BRITAIN PREVAILS - Captain Britain & MI13 Appreciation PART II

[Panic]

I've been imagining a Immortal Iron Fist-style series starring the Black Knight and drawn by Aja... ah, the possibilities.

[coolbeans74]

I've been imagining a Immortal Iron Fist-style series starring the Black Knight and drawn by Aja... ah, the possibilities.

i would very much buy that..,

but then i would probably buy an Immortal Iron Fist-style series starring Stingray if it was drawn by Aja

[tony ingram]

I've been imagining a Immortal Iron Fist-style series starring the Black Knight and drawn by Aja... ah, the possibilities.

i would very much buy that..,

but then i would probably buy an Immortal Iron Fist-style series starring Stingray if it was drawn by Aja

Wouldn't an Immortal Iron Fist series by definition have to star Iron Fist?

[Panic]

Immortal Iron Fist-style

You've got to read these things more carefully, tony.

[Aelle3]

I would probably kill for Aja on a Union Jack and black knight team up book.

[James Hunter]

I would probably kill for Aja on a Union Jack and black knight team up book.

Nice idea, but I personally would prefer a Union Jack/Citizen V team up with Aja on art

Cheers.

James.

[The Sword Is Drawn]

I think Lobdell was given the title as a result of a quick change and he had no way to prep. H eliterally got his job writing x men by walking past an editor's office and being the first person the editor saw.

I'm not so sure about the quick change. I seem to recall several people on the X-Forums talking about the original plan having been Lobdell and Joe Madureira (Who had already done twop issues of Excalibur fill in art) being the original planned team to take over. Joe Mad's OTT style seems like a great distraction from Davis' departure. But of course he then got bumped up to the flagship book. So it didn't happen.

Lobdell did effectively neuter Excalibur, but I do have to wonder how much of that was Editorially driven. This was the period of the big now X-Office Rebrand. Every book embracing a new and very homogenous House Style. It was applied across the board and enforced fully.

Excalibur was the book which didn't fit that vision. The inclusion of non-mutants for a start. The whole axing all team members who hadn't been X-Men, the complete cutting off from all of Captain Britain's mythos and rogues gallery, to instead fight z-list X-Men tied villains, the move to Muir Island to be closer TO the X-Men through Moira McTaggart, and the destruction of Captain Britain to be rebuilt as 'Britannic' all wreak of crazy editorial intervention.

I'd love to hear from Lobdell himself, as to how much was his idea. But much like Ben Raab it's easy to point a finger at the guy, because it was his name on it. In truth though it was almost certainly not purely his creative direction.

[T Hedge Coke]

He did have some sort of long term plan, as evidenced by Warren Ellis' first arc being credited as story by Lobdell, but his standalone filler pieces, like the Nightcrawler, Son of Krakoa issue were alright. The actual long haul stuff was painfully inept though, as an Excal and Lobdell fan. Mark Badger couldn't save the Prometheum Exchange for trying, and I think a lot of fans, at the time, hated Badger's art choices there, anyway. Brittanic? Is there a rule that says Captain Britain writers must alternate, so one builds him up, the next makes an idiot of him, followed by someone to build him up so the next can make a fool... and so and so and so on?

[Willow616]

Is there a rule that says Captain Britain writers must alternate, so one builds him up, the next makes an idiot of him, followed by someone to build him up so the next can make a fool... and so and so and so on?

I think it's Marvel editorial policy

[The Sword Is Drawn]

He did have some sort of long term plan, as evidenced by Warren Ellis' first arc being credited as story by Lobdell, but his standalone filler pieces, like the Nightcrawler, Son of Krakoa issue were alright. The actual long haul stuff was painfully inept though, as an Excal and Lobdell fan.

I personally feel that the weakness came from the loose ends which he chose to form stories from. He focussed on side-notes from old Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler appearances in Uncanny X-Men, on z-list X-men villains, on old cast-off FROM the X-Men...

Now it may be that this was the remit given by the X-Men Office of the day. But when Ben Raab did similar in the later issues of the run the book got cancelled. Because they weren't interesting concept.

Lobdell did nothing NEW with Excalibur, just retreads back to aged lose end plot points others wouldn't have bothered with. Even Douglock was really just an attempt to retread the Kitty Pryde/Doug Ramsey dynamic. Most importantly, he did nothing which was a good match with the core concepts of the team, nothing which actually made use of Britain (Or even Europe as a greater expansion) as the setting, nothing which made use of the gift of such a unique team book to have been given.

Whenever this has happened with ANY incarnation of Excalibur the result has always been universally the same. Readers lose interest and sales fall. Marvel then consider the book to be a lost cause, evenn though it has only become such a thing through trying to make it into something it was never supposed to have been.

Mark Badger couldn't save the Prometheum Exchange for trying, and I think a lot of fans, at the time, hated Badger's art choices there, anyway.

It *was* a bit of an odd choice. I mean Excalibur had a very distinctive Alan Davis look to it. That was a huge part of the draw towards it for many people. The art in The Prometheum Exchange is in places really interesting, but in others truly crude and jarring. A shame, because it was a decent enough actual story. Doom, West Coast Avengers, it should have been a winner. It just needed a stronger artist.

Brittanic? Is there a rule that says Captain Britain writers must alternate, so one builds him up, the next makes an idiot of him, followed by someone to build him up so the next can make a fool... and so and so and so on?

It certainly seems to have played out that way over the years. Usually when handed to a writer who has no real cultural connection TO Britain, and doesn't realise what a crude national stereotype they're making the guy.

[OJSlaughter]

I just read Secret Avengers 34 and Gambit 6, thoughts:

spoilers:

Secret Avengers was pretty good, I still don't like how Captain Britain decision making is being shown as being incompetent although the story about switching Betsy's hair-dye made me smile. Really though, at least Captain Britain is doing something and doing it fairly well. I like the banter between Haweye and CB and, as someone who has always seen Brian as a man well over his head, Remender constantly bringing up being Leader of the Captain Britain Corps works well for me. James Braddock seems to be in the comic, although I really don't know what to say about that. Gambit has the Queen in it, which is always fun although very silly. Faiza is seen as a tad bit useless in this issue, also where is the rest of MI:13?

end of spoilers

Edit: I created a thread on the Avengers Board, it is extremely spoilery of course: so be warned!

[Vic Vega]

Don't really see how Brian dad goes from being(i'm assuming now) first citizen of Otherworld to an Android building fanatic.

If he were going to go off his rocker I'd expect it to be more Arthurian themed really(scientist or no).

[OJSlaughter]

Well I like to avoid spoilers...

Still, James looks really young here too. I guess we will have to find out.

Edit: Turns out it was a flashback. I never read the place/time captions :s

[The Sword Is Drawn]

Don't really see how Brian dad goes from being(i'm assuming now) first citizen of Otherworld to an Android building fanatic.

If he were going to go off his rocker I'd expect it to be more Arthurian themed really(scientist or no).

To be fair though, Sir James has rarely been portrayed in any truly 'Arthurian' theming. We've really seen very little of his Otherworld connections. His children never knew anything about that side of his life whatsoever, until in their 20s, a fair few years after his death.

This big image Remender seemed to be trying to paint in Uncanny X-Force of an Otherworld Heritage, big portraits of Sir James in important Otherworld locations and this strict Family Line the siblings MUST follow simply never existed in Brian, Betsy or Jamie's lives. Far from it.

All we've really seen of Sir James is a guy who built a supercomputer, complete with hard light holographic avatar, which was capable of manipulating others and ultimately was responsible for his death. Similar holographic technology was used by Sir James to relay a message to Brian, upon reaching a certain cave in Otherworld, from beyond the grave. So he clearly had a very competent knowledge of and access to that kind of tech.

His membership of the Hellfire Club, and his ties to creating bullets made from mutant skin on Genosha, are far more vague. They've never really been explored. Were those bullets on Genosha grafts from this 'Skinless Man' (Who frankly is a character who jars with me)? Maybe. But no finite answer has been given. How did the late great Fantomex come to own said bullets? Had Sir James had some kind of ties to the Weapon Plus program? Still no finite answer.

Really the only information ever given about the Otherworld side of the character is the testimony of the Machine which killed him, telling Brian and Betsy that their father came from Otherworld. "He was one of Merlin's chosen Guard. He came here to prepare the way". But no real details of what that involved have been given. Just a picture of the guy wearing a red and white caped costume, standing next to Merlin. Followed up in 2000 by a hologram imprinted with Sir James' personality telling Brian that his father had been a member of the Captain Britain Corps, sent to Earth 616 in order to breed some kind of offspring who possessed '...the Divine Spark'.

Is Sir James a being *from* Otherworld? Genetically different from the Human Race? Or is he a man from another Earth who rose up to the Corps? Is he originally *from* Earth 616, that dimension's Captain Britain *before* Brian?

No information has ever been given to clear things like that up. :)

[OJSlaughter]

When Brian became King of Otherworld, his dad came out as a hologram. He has always given a very technological impression: his Otherworld connexions seem forced to me