Friday, 3 June 2016

Captain Britain Vol1. Birth Of A Legend



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…

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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