvel US was sure would work.
Sometime later, on the British newsstands appeared the “Young Lion”
himself – Captain Britain!
Cap was essentially “Captain America” for the British
audience. Instead of being created by
science, CB was created by magic from the hands of the mighty sorcerer Merlin
and his daughter Roma. In true Arthurian
style, a young hard-on-his-luck aristocrat called Brian Braddock is given a
choice – pull the sword out of the stone, or take an amulet from a second
stone. Brian takes the amulet,
transforming him into the superhuman Captain Britain, ready to fight for truth,
justice and the American British way!
CB really should have worked, as it had all the right
ingredients, but the very nature of its execution damned it from the
beginning. Being
drawn by American artists itself was not a problem – hell, even John Buscema
drew CB, but being written in America it had the same “feel” as many of Marvel’s
publications of the period. Cap had a few of his own good villains to start
with, but eventually Marvel US incorporated more of their own characters into
the title, including Nick Fury, Captain America and the Red Skull. Add to that the “Cor Guvner strike a light”
school of American pretend British that was prevalent at the time and you can
guess the rest.
The thing is it’s not all bad. The artwork is true 1970’s Marvel (which is
not terrible), but the colour work is let down because of poor reproduction –
not by the producers of the book, but by the UK printing process of the 1970’s
that couldn’t do proper colour registration for love or money (many UK comics
suffered from this, 2000 AD being one of the most significant). Luckily, CB went black And white half way through
the initial run.
This volume collects the first half of the American written
run of Captain Britain, and it’s a quality book, hard backed, on good quality
paper. The RRP is £25, but if you shop
around, you can find it cheaper – I got mine from eBay!
All in all, it's OK. It's not Shakespear, but it's OK. That being said, Captain Britain deserved better, and he eventually got it, when a young writer called Alan Moore showed us how he should have been written – but that as they say, is another story…
All in all, it's OK. It's not Shakespear, but it's OK. That being said, Captain Britain deserved better, and he eventually got it, when a young writer called Alan Moore showed us how he should have been written – but that as they say, is another story…
By the way, what is
with Stan Lee and first/last names that start with the same letter? And Brian? Monty Python showed us how that would turn
out… :)
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