Will You Be My Captain? Reviewing ‘Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain’ #2

Betsy Braddock has been Captain Britain for years now, and she’s pretty darn tired of having to prove that fact. As Morgan Le Fey moves forward with dastardly plans to tear the Captain Britain Corps apart, Betsy and Rachel Summers make some multiversal new friends in another fantastic issue of Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain.

Each of the previous books that Tini Howard has written around this concept since the X-Line changed in 2019 has starred Betsy and focused heavily on her. One could argue (and I did during the times of Excalibur) that this focus was a detriment to other characters, and there is no denying that not only has that focus paid off, but it’s become even narrower and wider at the same time now that Betsy has a proper solo series. Howard has a perfect handle on Betsy and Rachel at this point, as well as many of the other supporting characters that are still part of this series, and is seamlessly weaving in other Marvel British elements to keep building on a story that began all the way back in 2019.

Despite that start many years ago this is pretty easy to jump onto a book even for newer readers. There are some elements like the Furies and some of the callbacks to previous events that might fly a bit over one’s head but overall the crux of this issue and what Morgan Le Fey wants to do as well as the trip to the Captain Carter universe are pretty well laid out. Funny enough I would say that Excalibur as a series was denser and harder to jump on board once it got going because everything was piling on top of one another for a long-form story, while Knights of X lightened things up considerably and this has gone even further.

That being said, I would highly recommend checking out those stories if you haven’t yet because there are great nuggets and moments that lead up to this series that are worth exploring. Also, Knights of X is just an amazing fantastical comic book series.

Vasco Georgiev can make anything look spectacular, and that is surely the case with this series. Not only is every panel richly detailed with great depth and fluid motion, even the ones where such elements are pulled back on a bit, but there is also emotional life radiating off every moment. Georgiev’s artwork marries a realistic style of energy with more fantastical fun out there type, hitting that comic book sweet spot.

Things are zipping around in this issue as the setting constantly changes and the action spills into various dimensions and spaces, and we can instantly feel the changes and that frenzied energy. Part of that comes with the way that each page is laid out panel-wise. Standard-style panels are great and do so much, but I love how Georgiev and others keep changing the modern game with so many varieties of panels where no two pages ever look alike. Things slip and slide around at angles, different shape boxes, stack over each other, and various other choices are made that make the artwork flow even better and give more of a sense of motion/disorientation/action throughout.

There has been a consistent sort of color styling across the past few books following Betsy, thanks to Erick Arciniega. There are a few changes here or there, chiefly because the artists have changed between books therefore the colors shift some to match art styles, but overall the pairing of more vibrant fantastical colors and more down-to-Earth toned-down shadowy colors remain. It allows the magical elements to play as they should while also reminding us that this book takes place in a world similar to our own in many respects. At the same time, Arciniega makes sure that each space that is visited feels unique with its own color styles even if those color changes are just coming from accurate lighting work being applied for different spaces.

Another throughline for Betsy and Friends is the fantastic work done by Ariana Maher to give the characters their voices alongside all the other lettering. Maher easily is able to infuse any words on the page with the personality, energy, tone, emotion, and everything else from any character. It’s part of the tools that help draw us even more into a story because now we can actually ‘hear’ it all in our heads while we read through it. I get the reasons why, but I wish more used the sentence case that Maher uses often in books for speech.

Right away it just perfectly tells the mind that this is something being said at a very ‘normal’ tone of voice, allowing for things like capitals and bolds and other changes to pop out even more when used to showcase changes in the normal speech levels. That can still easily be done with the other cases, Maher does it in other books where she doesn’t use the sentence case, but to me, one just can’t beat the ease that using sentence case (and the familiarity to all of us in our own writing) brings.

Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain #2 is now available from Marvel Comics.