Art For Art’s Sake #385: Celebrating 50 Years Of Captain Britain (Part 1)

Welcome to this special Art For Art’s Sake focused on my favourite hero in comics, Captain Britain … first published in October 1976 and thus celebrating 50 years right about now.

I can rightly say that it was Alan Moore and Alan Davis‘s Captain Britain comics that set me on the path I find myself on, a lifelong comics fan, and lucky enough to be able to say I treat comics and writing about comics as part of my job. So, there was no way I was going to pass up the chance to give the good Captain a happy 50th anniversary.

Of course, the good Captain’s adventures didn’t start with Messers Moore and Davis, oh, no, it actually all began back in October 1976 with the birth of a (sort of) British superhero — the first all-British superhero created by Marvel just for Britain, albeit published, written and drawn in the good ol’ US of A. The series introduced us to Brian Braddock, a scientist (and possibly the only 20-year-old smoking a pipe in England at the time) gifted powers of ancient British magicks by Merlin himself.

Bedecked in a garish costume and carrying, weirdly, some sort of pole vault pole thing. We met the Braddock family, older brother Jamie, and Brian’s twin sister, Elizabeth/Betsy, revealed to have psychic powers early on (and then forgotten about until Moore brought them back into the tale practically a decade later).

Sure, it wasn’t great. A cliched US superhero poorly dumped into a vaguely British setting and given a series of increasingly ridiculous foes to do battle with. But it was all ours at least …

I wasn’t really around for this first iteration of Captain Britain, only coming across the character on those most wonderful of primary school things, the wet dinner-time comics box. That introduced me to plenty of Marvel UK-published US heroes through their reprint titles, and also the full-colour, later black-and-white when the sales tanked, Captain Britain.

But that was about that. The series itself lasted 39 issues before being unceremoniously merged into Super Spider-Man before disappearing, seemingly cast forever into comics limbo.

Of course, at the end of 1977, over in the US, we also had the first appearance of the good Captain, written by Chris Claremont, and with art from John Byrne and Dave Hunt, in the pages of Marvel Team-Up #65 & 66, shortly thereafter reprinted in Super Spider-Man & Captain Britain #248.

Cap’s first big US appearance was pretty damn good too, albeit very much in the standard Marvel format, where Spidey and the Captain team up against newly created villain Arcade, as we see the rather disturbed hitman whose whole thing (at that point at least) was trapping superheroes in his custom-made Murderworld.

(Interestingly, fascinatingly, this wouldn’t quite be the last time the good Captain comes up against Arcade, with more to come once Moore and Davis take on the reins, but more on that next week).

Anyway, as I say, that could have been the end for Captain Britain, cast into that aforementioned comics limbo.

But no, thanks to Dez Skinn‘s leadership at Marvel UK, Brian and the Captain came back in 1979-1980, when Steve Parkhouse and John Stokes, the first British creative team on Britain’s hero, re-introduced him in the pages of Hulk Comic’s Black Knight Strip, with a brilliant look at the more mystical, ancient British aspect of Cap’s origins.

Again, I wasn’t around for that either. Should have been; it’s pretty good.

Nor was I around when Dave Thorpe and a very young Alan Davis (only his second professional work) brought Captain Britain back in the pages of Marvel Superheroes #377 (September 1981) …

Oh, and if you’re wondering just what was Davis’ first pro comics work, that came just a little earlier, or maybe a little later. It’s a little vague, to be honest. It’s said online that it first appeared in an issue of Marvel UK’s Frantic, but not even Alan has ever confirmed this. It definitely appeared in Rampage Magazine #41 in November 1981. Ladies and gentlemen, The Crusader by Davis and Paul Neary …

Okay, back to Captain Britain…

I only experienced these new Thorpe and Davis Captain Britain stories when I mail-ordered them about a year later. It was a great re-introduction, Thorpe taking Brian/CB from the end of the Black Knight saga, when Merlin sent him ‘home’, along with Jackdaw, his new elf sidekick.

Except Thorpe had other things in mind. Sure, he sent him back … costume changing along the way to the iconic proper Captain Britain look (one, according to Alan Davis, that was a bastard to draw) …

[Oh, and all art from this point on is by Davis — in my humble opinion, THE Captain Britain artist]

On this world, we’d meet a weird and wonderful cast of characters, including the Crazy Gang and Mad Jim Jaspers, soon to take a rather pivotal role in things …

But it turns out it wasn’t quite the world Brian had left behind…

Oh yes, dear Captain, something had gone very wrong indeed!

For the next 10 monthly issues, Thorpe and Davis carried on telling the tale of the good Captain, going deeper and deeper into things on this alternate Earth, introducing this parallel Earth as just one of many. Coincidentally, it had Thorpe creating the idea of the Marvel Multiverse along the way, something that’s become rather a big deal in comics and movies since then. Oh, and Thorpe also introduced the multiverse into Marvel Comics — wonder if that ever took off?

We had the introduction of Saturnyne, responsible, through some multiversal agency, for bringing this remedial Earth into line, via ‘the Push’ …

And we had plenty of very early, sometimes a little raw, but still quite obviously incredibly talented Davis artwork …

By this point, things were seemingly not good between either Thorpe and Davis and/or Thorpe and Marvel. Whatever happened, whoever was at fault, for whatever the reason, Thorpe left Captain Britain. His last credited script was for Marvel Superheroes #386, June 1982.

In steps Alan Moore, taking over officially with issue 387, ‘A Crooked World,’ and with Davis’s second Cap cover showing just how far his art had come in just a year …

I’d say spoilers, but it’s pretty obvious Jackdaw dies inside from the cover, wouldn’t you say?

The thing is, I’m absolutely certain that I read somewhere that Moore actually took over the issue before, with his first, uncredited page of writing for the Captain being the final page of the Captain Britain episode in MSH #386, ‘If The Push Should Fail’, where, as Saturnyne and Cap celebrate the Push working, meaning this Earth finally being pulled into line with the other Earths — mission complete, all done, time to celebrate and then go home — Moore comes in, brings Mad Jim Jaspers back, and plunges everything into chaos…

If it’s not Moore writing that page, it damn well feels like it — that talk of  “A crooked man smiled a crooked smile. His name is Mad Jim Jaspers and his mind is a dark amusement park alive with nightmares. Everyone has forgotten about Mad Jim Jaspers … and that was a mistake of terrible consequence.” That’s very much the early Moore voice.

After that chaotic ending to issue 386, Moore plunged us deeper and deeper into the madness in MSH #387, with a full-on Jaspers reality warp infecting this world, the Captain left alone as Saturnyne makes her escape, and the introduction of the hero-killing machine created by Jaspers, The Fury — terrifying, unstoppable, and still one of the scariest comic villains I’ve ever read. All this in just five short pages…

I mean, that introduction — “Allow me to introduce you to The Fury, Captain. The Fury is a cybiote, an unstoppable amalgam of flesh and metal. It kills superheroes”– that’s just one of those great comic moments if you ask me.

Anyway, things go, as you’d no doubt expect, bad. This was Moore taking on the deconstructionist method he’d made his name on, breaking everything down before building it all back up, and that meant the Captain’s world had to come crashing down.

Again, that glorious line — “I’m Mad Jim Jaspers. I think we’ve met.” Oh, that’s just something else.

Anyway, we’re very nearly at the point I joined the whole Captain Britain saga properly here. Yes, I was late to the party. But my baptism came next issue, with MSH 388, picked up, my failing memory assures me, on a family holiday in 1982. To say it changed my life seems a little over the top. Yet it did. All I had with that five-page Captain Britain episode was Moore delivering the hammer blow, brutal and far too quick, yet it absolutely thrilled little 11-year-old me, immediately making me a huge fan of Moore and Davis and the Captain. But more importantly, from that moment, I picked up MSH issues 377-387 on mail order, and then followed Moore and Davis into Warrior, where I’d fall in love with Marvelman and V for Vendetta, and from there, my comics-reading world broadened and broadened. These Moore and Davis Captain Britains planted that seed of comic-loving me.

Well, next time, I’ll go a little bit deeper into the Moore/Davis years of Daredevils and Mighty World of Marvel, where they went on to craft what, to my mind, is still one of the greatest of all superhero tales.

But we’ll end with Captain Britain‘s legacy and where he went next …

Following the end of the Moore/Davis Captain Britain run, there was the transfer of the good Captain to the USA, where Marvel, seeing Davis as a major talent, started using him more and more, eventually leading to the publication of the Chris Claremont-written and Davis-drawn Excalibur, essentially a mash-up of the X-Men and Captain Britain for a pretty damn fun series — at least whilst Davis had anything to do with it.

After this, I have to say, my experiences with Captain Britain became fewer. As the years have gone on, Brian and Betsy have carried the mantle of Captain Britain, with their stories becoming integral to the entire Marvel Universe.

But for me, aside from a few dalliances — I mean, sure, Excalibur was fun, whilst Davis was involved, and the Paul Cornell-written series was good — MY Captain Britain, 50 years old this month, is all about that perfect moment of comics, the superhero tale where I fell in love properly with comics. More on that next week — if you’ll forgive an old man his indulgences.

And of course, as it’s the 50th anniversary, Marvel is doing something, this in fact …

Out on 14th October, the special gives us three tales from the past, present, and future of both Brian and Betsy Braddock, Captains both.

Three stories. With Chris Claremont and Paul Davidson giving us ‘Braddock Business‘, Davis returning to show us ‘Chains of Command’.  And finishing with ‘Another Day, An Otherworld’ by Dan Abnett and Kelsey Ramsay.