Captain Now And Forever More– Reviewing ‘Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain’ #5

Back in 2019, Morgan le Fay and Betsy Braddock faced off and the latter became Captain Britain in the process. Through thirty-six issues across three series, the final battle between the two has finally arrived.

Everything to do with the X-Line of things at Marvel is in a state of flux. Multiple events have taken up space and the soon-to-arrive (and still mysterious) Fall Of X is causing many books to end or change. Very little of the creative group that brought about a massive status quo change in 2019 remains. There are only two titles that are still running from that first bunch (X-Force and Wolverine).

Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain #5 not only feels like the culmination of all the stories Tini Howard has been telling since 2019, but it also almost feels like an overall goodbye.

There is a ton that happens here as there are several things that need to be addressed before the series ends. Loose ends to tie up and characters to put back into the toy box, some of them altered for the better, leaving the play space as tidy as possible. Does this rapid-paced issue do them all justice? No, not at all but that’s not on Howard’s writing. I would say more of it has to do with the fact that five issues were not nearly enough to really do justice to just how much Howard has contributed to the line.

Excalibur was a huge epic series that set up Otherworld, and Knights of X had to work to wrap up those storylines. This series was to be Betsy’s solo and worked to wrap up the Morgan stuff. Pacing wise this feels like an ‘unexpected’ final issue. In the sense that the first few were written under the idea that the series would go longer, before it was decided it would be only five for sure. I can’t say for sure of course, but there was confusion during the announcement of the book about how long it was running.

Overall, it’s a satisfying conclusion to the series and sees Morgan as well as all the Braddocks in interesting new spaces that could be explored. If this is in fact Howard’s goodbye (she has numerous books elsewhere), it wasn’t the biggest it should or could be, but it worked. Hopefully, Betsy and the rest of the British side of Marvel aren’t neglected after this.

Visually, it’s still a delight to behold as Vasco Georgiev has such an expressive and gorgeous art style. It would have been amazing to see this series be able to go longer to allow Georgiev to tackle tons more fantastical things. It’s a style that is smooth and almost slick, while also feeling solid. Depth and details are immaculate, and the characters feel like they are taking up actual space. Every bit of the work feels like it’s in actual motion, despite knowing that it’s not moving one bit.

There has been color consistency across Howard’s titles because of the great work that Erick Arciniega has been doing all this time. Rich vibrant colors are allowed to mingle with those that are more normal or typical, allowing the worlds to feel realistic even with all the supernatural elements at play. There is a toned-down sort of appearance to many of the colors which gives it that more ‘natural’ sort of feeling. This allows the vibrant costumes or uses of magic to pop even more because they stand apart so much, as they should.

One of the chief things is that the different spaces always feel unique color-wise. No two spaces are colored the same because their moods are different but also the lighting would be different. All of that is taken into consideration as Arciniega gives spaces their rightful personality/energy.

Speaking of uniqueness and consistency, that’s something that always comes from Ariana Maher doing the lettering of a book. No matter if there are massive or smaller amounts of letters to be found, Maher makes them all work. While making sure there is such energy and power to them on the page.

Not only can we hear and feel the character’s personality through the words, but the tone or volume is also always clear. One thing that Maher does well for this is the use of sentence case. Comics often are done with all caps for dialogue which works just fine. There is something even better about sentence case, though, because it inherently is a perfect baseline style of dialogue font. Normal voice, if you will.

That makes it easier to showcase louder or quieter moments using all caps or smaller fonts. A sentence suddenly shifting to all caps and becoming louder is far more impactful, in my humble opinion. So, I always love to see sentence case making an appearance and Maher is always good for that in certain books.

Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain #5, the final issue, is now available from Marvel Comics.