Marvel Tales: Captain Britain #1 - Marvel Comics

MARVEL TALES: CAPTAIN BRITAIN No. 1, November 2020

Reprinting the first couple of issues of “Captain Britain Weekly”, along with some additional adventures taken from both “Marvel Team-Up” and “Excalibur”, this weighty tome certainly must have pleased fans of “the British Isles’ answer to Captain America” upon its release in September 2020. Indeed, despite Chris Claremont’s opening story only lasting sixteen pages in total, having been originally ‘chopped’ into two eight-page instalments for the “anthology comic published exclusively in the United Kingdom”, the super-hero’s origin story is simply packed full of pulse-pounding pugilism, despicable treachery and supernatural swordplay.

For starters the British-born American author throws his 5,000 strong audience straight into the deep end with Brian Braddock’s freshly-formed alter-ego weighing into a bunch of the Reaver’s steel-clad henchmen with plenty of bone-breaking blows; “I’m battling these thugs as if I’ve been fighting all my life…” Enthrallingly characterful in his garishly red costume, and as utterly bemused at his predicament as this comic’s readers probably were, it is difficult not to get caught up in all the insane action as the “shy and studious youth” trades witticisms and wallops with the heavily armoured, blade-wielding “Butcher.”

Happily however, once Claremont’s narrative has fully captivated any perusing bibliophile, the five-time Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Award-winner does pen a straightforward explanation as to just how this bizarre collection of super-powered personalities somehow managed to come together “in the remote fastness of the Cheviot Hills, just south of the Scottish Border.” An utterly insane attack upon a top secret nuclear complex by Joshua Stragg and his technological advanced machinery quickly establishes just why a pipe-smoking Braddock would want to escape the installation in the dead of night, whilst the university student’s sudden choice to own the mystical Amulet of Right rather than the Sword of Might rationalises his shocking transformation into a champion “of law and justice”.

Adding enormously to this spectacular series from the Seventies' storytelling are Herb Trimpe’s layouts, which genuinely manage to hold the eye throughout courtesy of some astounding athletic fighting manoeuvres and an increasingly enraged Reaver’s mad facial expressions. “The definitive penciler on the Incredible Hulk comic” is especially good at adding plenty of “Whod!” to this book’s numerous wallops, and it is easy to see why he would later recall that Claremont was a ‘flexible writer who allowed him considerable free rein in laying out and pacing the stories.”

Writer: Chris Claremont, Artists: Herb Trimpe & Fred Kida, and Color Artist: Marie Severin