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Captain Britain Omnibus

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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]. With Moore, Jim Jaspers and The Fury became forces to be reckoned with and he-reintroduced Betsy (now with purple hair) and Slaymaster who was to be taken a lot more seriously as a threat now. Eventually it declines into an X-men 'riff' on intolerance as the logic of Moore's world is explored to its natural limits. Make no mistake, this collection IS exhaustive, collecting every scrap of Captain Britain possible, from first appearance through the brink of his joining Excalibur, although it oddly omits a Captain America appearance that was included in an earlier, slimmer version of this omnibus.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. 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. Captain Britain, it began when the Merlin of Arthurian myth transported him to a world sideways to his own, an alternate reality on the brink of annihilation. 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!

Alan Moore takes Captain Britain on a wild multi-versal ride, again combining the ideas of fate and destiny and further cementing Brain Braddock as a savior of the universe type. It's also the first Captain Britain stretch that's honestly enjoyable on the level of being a good children's fantasy comic - with its 3-4 page episode lengths and tight, atmospheric storytelling it could easily have seen print in Valiant or another IPC or DC Thomson title. Just lovely stuff, much of which was a mystery to me because of the way Marvel reprinted the stories in the early 90s. This omnibus lives up to its name with over 1300 pages of Captain Britain material from his first appearance through his various British serials onto an X-Men Annual in 1987. In short, this is an anthology that leaves a bittersweet taste behind: an essential reading for anyone interested in the multiverse, but way to expensive for anyone who is not a diehard Alan Moore or Captain Britain's fan.

There is a minor bit of weirdness in the 2021 edition of this Captain Britain Omnibus, the apparent writing out of Alan Moore as significant player in the commentary despite Moore producing the most impressive run of issues in the eventual development of the 'Jaspers Warp' story line. Even Alan David, whose has instantly leaped onto my favourite artists of all time list after this, was able to intermittently take over writing duties and acquit himself more than admirably. A character who has occasionally popped up here and there over the years, being butchered, retconned and generally destroyed, especially in more recent times. Yes, he still appears and is dealt with creatively when he does even if he is not the figure that he was in the early 1980s. I really expected and wanted to love everything in this book, since I'd never read any of it before.

Claremont's stories are stodgy superhero fare with a mild level of British flavouring: when he leaves the book, Gary Friedrich turns that level fully up, the vindaloo to Claremont's tikka masala. In the end it's Moore's take on Captain Britain that's stuck - a well meaning posh boy miles out of his depth in a much darker, weirder world than he realises - but it's also true that nothing in his earlier adventures contradicts that at all.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. 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.

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