Captain Britain Omnibus

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It underlines that Moore had all the ingredients he required for his stint on the comic, which does two things, one very successful, one more ambiguously so. Picking up the pieces of a confusing and meandering story arc, Alan Moore came in and gave the series a new sense of purpose and a very real sense of danger.

A short story by Grant Morrison ("Captain Granbretagne") offers an interesting and eerie variation on Captain Britain's origin story that also makes this volume worthwhile reading.

This was an adventure from the early 80's after they revived the character and gave him a new uniform, and dispensed with his 6 foot staff. It also suits the British national character (certainly of that period) where gloomy dystopian fears, a dislike of bullies, a penchant for the supernatural, a respect for practical science, a relative lack of interest in space-faring and a sense of history can co-exist in uneasy balance.

Understanding Captain Britain as a fantasy character more than a superhero is key to what makes him work. The truly gonzo material unfortunately runs out leaving us with stories that are simply very bad (mostly by Larry Lieber) but ropey plots aside this is an attempt to do a Captain Britain that owes something to the Avengers TV show and James Bond - a British take within the Marvel formula. Claremont's stories are stodgy superhero fare with a mild level of British flavouring: when he leaves the book, Gary Friedrich turns that level fully up, the vindaloo to Claremont's tikka masala.Alan Davis brings not just great art, but rich characters and a human touch, while Alan Moore brings an epic story that hits even harder than Miracleman. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

Friends bought it occasionally: it was beautiful but baffling, lyrical in a way the American comics just weren't, full of surreal characters who bore no relation to anything I'd seen in Spider-Man or Secret Wars. Delano's biggest contribution would really end up being the bringing of Betsy Braddock into prominence—a character which would eventually become the immensely popular X-men character known as Psylocke under the guidance of Chris Claremont. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Merlin represents Clarke's oft-cited notion of magic being merely undiscovered science and the relationship between magic and science with rebellious politics suits Moore to the ground.I love the introduction of the Captain Britain Corps, Otherworld, the Fury, Megan and so much more that added to the mythos. Grant Morrison subverted this with a prose horror story about Captain Gran Bretan (1986) where the magic is malign. With Moore, Jim Jaspers and The Fury became forces to be reckoned with and he-reintroduced Betsy (now with purple hair) and Slaymaster who was to be taken a lot more seriously as a threat now. Moore's story, though, is not joyful at all: on my first read of it in the 90s it felt dramatic and unpredictable.