Captain Britain [1988] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Captain Britain [1988]

This is a collection of seventeen stories of Captain Britain (Brian Braddock) by Alan Davis, the artist most associated with the character, including designing his most famous costume and most of his major supporting cast and villains. These were published in black and white by Marvel UK from 1984-1986.  This book is also published by Marvel UK, but has US/Canadian cover prices and unlike many Marvel UK books was widely available in North America. Davis had been the artist on the feature (created in 1976 by Herb Trimpe and Chris Claremont) through various books from 1981, with various writers. Most of those earlier stories wouldn't be widely available outside the UK and in colour until 1995.

This stretch of issues, concluding Davis' run, are mostly written by Jamie Delano (then breaking into US comics with HELLBLAZER over at DC), with a few issues early and late in the book written by Davis himself and some by Michael Collins (not the astronaut, the Irish revolutionary or Deathlok). Davis does all the art, joined by Mark Farmer inking the last few. As the cover shows, they're reprinted here to take advantage of the new popularity of the characters in America as part of the EXCALIBUR series (for Marvel proper with some once and future X-Men), which Davis had created with Chris Claremont and would do on-and-off until 1993.  Claremont also provides an introduction to this book, while original editor Ian Rimmer provides an "outroduction".

For the most part these are entertaining stories. They suffered greatly at the time from very much being the follow-up stories to a run which wasn't available to me until several years later (in particular the "Jaspers' Warp" storyline written by Alan Moore). Frequent direct references to those stories were lost on me. But the work still manages to hold its own, for the most part (a few middle chapters are a slog).

There are a lot of clever twists in the plot, quite a few funny bits, and Davis' art is always a pleasure to look at.

These stories were eventually included in a few expensive hardcover reprints of both the complete Davis run and the complete run of the character from 1976 until these stories. I thought there was also a more affordable softcover, but apparently not from Marvel proper, only from Marvel UK.