Captain Britain: Anarchy in the UK

In 1976, as the British people suffered from a historic heatwave, comics in the UK were also suffering from the heat of a Fredric-Wertham-like backlash. A new comic was published by IPC, devised by Pat Mills (who would go on to create 2000AD the following year.) Called simply "Action", it had no connection with the American comic which had launched Superman in 1938, being instead, the usual British anthology format showcasing a number of strips each issue.

The content of those strips was anything but usual, though. One of the standout strips was "Hook Jaw." Inspired by the success of Jaws, Hook Jaw focused on the shark as the main protagonist, inflicting his own brand of justice on the unsympathetic human characters - usually by graphically dismembering them.

Hook Jaw always gets his man 

Other strips focused on a Nazi tank commander during World War II, and football hooligans.

This extreme approach did not go unnoticed - by consumers or the media. The first issue sold 250,000 copies (a huge number for a UK comic) and increased from there. And it was no doubt helped by the media backlash, first in newspapers, then on TV, and finally being mentioned in parliament. Worse still, it garnered the attention of Mary Whitehouse.

Mrs. Whitehouse was a regular presence in the British media, and her National Viewers and Listeners Association held an inordinate amount of influence over institutions like the BBC, despite the fact that their ultra-conservative views were out of step with the vast majority of the British public.

"Won't somebody think of the children?!"

Mary Whitehouse, scourge of the UK media

By October, facing pressure from distributors, IPC suspended publication of Action, and when it returned, it was in a much more watered-down form, to the disappointment of its fans. Sales plummeted to an unprofitable 70,000, and it was cancelled in November 1976.

The backlash against Action had caused scrutiny of comics as a whole in the UK, and it was into the crucible of this controversy that Captain Britain was launched.

Genesis

Marvel had opened an office in the UK in 1972 to oversee a line of British comics. It was mainly used as a postal address where letters from British fans could be sent, as well as dealing with advertising, and was run by a skeleton crew led by Neil Tennant, who would go on to be one half of the Pet Shop Boys. All the editorial work was still carried out in the U.S., though, initially by Stan Lee's brother, Larry Lieber. Larry had worked as a writer, artist and editor for Marvel and indeed Timely Comics before they became Marvel.

Following the format of most British weekly comics, Marvel UK's comics were anthologies, featuring a number of stories each issue that were reprints of US comics, cut up into 6 or 7 page chapters, occasionally with new splash-pages to reintroduce the strip the following issue - again, written and drawn in the U.S. Up until 1976, apart from those splash-pages, there had been no original material in the UK comics. That was about to change, though...

A small teaser ad appeared in Marvel UK's titles on 22nd September 1976 promising "Britain's Own" superhero, followed a week later by a full-page promotion:

Then on October 6th 1976, Captain Britain #1 was published.

It's not entirely clear who originated the idea for Captain Britain, but the task of bringing him to life was given to Chris Claremont and Herb Trimpe. Claremont, who was born in the UK, but moved to the US when he was three years old, had recently started writing the X-Men, although sadly his work on Captain Britain doesn't reach the heights he'd eventually reach on that title.

Herb Trimpe had recently returned home to the U.S., having lived for a year in Cornwall in the UK. In interviews, he was fairly pragmatic about Captain Britain; "I thought the idea was rather silly in the sense that I didn't think a superhero could be popular in England. Superheroes have a very distinct, very American, very in-your-face cultural footprint. It was extra work and I did it for the money. For me, eight pages of Captain Britain was two days work and that was it. You have to understand where that feature stood in the vast scheme of the Marvel Universe, and the other things I was doing at the time, both inside and outside the walls of the Marvel offices. Captain Britain was just a small part of all that. I never considered myself to be really part of the process of creating Captain Britain."

The latter comment is in reference to the fact that Trimpe didn't design Captain Britain's costume. According to Trimpe, "It looks like the work of John Romita, who was doing that kind of thing while on staff at Marvel." 

However, it appears that Larry Lieber was primarily responsible for coming up with the design, along with input from Bob Budiansky, who was working as Lieber's assistant at the time, who created the final design for the mask. Then with some small refinements by British artist George Mina, Captain Britain's costume was complete. It's possible that John Romita, as Marvel's Art Director, had some input, but it's unclear what that was.

Larry Lieber's preliminary sketch of Captain Britain

along with various reference images he compiled.

More sketches by Larry Lieber (and possibly George Mina)

 showing the development of the costume, and inset, a sketch

by Bob Budiansky showing a refinement of the Union flag

on the mask.

The costume really shouldn't work at all, and yet I've always loved it! Maybe my nostalgic fondness for it is colouring my opinion, because it doesn't seem to be very popular with a lot of people. It even got a mention in Amazing Heroes' list of Worst Dressed Heroes in #94 (dated May 1986):

The lion rampant on Captain Britain's chest is not part of any flag, although it is present on the Royal Standard of the United Kingdom - representing Scotland. England's part of the Standard has three lions passant, i.e. down on all fours. 

The Royal Standard of The United Kingdom

As for the story... Claremont lays the Britishness on thick, with Darkmoor (there's a Dartmoor in England, but no Darkmoor) being "a place of faery rings and the Old Gods, of sprites and elves, and haunted woods, a place of legends and ancient power..." It's also home to a nuclear research complex! A place where a young, but nonetheless pipe-smoking student named Brian Braddock (alliterative surnames like Reed Richards, Bruce Banner, Peter Parker, Sue Storm etc. were quite popular in the Marvel Universe) is working when it's attacked by a grotesque bad-guy named Joshua Stragg, "The Reaver". Brian escapes, and as he races across Darkmoor on his motorcycle, he crashes and finds himself in a handily placed stone circle - The Siege Perilous - where he's confronted by the ethereal visages of Merlyn and his daughter, Roma. They go unnamed at this time, although both play a major role in his story in the years to come. The Siege Perilous (another aspect borrowed from Arthurian legend - it was a seat at the round table reserved for the knight who retrieved the Holy Grail) would also be used by Claremont years later in the X-Men.

Brian is given a choice; he must take either a mystical amulet or a sword which is embedded into a stone. Brian chooses the amulet, and is transformed into Captain Britain.

Then Joshua Stragg, who'd been pursuing Brian, arrives and takes the sword. After a battle in which he defeats Stragg and his men, Brian decides to keep the mantle of Captain Britain.

And so ends his first adventure. This was actually spread across the first two issues of Captain Britain in 8-page installments, and surprisingly for a British comic at that time, was mostly in colour. This meant it was an even bigger risk for Marvel, colour printing being considerably more expensive than black and white. Unsurprisingly, then, Marvel sent out the big guns to promote the comic - in the shape of Stan Lee himself! A promotional tour was arranged, with appearances and signings in 5 cities across the UK, as well as a number of interviews with TV, radio and newspapers.

Stan even appeared on Nationwide - an early evening magazine show on BBC1, with a large audience - where John Sanders, the editor of Action, had faced an aggressive grilling from presenter Frank Bough only a few weeks earlier. 

The subject of violence in comics inevitably came up in most of these interviews, but Stan appears to have handled it with his usual charm, although it seems apparent that he hadn't actually read Captain Britain... "I like heroes the kids can look up to. Captain Britain is bright and courageous but not infallible. He can't fly and he can't go through a brick wall. I imagine he'd like a drink now and again but he's too smart to smoke."

Stan Lee meets an old work colleague at a Captain Britain signing in 1976.

Meanwhile, in an article in The Evening Times, a Scottish newspaper, Marvel's UK Editor, Neil Tennant was forced to defend Captain Britain. A spokesman for The Church of Scotland is quoted as saying, "Violence In children's comics must produce some reaction in individuals. Children may be terrified by the science fiction monster, shocked by blood, or even moved to violence. But, worst of all, they might come to accept it as normal"

Tennant responded, "I wouldn't call it violence. It is action and old-fashioned adventure. Our readership is older and more intelligent. We get letters from kids analysing our comics. In a few years they could be analysing a painting by Van Gogh. Our comics have a good effect on the imagination of children."

Captain Britain outlasted the controversy caused by Action, but sales weren't strong. Chris Claremont left after 11 issues, replaced by Gary Friedrich, and by #24, that expensive colour printing was dropped in favour of grey tones. John Buscema and then Ron Wilson drew the strip for the remainder of its current incarnation, and then with #39 (dated 29th June 1977), the Captain Britain title was cancelled. The strip, however, continued for a while in the UK Spider-Man weekly comic.

In October 1977, Captain Britain made his first appearance Stateside, in Marvel Team-Up #65 & 66, written once again by Chris Claremont, and drawn by his new X-Men collaborator John Byrne. The two-part story has Brian Braddock visting New York on a student exchange programme and staying with Peter Parker. Whilst there, new villain Arcade is hired by The Maggia (the Marvel Universe's equivalent of the Mafia - how do they come up with these names??) to kill Brian because he's one of a number of people the Maggia suspect might be Captain Britain. Of course, the Captain and Spider-Man team up and triumph over Arcade and his "MurderWorld."

This adventure was serialised in the UK comic, and was in fact the last time Captain Britain would be seen for a while.

It's no surprise that Captain Britain didn't connect with the UK audience, given that his strip was produced in the US, and with the exception of his initial creators, Claremont and Trimpe, those writers and artists had no connection to the UK. The strip was completely out of touch with the UK zeitgeist, the spirit of rebellion that was in the air with the rise of punk - The Sex Pistols released their first single a month after Captain Britain debuted - and more daring comics like Action and 2000AD.

A Trip To Otherworld

In 1978, with sales dropping on all of Marvel UK's publications, Marvel hired Dez Skinn to head their UK office. A veteran of the UK comics scene, he took the job on the proviso that he was given more freedom over what Marvel UK published, and a budget - albeit a small one - to produce home-grown material. The first weekly title launched under his leadership was Hulk Comic, which launched on March 7th, 1979.

The Hulk TV show had boosted the character's profile beyond comic fandom, and he was not exactly the usual costumed superhero. That was something Dez Skinn wanted to get away from: "I was wanting an adventure anthology title more than a superhero one. Superheroes had never been big sellers in the UK, we had plenty of legends of the past to spin fantasies about. So I went that route, picking existing Marvel characters who weren't really cut from the superhero cloth."

The Hulk strip concentrated more on the wandering accidental hero side of the Hulk as portrayed on the TV show rather than the more superheroic character who appeared in the US comics. It was drawn initially by Dave Gibbons, and thereafter by Steve Dillon, two artists who would go on to be industry greats.

Alongside the Hulk strip, there were original strips featuring Nick Fury - also by Steve Dillon - a new character called Night Raven, by Steve Parkhouse and David Lloyd, and a new strip featuring the Black Knight, by Parkhouse and John Stokes.

In the 3-page-per-week strip, the Black Knight - a character who pre-dated the Marvel Universe, but who had been introduced into it in the pages of The Avengers - is on a quest for Merlyn in Cornwall, when he encounters a hermit living in a cave. It turns out to be an amnesiac Brian Braddock - the very man the Knight had been sent to find.

Together, they go on an adventure that eventually takes them to Otherworld, a mystical land of elves, monsters and magic. The strip turned out to be the longest-lasting of all the UK-originated material in the Hulk Comic. All the other strips were eventually replaced by reprints of US comics, but the Black Knight lasted for 51 episodes. It was certainly the most attractive, with beautiful art by John Stokes, later assisted by Paul Neary.

The Black Knight and King Arthur prepare to defend Camelot

Later on, Brian Braddock's memory returns, and it's revealed that, returning from New York where he'd battled alongside Spider-Man, Brian's flight was attacked by dark forces summoned by the evil Necromon, and he'd leapt from the plane into the Atlantic Ocean and washed up on the coast of Cornwall. He'd been saved by the spirit of King Arthur, who rises from the dead to stop Necromon taking over Otherworld. Captain Britain and the Black Knight join forces with King Arthur and Merlyn and defeat Necromon and set out to rebuild Camelot. There, the story ended, and Captain Britain again went into limbo for a year.

New Faces

The Mighty World of Marvel had been the first publication from Marvel UK in 1972. Launched as a weekly title, by 1979 its sales were flagging, like most other Marvel UK titles, and it was relaunched as a monthly title called Marvel Super-Heroes with #353.

In Marvel Super-Heroes #377 (dated September 1981), a new-look Captain Britain soared from the cover in a striking image by a new UK talent - Alan Davis.

By this time, Paul Neary was running Marvel UK, and he'd managed to persuade Marvel to give him a tiny budget to start producing new material by UK creators. He was approached by a young Alan Davis at a comic convention in London: 

"My break into comics was due entirely to Paul Neary, who saw a potential in me which I didn't even see in myself. Paul wanted to originate material, but he had had to fight to win even a small budget because the money people were against creating new work when they had so much they could reprint. So Paul was really looking for people who would work for peanuts! It was about a quarter of the 2000AD rate at the time, so it was very poorly paid. But everyone involved was very friendly and enthusiastic, and Paul taught me a tremendous amount. He knew a lot about all aspects of the comic business."

Paul Neary wanted a total redesign of Captain Britain's costume, and gave Alan Davis a very open brief:

"Other than the fact that the Captain must wear a super hero costume, I was given absolute creative freedom. I had never liked the original Captain Britain costume. It was a pastiche of costume clichés, with a lion rampant and flag thrown in for cultural relevance. I imagined that Captain Britain would wear a uniform, so began to work around a vague notion derived from historical military regalia. Primarily, those worn by the Horse Guards outside Buckingham Palace: white riding breeches, thigh-length boots, white gloves, ceremonial sash and helmet. This initial premise proved sound after evolving through a number of incarnations.

After I created the now-familiar design, Paul Neary decided to involve Jim Shooter (then Marvel's editor in chief) in the project. So I was then asked to produce a selection of designs for Jim to choose from. I was pretty pleased with and confident of the one I'd finished and didn't want to risk being denied the opportunity to draw it. So I drew two rather bland alternatives based on Captain America, the other on Captain Marvel. I don't know what I would have done if one those had been chosen!"

Alan Davis' final costume design alongside the two deliberately 

bland options that were presented to Jim Shooter

Alongside Davis was another newcomer, Dave Thorpe. He'd been working as an editor for Marvel UK and jumped at the chance to write the strip.

After his adventure in Otherworld, Captain Britain is sent back to Earth, only it's not the Earth he remembers. He had somehow ended up on a parallel Earth where conditions were even worse than the Captain's home planet. The reason for this became clear later on in the series when a femme fatale called Saturnyne enters Captain Britain's life, and reveals that she works for the Dimensional Development Court, an organisation tasked with bringing all the Earths from multiple dimensions up to the same level. With this Earth holding the others back, she is to administer "The Push", which will evolve its inhabitants to a higher level.

Thorpe's influences were clear, with the new Captain Britain's first foes being The Crazy Gang, drawn straight from the pages of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. They were led by Mad Jim Jaspers, who would eventually prove to be a far greater danger than he first appeared.

The Crazy Gang

As well as Lewis Carroll, Thorpe took his influences from the politics of the day, i.e. Margaret Thatcher's Britain. As well as the Northern Ireland conflict...

Thorpe wrote a story set in Belfast featuring a young boy who was a protestant and his girlfriend, a catholic. Alan Davis immediately objected to it: "I just thought it was inappropriate to have a guy dressed in the Union Jack flying over to Ireland and sorting out the entire Northern Ireland situation. The problems are a little bit more complicated than can be handled in two five-page stories. Bernie (Jaye, who'd taken over from Paul Neary as head of Marvel UK) hadn't been an editor for long and Dave was on the staff, so I expected to lose the argument and my job. But, editorial and management agreed that the story was inappropriate and Dave was told he had to change his script. By the time I received the revised script, the offices were closed for Christmas and the art was to be finished when they reopened. I was stunned when I read the revision, which was now meant to be a fantasy fable, because it was exactly the same as the original script with the names anagramized. Belfast became Fablest, the Protestants became Rottenpasts, and the Catholics became Coalitch. This is when I got angry because I was insulted that anyone might think I couldn't see through something so transparent. I phoned Bernie who was spending Christmas in Paris. It was decided that our only option was to remove the politics, even though it left little else. I drew the entire issue in two days, that was pencil and inks. And it's the most horrible job I ever did. I regret the whole affair, which resulted in Dave leaving, because it had become a choice between him or me and Dave lost the chance to use the strip as a springboard to other work as I did."

After the Northern Ireland story was reworked, Alan Davis wrote and drew a fill-in story. Then a new writer was recruited - by the name of Alan Moore.

Moore was starting to make a name for himself, writing various short stories for Future Shocks in 2000AD, as well as some Doctor Who and Star Wars stories for Marvel UK.

Continuing various plot threads from Dave Thorpe's run on the strip, Moore has Captain Britain become more entangled in Saturnyne's schemes, and introduces The Fury, an unstoppable "cybiote" whose mission is simple - kill all superbeings. It goes about this task with single-minded zeal, endlessly adapting and repairing its techno-organic body with whatever materials are to hand, from scrap metal in a junkyard, to a dead cat. At one point, during a pitched battle, The Fury grows a second nervous system to cope with the pain it's experiencing.

The Fury

The Fury eventually succeeds in killing Captain Britain, giving Alan Moore the chance to literally deconstruct the central character, then rebuild him as something better and more powerful - a theme which he would later repeat in The Anatomy Lesson in his legendary run on DC Comics' Swamp Thing.

A scene from "A Rag, A Bone, A Hank of Hair" from Captain Britain, and

below, "The Anatomy Lesson" from The Saga Of The Swamp Thing #21

Captain Britain is brought back to life by Merlyn and Roma, and his adventures began anew, this time in the pages of Marvel UK's The Daredevils. Thus starts - as you'd expect from Alan Moore - probably the peak of Captain Britain's career in comics. Over the course of 11 issues of The Daredevils, and then 7 issues of the relaunched Mighty World of Marvel, Moore and Davis document Captain Britain's fight against Saturnyne and The Dimensional Development Court, The Fury, and Mad Jim Jaspers, who it turns out is an insane, all-powerful mutant, causing the breakdown of reality on the world which Captain Britain finds himself.

Along the way, we discover for the first time that Marvel's Earth is number 616 in the multiverse, mentioned for the first time in The Daredevils #7 (July 1983):

That number has stuck to this day, and is even used in the movies to identify in which reality the Marvel Cinematic Universe takes place. Alan Moore credits his predecessor, Dave Thorpe, with coming up with the number, even though it was never mentioned during his run.

One of my favourite moments during this run appears very early on; after meeting up with his sister, Betsy, who it turns out has psychic powers (she later goes on to become Psylocke of the X-Men), Captain Britain faces off against Slaymaster - one of the few villains who makes a comeback from the early days of Captain Britain's career. Slaymaster attacks Betsy's friends in The Forbidden Planet. This was the first shop of the now international franchise of comic shops, in its original location in Denmark Street in London, and was the first comic shop I ever visited, in 1981 when I was 13. Needless to say, I was like a kid in a candy store! The shop is still there, with its distinctive black railings, although Forbidden Planet has long since moved to larger premises.

After Alan Moore left, Captain Britain got his own monthly magazine again, this time with Alan Davis working with Jamie Delano. The two didn't really see eye-to-eye about the kind of stories they wanted to tell. According to Davis, "I accepted Jamie on Alan Moore's recommendation. I think Jamie is a very capable writer, but I don't think he had any interest in the superhero genre. More Clive Barker than Roy Thomas. I hoped things would improve in time. Jamie was in an impossible situation because he was the junior partner and having to prove himself every step of the way. There were certain stories I wanted to do. So in the beginning I would outline a plot and he would then write the full script. If it deviated from my plot I would change it back to what I thought it should be. It was a very awkward situation. I know I gave Jamie a hard time.."

Despite this, Jamie and Alan produced 11 issues of the Captain Britain title, before Alan Davis took over as writer and artist. Unfortunately, the title was cancelled once again with #14 (February 1986).

By this time, Davis had been working for DC Comics on Batman And The Outsiders amongst other projects, all the time being pestered by Chris Claremont to draw the X-Men. "I was very intimidated about following the stellar cast of artists on the X-Men. There had never been a mediocre artist on the X-Men. I didn't want to be the guy that comes onto it and the sales just drop through the floor because I'm so bad!"

Eventually, Davis drew a couple of fill-in issues, followed by a New Mutants annual and an X-Men annual. Then came Excalibur...

"The first I knew of Excalibur was when Chris phoned and instead of asking, did I want to draw the X-Men, said Marvel is doing another X-book and it's going to be set in England and Captain Britain is in it. Now Chris was one of the creators of Captain Britain so he obviously had an interest in him. So I don't know whether Captain Britain was included in the group to encourage me. I'd said my good-byes to Captain Britain when I did that final issue. Having said that, I don't regret that Captain Britain was in Excalibur. I think it made the book work."

Excalibur debuted in a one-off special edition called, "The Sword Is Drawn" (December 1987), then in June 1988, the team got its own ongoing series, again written by Chris Claremont and drawn by Alan Davis.

Up until this point, with the exception of those Marvel Team-Up issues and a brief appearance in the first crossover series, Contest of Champions, Captain Britain had only ever appeared in Marvel UK publications. Now, he was firmly embedded in the Marvel Universe, and has been ever since. 50 years after his creation, the mantle has now been adopted by a number of people. Brian Braddock is currently retired, and he and his wife Meggan live in a lighthouse on the south coast of England.

Thank you to Bob Budiansky for his insights and information.

For the writing of this article, I drew on a number of sources, as follows:

Captain Britain Omnibus published by Marvel Comics

Modern Masters: Alan Davis by Eric Nolen-Weathington published by Twomorrows Publishing

"Marvel Revolution in England" by John Dakin from The Comics Journal #45 published by Fantagraphics Inc. 

"The Saga of Captain Britain" by Nigel Lowrey from Back Issue #29 published by Twomorrows Publishing 

"Captain Britain And The Moral Panic Of 1976" by Robert Menzies from Back Issue #83 published by TwoMorrows Publishing 

"An Interview With Alan Davis" by Les Chester from Amazing Heroes #85 published by Fantagraphics Books Inc.

"Dressed For Success" by N. A. Collins from Amazing Heroes #94 published by Fantagraphics Books Inc.