Art For Art’s Sake #300: Celebrating 40 Years Of ‘Captain Britain Monthly’

by Richard Bruton

Well, what the hell happened? One minute I was starting these Art For Art’s Sake articles and here we are, mere moments later, with #300 … time flies!

So, what to do for A4AS #300? I thought about doing one with covers from issue 300’s over the years, but there’s not all that many out there, or at least not many that filled me with excitement. So then I took a look back at what I’d done for A4AS #200 a couple of years back. Well, that was celebrating 40 years of Marvel UK’s The Daredevils monthly, one of my all-time favourite comics of all time, where Alan Moore and Alan Davis‘ Captain Britain spearheaded something special every month.

And then inspiration struck. It was 40 years since The Daredevils in 1983, it was also 40 years since the last time the good Captain had his own title, in the 14 issues of Captain Britain Monthly that started in January 1985. Yep, that’s just perfect. And yes, we shall conveniently ignore the inevitable fact that something cover dated January 1985 was published at least a month earlier.

I’ve told the story many times, but Moore and Davis’ Captain Britain was really the thing that set me on the path of comics. Sure, I’d read and loved Asterix, Tintin, Lucky Luke, Addams Family, MAD Magazine, Beano, Whizzer & Chips and the rest, but when I read Captain Britain — specifically the Moore/Davis Captain Britains — I was absolutely hooked. I started reading and buying more superhero comics, which led me to comic shops, which led me to working in Nostalgia & Comics Birmingham, which led me to more and more diverse comics and a true love of all the medium has to offer – all of which led me to writing about comics, which led me right here.

So yes, I will unashamedly do a special on Captain Britain any time I can!

Following on from The Daredevils, Moore and Davis and Captain Britain shifted over to Mighty World of Marvel with issue #7 (Dec 1983) with Moore finishing off his story by issue 13, and then Alan Davis (with input from Steve Craddock and Mike Collins) went on to do three Cap stories of his own in issues 14-16 before that particular comic ended.

But we all knew there wouldn’t be long to wait before more of the good Captain. .. not when we’d seen this on the last page of the strip in MWOM #16…

.Not to mention this on the inside, although it did eventually shift the months a little…

Anyway, 14-year-old, nearly 15-year-old me was very, very, very excited to get more Captain Britain. Sure, it wasn’t going to be Moore & Davis Captain Britain, but it was still Davis’ Captain Britain. And anyway, I’d discovered Warrior comic by then and had plenty of Moore/Davis in Marvelman, not to mention Moore and David Lloyd’s V For Vendetta, to keep me going.

Inside Captain Britain #1 we had two new strips and two reprints. joining Captain Britain as all-new, we had Steve Parkhouse and Jerry Paris doing new Freefall Warriors (originally very minor characters in a Doctor Who Monthly strip). Joining those two, there were reprints of Steve Moore and Steve Dillon‘s Abslom Daak strips from Doctor Who Weekly and reprints of Night Raven by Steve Parkhouse and David Lloyd that had previously been in Hulk Comic. Later on in the series, we’d see reprints of The Black Knight from Hulk Comic featuring Captain Britain by Steve Parkhouse and John Stokes, plus new strips Space Thieves by Dave Harper and Barry Kitson, and The Cherubim by Mike Collins and Mark Farmer. And there were also the text stories, including some good Night Ravens by Jamie Delano, and a strange little early Grant Morrison written Captain Granbretan thing.

Davis was joined on CB by Jamie Delano, chosen, I seem to remember, after Moore’s recommendation. Delano had previously been writing (really well) some of the Night Raven text stories once Moore had stopped doing them. Of course, after that phenomenal Moore/Davis ‘Jaspers Warp’ run, things were never going to be as good again – even though Davis’ art just got better and better.

With Captain Britain, there was a sense of things just losing momentum – hardly surprising after the incredible Moore/Davis run that gave us the whole Mad Jim Jaspers / The Fury / Special Executive thing. We had the return of the Crazy Gang, Slaymaster, Vixen, and an obvious retread of The Special Executive with Gatecrasher’s Technet. It all seemed just that little bit all done before.

Indeed, Davis has gone on to say that things weren’t exactly ideal on CB working from Delano’s scripts, with Davis having to do a lot of re-jigging, coming up with the plots and then being ‘ruthless in my reworking of Jamie’s scripts but felt it was right for the book, or at least my vision of the characters and Captain Britain. I believe I did my best to make it work with Jamie but ultimately, we had opposing goals so, because I had more clout, I took over the writing myself.’ (That quote from Davis’ website scripts page here)

But even though adult me can see this Captain Britain monthly series as a coda to what came before, adult me also still remembers the feeling I had as a teen of 14 getting my hands on it. So yes, I can acknowledge its flaws and still get that nostalgic rush that puts me back into the moment when I found that first issue in the local newsagent in Dudley. And re-reading the Captain Britain strips for this Art For Art’s Sake has brought back all of that nostalgic joy.

After 14 issues the title was done. Davis headed to Marvel and DC Comics, and his career hit the heights. As for poor Captain Britain, well, the character was never really the same again. Sure, things like Excalibur were fun, but nothing, absolutely nothing, has ever really worked as well with the essential Britishness of the whole Moore/Davis run.

So, seeing as this is Art For Art’s Sake, time to hit you with some of the fabulous artwork … starting with issue 1 finding Cap hating copper Dai Thomas revealing the truth about the Captain and a good old-fashioned story so far moment…