Alan Moore's Captain Britain

[der2]

I came Alan Moore's run this week on Captain Britain. It was excellent, I loved the grand scale of it all with alternate worlds, unstoppable villains.

It was awesome to see cameos from Miracleman, Archie the Robot, the Claw was in there too I think, even if it was only to see them die, oh well. Getting to know of these characters lately, so its nice to see them around, mostly in reading Zenith and Miracleman.

The Fury is a bad ass and he just willed himself through dimensional barriers and his design was a nice shambles, suited him nicely.

He was very forgiving of Saturnyne after she abandoned them, he only had to see her and was about ready to let her move in after.

I knew little as I started the story, but that was fine, it was open and easy to get into. Moore does a little house keeping at the start and the story doesn't suffer for it, he gets Cap home and a cup of tea, then off to save the world!

I never thought I'd want something with a union jack on it, but I want a toy of him now. Not a big fan of the modern costume one that came out in the Captain America range, I'm gonna have to hunt down the one from 2010 I think.
 

[Cliffjumper]

It's a great arc, isn't it? The Fury is possibly the best Marvel villain ever, and Brian's death is probably among the best too.

All of Linda's doomed colleagues are based on someone or other - there are also graves for the likes of The Arachnid (the Spider), Gaath (Garth), the Puppeteer (Dolmann)... Col. Tusker and his killer toys is a nod to General Jumbo, Tom Rosetta is Tom Kelly and Linda's squeeze is good ol' Dickie Dauntless. Makes a nice change from the usual Marvel alt universe "Wolverine in a different costume" stuff, and IIRC was a big part of me looking up the Fleetway heroes.

The Alan Davis/Jamie Delano trade isn't bad - it's nowhere near as good, suffering a bit from having a much looser narrative, but some of the set-pieces are excellent (the second or third episode is one of the best comics I've ever read, no qualifiers). Being Davis it's a bit like a solo Excalibur series - a lot lighter for the most part, but still good.

Thorpe's brief run (preceding Moore) is batshit insane, but worth reading once.

The first series is best avoided, it's just another 1970s Marvel comic that occasionally remembers it's meant to be set in the UK. Writers included Claremont, Budiansky (no, really) and some washed-up alcoholic who turns it into a Captain America strip set in some weird alternate version of London.
 

[der2]

I might come back to the character in a while, but for now I think I might follow Alan Moore and see where he takes me. I've been thinking about picking up some of his Swamp Thing work and getting into that. The narrative felt as though it was far removed from the Marvel style, which can be very tedious.

The art as well was superb the whole way through, comparing B+W comics to one another I found the composition much easier to follow than Zenith. The court scenes and the fighting seemed so large, but it was all really clear and quite lovely, the aliens had a wonderful range in their designs as well. I do love a B+W story, but it can get messy or sparse potentially.

It must have been next to impossible for the American writers to make it feel English, what would they have had for reference, Mary Poppins and Doctor Who? They'd have no real feel for it. I often thought of how Spiderman would do over here. It'd take him a good while longer to get around surely, none/few of the buildings this side of the water would be tall enough for him to swing from, he'd only risk injury.

The Fleetway heroes will have to be researched a bit more before making a plunge into them wholesale, but it looks like some fertile ground for reading.