Captain Britain Omnibus

£9.9
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Captain Britain Omnibus

Captain Britain Omnibus

RRP: £99
Price: £9.9
£9.9 FREE Shipping

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But ultimately, he doesn't know what to do with the character either, any more than anyone else did. Recent projects include the dark fantasy novel Dragon Moon and Sovereign SevenTM, a comic book series published by DC Comics. But it's the weakest of his early hits, even so: unlike Miracleman or V or Swamp Thing or Halo Jones there's no thematic depth or sense of a story with a point to it. The silver age stuff, especially that featuring Captain America is cheesy as hell, with only the biggest silver age fans likely able to stomach it, yet its decent for what it is.

From a British perspective, I suppose we can see 'Captain Britain' as a noble failure and, if we were sour, as both the product and victim of American cultural colonialism. Thorpe's story lines from the 1981 re-boot begin the Omnibus which could be seen a mash-up between Valiant, Marvel and 2000AD [founded in 1977] in style (very British). The Jamie Delano run that follows it - with occasional dips into writing by Davis himself - is less proficient but more interesting in some ways, those ways mostly being that Delano lets Davis cut loose a lot more, experimenting with layouts and purely visual, lyrical passages - whatever grimness your story includes (and Delano is particularly sadistic towards Betsy Braddock), having Alan Davis on art is a way to bring in magic anyway. Moore's story, though, is not joyful at all: on my first read of it in the 90s it felt dramatic and unpredictable.

Understanding Captain Britain as a fantasy character more than a superhero is key to what makes him work.

Grant Morrison subverted this with a prose horror story about Captain Gran Bretan (1986) where the magic is malign. I also really liked most of the stories that took place after CB's costume change, no matter how packed with ridiculous characters the book became. I really expected and wanted to love everything in this book, since I'd never read any of it before. Follow the United Kingdom’s greatest champion from the streets of London to the mystic realm of Otherworld!The three in-between tales by Davis and others are OK, bringing Captain Britain back down to Earth, but not exceptional [6/10]. Now, thrill to a complete collection of Captain Britain's iconic UK adventures - from questing alongside the Black Knight to battling Jim Jaspers and the Fury to prevent Earth from becoming a crooked world! To be true to his creation could place him unwittingly somewhere on the nice side of the national populist camp but to deny his 'national meaning' could be to make him a laughable 'woke' nonentity, an add-on to a plethora of US heroes.

This omnibus begins right after the “Siege of Camelot” epic; Merlin sends Brian Braddock back to his universe, and gives him some new threads and powers.And Captain Britain remains one of the greatest 'superhero' runs I've had the privilege to read yet. 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.

Captain Britain is a character who probably never got his full due but this might be because of his internal contradictions.At this point Davis isn't quite the artist he'll go on to be, but he's still fantastic and although the early issues with Dave Thorpe and Paul Neary are good, you can't help thinking they're kind of just making it up as they go, with no real long term plan. Perhaps that doesn't matter, because it *is* thrilling: as a craftsman Moore already knew how to pace a page and an episode ruthlessly well, using prose to bully the story into line, establish a cadence, play it out through the episode then end on a cliffhanging payoff. He has also written a novel, Voice of the Fire, and performs "workings" (one-off performance art/spoken word pieces) with The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels, some of which have been released on CD. So all in all a huge book of varying quality but the strength of Davis' stories makes this so worth having, and deserving of 4 stars. The synthesis of Carroll, Who, King Arthur and Alan Garner works here in a way it never quite has since, with the rapidly-evolving Alan Davis the perfect guy to make the strange mixture sing on the page.



  • Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
  • EAN: 764486781913
  • Sold by: Fruugo

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