Captain Britain Omnibus Out This Week

Just a quick Blog before I had off for some shut-eye. I know it was originally lined up for two months ago (When frankly it could have done Captain Britain & MI13 a few favours, also) but it does certainly appear that FINALLY the Captain Britain Omnibus appears to be coming out this week (July 15th/16th depending on your side of the Atlantic).

Marvel have it listed as this week on their site, and several other Comics retailers also have it listed. I myself, am greatly looking forward to this. Although, after two months of delay, I will only believe it when the nice men from Amazon finally dispatch it to me.

As a reminder of content in this illustrious tome, which doubtless will be thick enough to squash a small child, here's Marvel's official blurb:

COVER BY: ALAN DAVIS
WRITER: ALAN MOORE
ALAN DAVIS
DAVE THORPE
PAUL NEARY
MICHAEL CARLIN
STEVE CRADDOCK
MIKE COLLINS
JAMIE DELANO
CHRIS CLAREMONT
PENCILS: ALAN DAVIS
PAUL NEARY

THE STORY:
One of the Marvel Universe's most staggering sagas from two of Britain's most remarkable writers, reprinted in total for the first time! Captain Britain fights to save a universe...and fails! But a single reality is small change in the game Merlyn’s playing against Mad Jim Jaspers, who's rewriting reality so he's the center of the universe! Worlds collide, heroes and villains die, and Captain Britain's beside himself — except when he's fighting himself...to the death! Featuring the first appearances of the metamorphic Meggan, Opal Luna Saturnyne, the Captain Britain Corps, and more! Plus: Psylocke joins the X-Men, and the X-Men join Captain Britain on a cosmic quest into the secrets of life and death! The fiendish Fury, the horrific Horde and the malevolent Mojo are only a few of the adversaries who await within! Also guest-starring the New Mutants and Captain America! Collecting MARVEL SUPER-HEROES (UK) #377-388, THE DAREDEVILS (UK) #1-11, CAPTAIN AMERICA #305-306, MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL (UK) #7-16, CAPTAIN BRITAIN (UK) #1-14, NEW MUTANTS ANNUAL #2 and UNCANNY X-MEN ANNUAL #11.
Rated T+ …$99.99
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3771-9

PRICE: 99.99
IN STORES: July 15, 2009

IMPRINT: MARVEL UNIVERSE
FORMAT: HARDCOVER
RATING: RATED T+

There's a lot in there. The Alan Moore and the Jamie Delano issues, in particular, are some of my favourite comic stories of the 80s. I know it's a steep price tag. But if you have the money to burn you could do far worse than picking this up. You won't be disappointed.

I guess the question remains though, will it ACTUALLY come out this week? Keep me posted guys. If you buy it this week, or if you even see it in your local Comic Book store, I want to know.

Leave a comment on this thread or drop me a line at the usual email address (It's on the right hand side of this page).

It's been a long time coming, folks. Here's hoping it finally arrives.

It Came from Darkmoor's Marvel UK A to Z : C is for...

Welcome to the second of It Came from Darkmoor's Marvel UK A to Z columns. The intention of this column is to spotlight a few of the more obscure Marvel UK characters - the kind who are probably less likely to come up in conversation or whose overall contribution to Marvel UK has not yet been acknowledged by this Blog.

We continue, as would only be sensible, with the letter C.

So far we've had a doppelgänger hero from the 70s, and an adult-orientated fantasy character from the 90s. Our next entry shifts tone a little. The guy in question began his life in the 1980s. And despite never having headlined his own title he actually appeared in print continuously (And on a weekly basis) for far longer than many of Marvel UK's more recognisable characters...

In our alphabetical series...

C is for COMBAT COLIN!

Combat Colin was the creation of Lew Stringer, who during the 80s was responsible for creating half (and later full) page comic strips for back-up pages in Marvel UK's licensed comic books. Forget the state-side 'Mini Marvels', or other tiny strips which occasionally turn up on modern Marvel letters pages.

Lew was doing these 20 years ago. And arguably better than they're done today.

These would usually appear inside the back cover, sharing half a page with the 'next issue...' panel or possibly somewhere in the middle of the issue. A light-hearted, but often quite clever mix of concepts and puns, which were tailored to match the title they were appearing in. Stringer had created Robo-Capers for the weekly Transformers comic. A strip which varied in content somewhat across its life.

It's chief focus was on the Alien King, King No-Nose, and his Robot inventor. But every once in a while it would do stand-alone strips such as 'Transformers That Didn't Make The Grade'...


Or explaining editorial changes, such as changing the 'host' of the letters page from Decepticon tape recorder Soundwave to big dumb Dinobot Grimlock.


The strip was incredibly popular, and helped to build up the Marvel UK house-style, which really loved to involve letters pages and other items in a fourth wall breaking manner, in the 80s. And so it was decided that Stringer should create a similar strip for the new Action Force weekly comic.

(NOTE: For any US readers asking themselves "What the hell was 'Action Force'?" perhaps the easiest answer would be to say "It was G.I. Joe". Although that's not strictly true. ACTION FORCE began its life as a spin-off smaller figure line of late 70s big-toy-of-the-moment ACTION MAN. It even had it's own continuity and comic book through another publisher (Battle). Hasbro later bought Action Force and used it as a way of getting G.I. Joe into the UK and Europe. Which was not easy. "G.I." was a non-transferable US Army rank, and meant nothing in Europe. And the phrase 'Average Joe' was an Americanism that certainly hadn't been embraced in Europe in the early 80s. Nevertheless, Hasbro bought the line and integrated it into G.I. Joe, eventually changing the name in the UK and Europe towards the end of its original lifespan.

Perhaps "Officer Cadet Smith" would have been a more suitable translation? Or even "Combat Colin"? But somehow I think Action Force is a bit more dramatic, don't you... ;D

If you want any more info on that, click here: Action Force toy line - Wikipedia)

Combat Colin (Or Colin Doobrey-Smiff, as it was claimed was his actual name) was the result, making his debut in Action Force Weekly #5. Stringer had originally planned to call him 'Dimbo' but Richard Starkings (Editor of Action Force, and often letterer too) suggested 'Combat Colin' as a more lasting name which would not date so quickly. And it was the perfect fit for a comic which reprinted US G.I. Joe strips alongside UK written back-ups.

The character of Colin was one of those odd guys you encounter every once in a while. The kind who are in their mid-thirties into forties, still live with their parents, and collect all kinds of military memorabilia as a hobby.

Collect.

And only collect.

Because, frankly there is NO WAY IN HELL they'd ever be let into the actual British Army. ;D


What a perfect antidote to the very serious strips appearing elsewhere in the book, with references to genuine war campaigns, Vietnam, etc...

Professional military vs military enthusiast.

Combat Colin's initial run started with some quite simple stand-alone half-page strips - building up to the pay-off of a final panel pun. But, as with Robo-Capers, it began to evolve into something a bit more complex. Along the way Colin acquired his side-kick, Semi-Automatic Steve, a short and bearded guy, whose dress sense seemed to have been inspired by Rambo.


Shortly followed by a move towards doing serialised strips, such as the fondly remembered 'One of our Milkmen is Missing' storyline.


Which also debuted Colin's first ongoing villain, Dr Nasty.

Sadly, Action Force weekly came to an end with issue 50. At that point the book went monthly, but this incarnation only lasted 15 issues before cancellation. At which point the US G.I. Joe stories, which had formed the lead story of Acton Force weekly, became the back up story in Transformers weekly.

And Combat Colin came along with them.

This did of course mean that Robo-Capers had to make way (Although, King No-Nose and his inventor did return for a one off crossover later into the run) but on the positive side allowed stringer to broaden Combat Colin's world, and pool of regular characters. Such as Semi-Automatic Steve's landlady, Mrs Frumpy,


Steve and Colin's delightful sometime dates, The Giggly Sisters,


Colin's Agent Roy L.T. Check, Sometime hindrance tabloid ace-reporter Headline Howard and even Combat Kate - Colin's representative for North of England.


And an increasing array of demented and ridiculous supervillains in his Rogues Gallery - from the diminutive Professor Madprof to the alien threat of The Brain.


On occasion some of these characters were even given the run of the strip, that week. Combat Kate had that honour one week, as did the Giggly Sisters, in the form of "The Giggly Sisters' NICE PAGE":


I particularly like the letters column ;)

And as the strip grew so did the page space it was given. Sometimes going into black and white for a while, but moving permanently from a half page at the back of the comic to a full pages in the middle. Serialised strips returned, sometimes growing quite epic in scale. And Colin was given a huge array of "Combat" Weapons, vehicles and Gadgets(Usually branded with a smiley face, with it's tongue sticking out) which he seemed to be able to produce at a moment's notice.


Many of these were later explained as being produced from his 'Combat Trousers' a gift from a visiting alien, and containing 'deep pockets', like a veritable pocket universe of storage space:


The stories also branched out in subject matter, exploring slightly bigger concepts, from obsessed criminal fans, to evil robot doppelgängers, to adventures through space, and time.

Entire stories were dedicated to such bizarre concepts as "Combat Rhyming Slang"


Which came complete with a phrase-list at the start of the story. Or "Combat Code" complete with decoder. Combat Code was, in fact, just a reversed alphabet, but even after the strip in question occasionally you'd come across the odd caption in 'Code'.


The strip was even used to explain away editorial mistakes...


Combat Colin had found his niche. ;D

And it thrived, toying with sci-fi concepts, superhero concepts, and throwing in pop culture references which doubtless went high above some of its younger reader's heads, but for those teen readers with a little more smarts about them they appreciated them. Nice touches like plastering over exploding brains with a picture of Kylie Minogue, or an editorial note in a 1960s flashback telling kids that

"*Note: This tale is set in the 1960's, when 75% of Boys were named 'Ringo,' after the great Pop Legend, Ringo McBingo. (Honest! Ask your parents!)"

And I'd love to know just how many young kids genuinely DID that!

But by far the biggest Pop Culture reference came in the form of the multi part storyline "Prisoners of the Place of No Return," in which Colin and Steve found themselves stuck in what looked suspiciously like (i.e. it WAS) the small village from TV series The Prisoner. Trapped there, at the will of all their many villains, amongst a number of Stringer's other characters who had been 'Retired' to this place.


Readers of Image Comics' Elephantmen will recognise Brickman on the end there...

The likelihood of any of the kids reading it being aware that the whole story was a Prisoner parody (Or of their having ever heard of The Prisoner, for that matter) were pretty slim. But that's certainly what it was. And a pretty good homage, too.

(And if anybody feels that they want to get hold of that story, it was collected a few years ago in Lew Stringer's "Brickman Begins!" (ISBN-10: 0974056782) where it was renamed as "Village of the Doomed".


Of course, back in the late 1980s Transformers was Marvel UK's flagship title. And while I'm not going to claim that Combat Colin was indispensable to the title, I do feel that from that one page weekly strip it actually did play a quite important part in the reinforcing of the Marvel UK tone and house feel. No matter how daft the stories were they were part OF a bigger picture.


Not just in cod publicity like that, though. It helped give this bizarre collection of licensed property books a common connection. And indeed a common connection with the greater Marvel Universe as well.

This was the late 80s. Marvel UK weren't reprinting US Superhero books with that great an ongoing regularity. But here in Combat Colin you were having occasional glimpses of Spider-man, references to other Marvel Heroes (Even if it was through analogue characters like Dr Peter Peculiar), mentions of Drawing Comics the Marvel Way and the like. At this time Combat Colin really WAS an ambassador for Marvel.

Heck, he even went up against Doctor Doom!


It was all very inclusive, as the Marvel UK line was in general, at that point.

And you never knew which Marvel character would make an appearance at the Combat Christmas Party:


Got to love the Hulk in that final panel! ;D

Sadly, much as though many people out there felt that no Marvel UK book was complete without a Lew Stringer strip in there, things changed in 1991. Marvel UK was wanting to push towards a more serious house style - the kind which could compete with 2000 AD. And as part of those inner changes Humour strips were dropped. Which I have always felt was an incredible shame.

That was the end of Combat Colin. At Marvel, anyway.

Marvel UK did at least transfer the rights of Combat Colin, and his direct circle of characters, to Stringer. Sure, the stuff tied directly into Transformers and Marvel is always going to be tied to Hasbro or Marvel. But it is through that creator ownership that the character has survived.

Earlier I mentioned Richard Starkings' Elephantmen, which is put out by Image comics. Well, through the Brickman strip which Lew Stringer has been doing as a back-up strip in that book Combat Colin has been resurrected.

As Lew Stringer recently announced on his own Blog:

COMBAT COLIN IS BRICKMAN!

I would recommend that Blog, too. Stringer does a huge amount of work discussing British Comics, in all their forms, as well as posting up photos from Conventions in the 80s and the like. It's a great site to visit.

As for Combat Colin? I will always see him as an ambassador for a better time in comics. A time where Transformers, Death's Head, Knights of Pendragon and Doctor Who could all be mentioned in the same sentence as Captain America, Spider-man and the X-Men. They were all part of the same family, and Colin was some kind of older brother who liked to remind us all of the importance of the Marvel family, whilst subtly undermining it with a truly terrible pun or two.

I'd love to see a proper collection done some day. But due to its ties with Hasbro's products and Marvel's characters I doubt we'll ever see a complete collection see the light of day.

I'm very glad that he's still around, and I'm glad Lew Stringer is still producing new material, too.

It's Marvel's loss. It really is.


'C' could also have stood for:

Captain Britain - But that would have been far too obvious...

I'd rather go with his alternates:

Captain Granbretan - From Captain Britain (Vol.2) #13, and written by Grant Morrison.

or

Captain Airstrip One - Created by Alan Moore, from an Earth similar to George Orwell's "1984" (You can read the solo story Moore wrote for him Here.)

Charnel - An alternative Baron Strucker merged with the body of the original Death's Head, into a deadly cyber-organic magic entity.

Adam Crown - The spirit of King Arthur reborn in the body of teenage waster. Leading light of the Knights of Pendragon.



Next Week: Well, 'D' surprisingly... ;D

It Came from Darkmoor's Marvel UK A to Z : B is for...

Welcome to the second of It Came from Darkmoor's Marvel UK A to Z columns. The intention of this column is to spotlight a few of the more obscure Marvel UK characters - the kind who are probably less likely to come up in conversation or whose overall contribution to Marvel UK has not yet been acknowledged by this Blog.

We continue, as would only be sensible, with the letter B. And in our alphabetical series...

B is for BLOODSEED!

Lysander Bloodseed, in fact. Or at least in theory...

Bloodseed was the brain-child of former Marvel UK E-i-C Paul Neary and Death's Head II artist Liam Sharp. Much like Mortigan Goth (A link for those with shorter memories) Bloodseed was created for the somewhat short-lived Marvel UK sub-imprint of titles, Marvel Frontier Comics, a more adult orientated line of books more akin to DC's Vertigo than to standard superhero comics.

The aesthetic for Bloodseed is quite an interesting one. On the surface it does very much seem like a European-styled Fantasy comic, with the familiar swords, monsters and magic.


Bloodseed fights with a sword, he has magical healing powers, he battles fantasy monsters and giant ape-like brutes. You can also see elements of Tarzan, of Marvel's Ka-Zar, and other similar pulp adventure characters of that ilk.

Very European, also, in it's attitude on nudity. Yes, Bloodseed is fighting naked on that page, if you feel that you need that clarifying. There is also a heck of a lot female nudity throughout the book, something which would certainly not escape the attention of a teenager reading this book back in 1993 (And certainly didn't). There are female naughty bits EVERYwhere! And frequently very little attempt to cover them up.

But, by and large, it's not purely for titillation. It is at least plot driven nudity for the most part. When we join Lysander Bloodseed's story he is dragging his semi-conscious naked self through snowy wastes of a planet he later discovers to be named Themax-2, trying to remember how it is that he came here, and in even who the hell he actually is.



The answer to which (To his current mind, anyway) is that he is Lysander, Warrior-King of Elyssium, a Kingdom in the land of Utopia. Elyssium is a Warrior Nation, whose landscape looks like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, where the men are built like Tarzan and the women built like porn stars and who appear to hold a fundamental distaste for wearing of clothing. He is King and Elyssa, a busty Amazon type with flowing black hair (And seemingly just as much distaste for clothing as the rest of her kin) is his Queen, and one true love.

Sound just a little too good to be true? Well, you'd not be wrong. And how can he be King of Elyssium when a woman named Elyssa is also wandering the land, with the same memories, also believing herself to be the Queen of Elyssium? Only in her memories she rules Elyssium, with Lysander her King? And he's certainly not the Lysander we've already met...


The same memories, but two different people believing them to be their own.

The truth of course, is that they are false memories, implanted visions of a past that seemingly never was. Despite seeming like a fantasy world, it is at least partly a façade. A fair amount of what Bloodseed has been seeing is revealed to be a holographic computer programme, a method of controlling and testing him.

He's actually the latest in a line of humanoids created by a company called "Gene-Corps" on behalf of a client. He's not the first, but the latest in a long line of Bloodseed's to be tested for survival. As is another one-armed Bloodseed Lysander later encounters, a dead test subject wearing the same armour as him which Elyssa stumbles upon, and in fact Elyssa herself.

Each Bloodseed appears to be 'birthed' out into the world, with these false memories, and placed into a Darwin-esque scenario of being programmed to kill of the other subjects. Each subject is a peak physical specimen, possessed of the ability to heal others by touch, some kind of telekinesis, and (If they reach the correct point in the program) they will be given a 'Helmet of Truth' a semi-sentient mask which allows the wearer to discern what is real from hologram.

Lysander and Elyssa's progress in these trials eventually alerted the attention of Gene-Corps's Chief Engineer, who having convinced Lysander to remove his helmet (Triggering Elyssa's programming, and setting her trying to kill him) then contacted his client. And that's kind of the twist in this tale. Their client is goes by the name of Lord Juno. And he comes from Earth.

Only he's a dinosaur. A fully sentient, English speaking dinosaur.



Now, I'm reading between the lines here, but I always interpreted these events as follows...

Lord Juro is part of a sentient race of Dinosaurs who fled Earth before whatever ice age/meteor strike/catastrophe actually brought about extinction. Far off into the future his race employs Gene-Corps to create them a human subject to allow them to settle some age old feud with the race which replaced them at the top of the food chain of the planet they once called home. Bloodseed is that human subject.

It's honestly hard to say what the actual plan was, though. For all we know Bloodseed may have been returned to the modern day Marvel Universe? Maybe Elyssa would have killed Lysander and been the Bloodseed to travel? Maybe there would have been some explanation as to what that giant glove thing Bloodseed is wearing on the cover of #2 actually was?


Is that glove? Or is it his actual hand? I've never really been sure of that.

Sadly, we never actually got a finite answer to any of those. You see, while I get the feeling that there was actually quite a long planned out story for Bloodseed, and while it was initially planned as a four issue limited series, it was eventually cut down to just 2 issues and a sort of Prologue tale in Marvel Frontier Comics Special. This was the tail end days of Marvel UK, just before the US office closed it down. The promised second series never came to pass.

But Bloodseed remains a character and a series which still holds a certain amount of interest for me. Compared to Liam Sharp's later work the artwork this does seem very rough and ready, but I do see certain early roots of later style in play here. And conceptually I do believe there was a decent story being taken through its paces here. It's just a great shame that we never got to see how it would have panned out.

'B' could also have stood for:

The Battletide The demonic gestalt entity, powered by the souls of fallen warriors, which tore its way through the universe. See mini series Battletide and Battletide II.

The Bane The big, bad, adversary/adversaries of the Knights of Pendragon and nemesis of the Green Knight.

The Bacillicons Digital analogues of human mercenaries brought into play to hunt down and kill Digitek.

It Came From Darkmoor's Marvel UK A to Z : A is for...

Welcome to the first of It Came from Darkmoor's Marvel UK A to Z columns. The intention of this column is to spotlight a few of the more obscure Marvel UK characters - the kind who are probably less likely to come up in conversation or whose overall contribution to Marvel UK has not yet been acknowledged by this Blog.

We begin, as is frankly logical, with the letter A. And in my alphabetical world...

A is for APESLAYER!

Let's go back to 1975, a year before Captain Britain becomes the first truly acknowledged UK scribed new Marvel material. This was the 70s and Planet of the Apes was huge, turning into a global fan phenomenon which inevitably sparked a licensing deal in the USA between Marvel and the studio for a Planet of the Apes comic. It was a Black and White comic, which was later reprinted in colour, and ran to 29 issues between 1974 and 1977, adapting the movies and also adding some new material.

At roughly the same time Planet of the Apes weekly began reprinting these stories in the UK (It should be pointed out that the standard format for Comics in the UK is, and has always been, weekly. Especially in the 70s the expectation for weekly content was a given. So don't you go telling ME DC were doing something new with 52! ;D). But of course, reprinting material weekly, when it was being originated monthly, threw out a bit of a problem.

And so it was that in March 1975, with #23, a new story set in the the Planet of the Apes universe began, featuring a new human character called APESLAYER.



The Plot and Concept of this new story is attributed to Marvel Legend Roy Thomas, with pencils attributed to Neal Adams and later to Howard Chaykin. With the script attributed to Gerry Conway.


Apeslayer was very much part of a world where Apes ruled, where he had been brought up a human slave, forced to fight in arenas for the amusement of the simian rulers of Earth, only to later free himself and make it his mission to wage war on his oppressors...

Pause there a moment. Does any of this sound a little familiar? In fact a little like another Roy Thomas concept from the 70s. In fact, does Apeslayer himself bear a certain physical similarity to Roy Thomas' Killraven - "Warrior of the Worlds" from Amazing Adventures?



Well, there might be a reason for that. He kind of IS Killraven... Yes. To fill in during waiting for new American material, the fledgling UK arm of Marvel comics turned Killraven into Apeslayer, to use as part of their Planet of the Apes series. And pretty much the only changes between the two were purely cosmetic - changing the length of Apeslayer's hair, removing Killraven's headband and armlets, changing Martians for Apes, and changing a couple of names here and there to make things work.

Seriously. These Killraven pages were two which I scanned for use in a forum thread on Paul Cornell's Wisdom series a couple of years back (Which features a young Killraven and a his Mother Maureen Raven - she, in fact, appeared there as one of the original members of MI13). Click to enlarge:


And here are their equivalent pages from Planet of the Apes' Apeslayer story (Again Click to enlarge):


Jonathan 'Killraven' Raven becomes Jonathan 'Apselayer' Dozer, Maureen Raven becomes Maureen Dozer...

Bizarre, isn't it? And the length of Apeslayer's hair does not actually match between Covers and the actual story. All very strange. It is exactly the same story, with the barest of changes made. Notice that some supporting cast members do not even get their name change, they remain the same - Ann Carver remains Anne Carver. Why the decision was made to bring this one under the Planet of the Apes license is certainly a curious one. To my knowledge Killraven had not been reprinted in the UK at that time, so maybe the editors thought that nobody would notice the similarities. It certainly raised a few eyebrows amongst UK readers, a few years back, when Marvel printed an Essential Killraven volume - to find themselves greeted by a rather unusual feeling of deja vu...

As far as likelihood of an Apeslayer revival goes? Not likely. He'll be covered under the Planet of the Apes license. Should anybody ever pick that up again by rights they could use him. But I doubt we'll see that happening any time soon.

For those wanting to read more of Marvel UK's Planet of the Apes title they are actually available online, in pdf format, through Hunter's Planet of the Apes Archive - pota.goatley.com/marvel_uk which you may find worth a visit.


'A' could also have stood for:

The Anti-Being: Chaos Bringing enemy of Dark Angel and Death's Head II, and one giant mass of negative energy.

Afrikaa: African based Black Axe and Black Panther ally, powered by the Heart of Africa.

Abslom Daak - Dalek Slayer: Doctor Who character, who's purpose in life should be rather clear from his title.

Random Misc #1

Knights of Pendragon and X-Men Forever speculation.

You may remember a short while back (March to be precise) I mentioned that Panini Comics would be putting out a first trade volume of the Abnett/Tomlinson/Erskine new age-eco-Arthurian epic, Knights of Pendragon. This is a particular favourite series of mine, and one which I feel was long overdue a collection. It was, I believe, in part the quality output of books such as KoP which actually resulted in Marvel UK being given an imprint of its own.

I have now found the ISBN for the volume itself and it is now available to pre-order from Amazon, with the provisional release date of 8th of October 2009 ( ISBN-10: 1846534313 ). Of course, please remember that this date IS only provisional (Let us not forget the delays over Panini's Captain Britain Vol 3) but anybody who might wish to reserve their copy - and it would be well worth your while - now you can.

While we're still on the subject of Panini during the process of my reserving a copy of the aforementioned volume I also noticed that there is a pre-order page for a 4th Panini Captain Britain volume, subtitled "The Siege of Camelot" ( ISBN-10: 184653433X ). This volume appears to continue directly from vol 3, completing reprints of the Black Knight and Captain Britain stories from the UK Hulk Comicand onwards into the Dave Thorpe, Alan Moore and Alan Davis stories - debuting The Fury. It certainly appears that, and the rumours I have been hearing so far this year seem to support this, that regardless of Marvel's own Captain Britain Omnibus Panini intend to continue printing all of Cap's pre-Excalibur appearances, up until completion. Great respect to them, if this is the case.

Still on a Captain Britain related theme several regular readers have mailed me over the last few weeks with regards to the poster on the right here (Click to Enlarge). It was released by Marvel to coincide with the start of Chris Claremont and Tom Grummett's X-Men Forever.

For those unaware of the series, X-Men Forever is basically a fortnightly (That Bi-Weekly for our American readers) ongoing What If...? series, allowing Claremont to write an alternate history of the X-Men, and X-Men titles, as he would have written them had he not left the the X-Men books in 1991, after the release of (Adjectiveless) X-Men #3. At that point Claremont had been writing Uncanny X-Men, and steering the creative direction of X-Men spin-off titles foe 17 years (Utterly unthinkable in modern comics) and nobody can debate that his leaving had a heck of an effect on X-Men comics through the 1990s.

Several of you have rightly pointed out the notable presence, on this poster, of two very distinctive Marvel UK properties, namely Captain Britain & Meggan. And drawn by Jim Lee they look very impressive too - Meggan in particular:


And upon seeing their presence on this poster immediately jumped for joy at the prospect of their turning up in X-Men Forever.

Please folks, hold your horses.

I don't mean to disappoint anybody (And indeed I may be premature in doing so) but this poster is not new work. It's a re-issue of a poster Jim Lee and Scott Williams did in 1990 or 1991 of every X-Man who was on an X-Men title at that time, accompanied with the phrase "... and the BEST is yet to COME!"


Cap and Meggan appear here because at the time, in continuity, they were both part of Excalibur. As were Rachel Summers, Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde and Lockheed, who are also pictured.

This is a re-issued poster with modern colouring. It looks damned good, and as it dates from the rough point that Claremont left the X-Books, making it a good fit. At the point X-Men Forever begins these are the teams in play. But I don't think we can take it as read that this will have any indication over whether or not Cap and Meggan will appear.

I mean sure, Chris Claremont has always loved to feature Captain Britain (The character he has always gone back to since creating him in in 1976) and Meggan, wherever he logically can in his X-Writing. Something I've always been kind of grateful for. But this vision of the X-Men is a bit different. In X-Men Forever #1 we already have Kitty and Nightcrawler debating leaving Excalibur to rejoin the X-Men, having returned to New York for Magneto's funeral.

So this one may well play out very differently. I always have my fingers crossed, but you never know.

Anyway, enough of my talk.

If you wish to contact me you can mail me or Tweet me at the usual places (Listed on the right) and feel free to drop your own comments on any of the Blog threads I start.

Until the next time...

Mark
(Sword)

Nova, Uncanny X-Men, Killpower and the shape of things to come.

Greetings once more loyal It Came From Darkmoor reader,

Yes, it's been a while. During the month of may I mostly gave over the computer to my other half, for a project of her own she was working on. Maybe at some later date I will be able to tell you more at that. But for now just understand that May was a month away from the site, which as it happened also tied in with a heck of a lot of other things on my plate. I continued to post in Twitter and elsewhere online, especially around the unfortunate cancellation of Captain Britain & MI13, all the same.

A great thank you to those of you who sent Birthday wishes to me at the start of June. In the past few weeks I have experienced turning 30, finding a new house and arranging a mortgage, on top of starting at a new gym and a build-up of work from my employers too. I've meant to jump in with an update sooner, but time has not been on my side. Further on in this bulletin (So please keep reading to the end)I'll be detailing just where I'm going to be going from here, in order to get back on track. I think you'll like it.

But in the meantime Marvel UK properties have continued to pop up in modern continuity. And as always I've been watching out for them...

Starting out with Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning's Nova, which became part of the DnA devised Cosmic Crossover Event "War of Kings". But meanwhile, in May's #23 a plot which has been building in the background for a while finally came to a very significant point, as far as Marvel UK fans are concerned.

You may remember back in October I first mentioned how Death's Head II's programmer, Dr Evelyn Necker, had shown up in the pages of Nova (Who the Necker You?). We know from Abnett and Sharp's Death's Head II that some ten years into the future an Evelyn Necker was working for AIM, having created Project Minion - a cyborg designed to assimilate the greatest scientific and warrior minds from galactic history. And here we had a slightly younger Evelyn Necker working for Project PEGASUS, who just happens to also be running a personal project called 'Project Minion,' along with some 'Death's Head' cyborgs which happened to look suspiciously like the Minion Cyborg who would later become Death's Head II.

But at that point we still had never seen a finite link between Necker working for PEGASUS and her future self. Until May's #23.

To catch you up to speed, at this point Richard Rider has had the Nova force removed from him (After a falling out with a corrupted Worldmind) and discovered that as a result he is actually now dying from the damage the Nova force did to his body. He has been consulting Dr Necker about ways of keeping him alive. However, that comes to an end when Norman Osborn turns up and shuts down Project PEGASUS, seizing its resources now that he runs the replacement organization for SHIELD.

Necker though is not willing to let Richard Rider die. So she grabs what records she has, throws him into her car, and drives them to a secret laboratory, hidden below an abandoned Drive-In movie theatre. To which Richard queries if Dr Necker 'Works for SHIELD'. She replies (Click to enlarge):


And there you have it. The circle is complete. Necker HAS been working for AIM. Now whether this means that Abnett and Lanning may yet choose to try bringing back a new version of Death's Head (Always a good idea, yes?) remains to be seen. But the doorway is open, and the option is there.

Plus, this unexpected little moment:


Certainly leaves further appearances in the pages of Nova as a possibility. She's not Gamora, but I can think of worse couplings out there..

May also threw me a very unexpected curve-ball in the pages of Matt Fraction and Greg Land's Uncanny X-Men, which momentarily cheered me up during the news of Captain Britain's cancellation. This one came quite out of the blue. In Uncanny they'd been building up a storyline involving Madelyn Pryor, Cyclops's ex-wife and clone of Jean Grey, creating a 'Sisterhood' of Evil Mutants... To be honest, I wasn't really that interested. But then, in Uncanny X-Men #508, Fraction had this Sisterhood going to Japan to retrieve a body. The original British body, it seemed of one Elisabeth Braddock. A body they healed back to health, somehow, before this happened:



'Hold on a second...,' I thought,'Did that just happen?'

Yes. It did. They put Psylocke back into her real body, again.

And the cover of Uncanny #509 continued with that:



Now, I've probably mentioned before that I have certain problems with the way {Psylocke has been written over the past 15 years. Back in the early 90s Chris Claremont had British telepath (And non-mutant twin sister of Captain Britain) modified by Spiral and Mojo, and brought under the service of Marvel's Japanese ninja cult The Hand. At the end of the previous storyline, in order to escape death, the X-Men travelled through mystical gateway The Siege Perilous. Each character found themselves somewhat altered and split apart from the group as a result.

Longshot and Dazzler ended up in another dimension. Rogue ended up with Magneto in the Savage Land. Colossus ended up in England, where he believed he was a British painter. And Psylocke ended up brainwashed and physically modified into an assassin.

The actual story which detailed Psylocke's journey, by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee (In Uncany X-Men #256-258), remains one of my favourite stories of all time. The references to Captain Britain's solo series, and Betsy's past relationships with BOTH of her brothers is really well written.

But when Claremont left Uncanny things began to get a little silly.

The change was never meant to be permanent. None of the other X-Men stayed the way they'd been left. But Marvel editors and marketing men liked a ninja who fought in a swimsuit like costume. Great for 1990s Marvel Swimsuit Specials! And so it stuck...

Fabian Nicieza retconned Psylocke's body modification into a Body Swap, with a
Japanese ninja named Kwannon. The two fought, then reconciled. Kwannon even briefly joined the X-Men, as Revanche, before being killed off by a virus. Thus removing any possibility of ever putting Betsy back into her real body.

I personally hate it. Most Psylocke fans I know out there also hate it. In fact many new readers do not even realise that Betsy Braddock is English. Because she doesn't look English, and over the years writers have struggled to write her dialogue, mannerisms and personality AS English. In fact she's almost been overwritten as being Japanese on a couple of occasions.

I personally detest the Japanese body, because it's an odd contradiction. None of her personality is trained towards that culture. And the longer she stays in that form the longer all ties to her former life, as a supermodel and agent of British espionage organisation STRIKE, go unexplored. Furthermore Marvel changed her Marvel UK power-set of telepathic blasts and precognitive flashes to badly explained telekinetic powers a while back. So seeing her finally back in her real British body, as fans have been pleading for over 15 years, and using those psi powers to manifest a psychic knife, I was cock-a-hoop!

Unfortunately, Marvel have a habit of disappointing me at the moment...


Yeah. You saw that right. Betsy Psi-bladed her brains out.

(Although there was a nice little interchange between Betsy and Dazzler there, which did at least acknowledge the characters' comradeship in the X-Men 'Outback Years'. A small bonus. Very small...)

She's now found her way back into her Swimsuit Ninja body, and the British one is firmly dead again. To call it disappointing doesn't really cover it. I understand that she'll be getting part of her Psi Powers back, but what a waste. It makes the characters back history even more complicated. That's never a good thing.

Now a couple of months back I mentioned how Motormouth had turned up as an agent of MI13, in Captain Britain & MI13. Here she was:



At the time she stated that her partner, Killpower, was captured when Dracula broke into the Hussain household (Faiza 'Excalibur' Hussain's parents) while they were assigned to protect them. Well, in this month's penultimate issue #14 Killpower does indeed make an appearance. I won't show too much, as it will give away a bit of plot which shouldn't be spoiled. You should go and buy yourself a copy instead. But just to reassure those who wanted to know for sure that he was in there, here you go:



The rest I leave up to you.

Whilst we're still on the subject of CB&MI13, I'm still trying to track down the second Marvel trade of the book. The Panini one has been out for a while, but the final copy of Marvel's own version of trade in Forbidden Planet, Coventry, was swiped from my grasp by another. So I went home and placed an order with Amazon instead. Two weeks later it still hadn't shipped, and so I sent them an email to find out why. I received the following:

"Dear Mr M A Roberts,

Thank you for contacting us at Amazon.co.uk.

Please accept our apologies for this inconvenience, but "Captain Britain And MI13 Volume 2: Hell Comes To Birmingham TPB" appears to have been a surprise sellout.

When you placed your order [ORDER # BLANKED OUT], we believed we had access to more copies - we then discovered that every one of our distributors had rapidly sold out.

Major distributors have thousands of copies on order from the publisher, all
apparently awaiting the next print run. As soon as more copies become available,we'll be able to dispatch them to our customers.

We will update you once we have received an estimated arrival date from the vendor."

well, it's a bugger for me. I'll have to keep on waiting, but in a certain light is good to at least know that perhaps, in some small way, Marvel might have made enough off trade sales to wonder if they've been a bit hasty about the book. Vocal fan pressure certainly hasn't eased up any. In fact that many people posted Captain Britain & MI13 questions on for Joe Quesada on CBR's Cup of Joe that they farmed it out into a separate article: Joe Quesada Talks Captain Britain, Event Fatigue

Oh, and the big news I meant to post separately - Panini's Captain Britain vol. 3 (The Lion and the Spider) finally came out! And for those Black Knight fans this one starts reprinting those Black Knight & Captain Britain stories from Hulk Comic. And about time too. Here's an Amazon link (But remember, there ARE other retailers): ISBN-10: 1846534011 and ISBN-13: 978-1846534010

And finally, onto what comes next for It Came From Darkmoor. A few of the older features have become a bit absent recently. I'll be trying to get a Cover of the Week up each week as a bare minimum, and the 'Who the Hell is...?' profiles will return in coming months, but I'm going to try and shake things up with a couple of new odds and ends, too.

Firstly, it's now been a good ten years since I read some of the Marvel UK material I talk up on this site and elsewhere. Partly to makes sure this Blog covers all angles, and partly to keep it all fresh in my mind ( ;D ) I'll be starting to re-read a few series and posting my thoughts, issue by issue, on here where and when I get the chance. I'll probably be beginning with the imprint years, but if anybody has a request for something earlier then by all means drop me a line at theswordisdrawn@googlemail.com . It may have a bearing on my final decision if enough of you want a deeper look at one specific series.

And secondly is an idea I considered early last year, but never quite got around to. The idea was to do an A to Z of some of the more obscure Marvel UK properties - some of which hadn't been covered in any detail before on the Blog or were just obscure characters which I loved, but others probably don't remember. The intention was to broaden the showcase of characters currently visible online.

Recently I did talk with Judge Dredd Megazine's Matthew Badham, about helping him out with a Marvel UK A to Z. That project sadly did not come off, but it got me thinking about the original idea and motivated me enough to start work on it proper. Matt's a bloody nice bloke, and he says he's okay with it, so look out for this new feature in the next couple of weeks.

If there is anything else you'd like to request, then by all means do. You have my email address and I'm always interested to hear what you guys think of the site.

You can also find me on Twitter at @theswordisdrawn where I frequently whitter on about more general Comic Book topics and anything which I happen to have found quite amusing that day. Feel free to drop by.

Right, well that's it for now. It's gone midnight and my eyes are dry from fatigue and continuing hayfever irritation(Thought - Why do I always get hayfever worse, directly after it's rained? There's something not right about that.)

Hope you all enjoy your week.

Speak soon

Mark
Sword)

And now some sad news...

Well, as some of you are now probably aware (Yesterday's August solicits finally confirmed it) Captain Britain & MI13 will be coming to an end with #15 in July. A very sad event I'm sure you'll agree. Unfortunately, while the book has fought hard to establish a very dedicated fan base it hasn't raised the sales which Marvel required to keep the book alive. But luckily, writer Paul Cornell has planned for this, and explains how the book will be drawn to a natural conclusion through the next two issues and the annual, over at his Blog:

Goodbye Captain Britain

It's a greatly sad turn of events. But I would like to take this opportunity to thank Paul, Leonard Kirk and editor Nick Lowe, for what has been a greatly enjoyable book for the past year and a bit. It really did, in terms of quality, play at the same level as Marvel's bigger titles. The attention to detail, and way in which it weaved both into the Secret Invasion event and more recently Dark Reign, was at times arguably better than those main events. And while it is sad to see the cast once more slide into limbo I feel sure that this run will be remembered, for quite some time to come, as the way in which a British Marvel story SHOULD be told - and told well.

And I am sure that plenty more of you reading this will also feeling this way.

The announcement yesterday, I'm sure it won't surprise you, triggered a lot of responses from some very saddened and angry people on Twitter ) Here and across the Internet, at everywhere from
Comic Book Resources, iFanboy, Comixfan, Newsarama, to Millarworld Here and Here. Heck, at Millarworld they have even opened a Draw Off thread as a tribute to the series: Here.

A lot of people loved this book. Two months ago, due in part to fans actually spreading word of how good the book was (In spite of how little it was advertised) sales began to rise. But last month that fell by 3,000 readers. How, one might ask? I know that several of you mailed me to tell me that you'd struggled to get hold of a copy. It seems that after those false cancellation rumours in the winter a fair number of Comic Book stores lowered their orders. Despite the previous month's rise it would seem that in some case there just wasn't enough copies last month to meet demand - which may have been part of the problem.

I understand that some of you might want to murder Marvel right now ( ;D ). When you look at the sheer number of Marvel Universe titles they have cancelled or not chosen to take beyond a test mini-series in the last 3-4 years you do have to wonder how there's an actual Universe left sometimes. But I'm not a fan of sitting around feeling angry. It's a bit of a waste of time.

Take that anger and try to turn it into something more positive. If you love this book, let Marvel know. You can try emailing them, Twittering them or posting on their forum. But at the end of the day the best way you can voice your disappointment at the book's cancellation is to grab yourself a sheet of paper, and an envelope, and write Marvel a letter. That may seem old-fashioned to some, but using snail mail and writing either by hand or type shows that you're not just spamming their mailbox - your making an effort to voice your opinion.

You could send your letter to the The Editor, or The Publisher, c/o Marvel Comics, 417 5th Avenue, New York City, New York, U.S.A. .

I'm not saying that it will guarantee that Marvel will reconsider, but it will certainly help to make it clear that the book has a fanbase, and that it is vocal enough to tell them they are disappointed. How they then react is up to them. But it's certainly far better than sitting and brooding now, isn't it?

And don't forget to continue spreading the word about the book in trade. Pick up the
first trade, and preorder the second and third. Improving sales of those can only go to help, and you'll have a complete run in three pleasing volumes.

It would also be criminal if a book like this were not acknowledged in this year's Eagle Awards. For those US readers the Eagles are British Comics big fan-voted awards (They take their name from the now sadly defunct Eagle Magazine, which used to house characters like Dan Dare). Nominations for this year's awards are open until Friday (22nd May) and I would urge you all to offer some nominations:

http://eagleawards.co.uk/

Captain Britain and MI13 was very much a group effort between Paul Cornell, artist Leonard Kirk and editor Nick Lowe. Paul and Leonard both deserve nominations for their work, but if ever an editor deserved acknowledgement, for such hands on involvement with a title, Nick Lowe is that man.

I'd urge you all to nominate wisely, and get those votes in SOON.

I'm going to sign off now. Great apologies for the lack of recent blogging. I just haven't had the time to post, recently. When I do there will be fair bit of content to put up. So keep them peeled.

I'll speak to you all soon.

Mark
(Sword)

ICFD Cover of the Week - 7th April 2009

Yeah, it seems like a lifetime since I last did one of these...

This week's (Laugh all you like) cover features Motormouth, in honour of her recent return to Comics in the pages of Captain Britain & MI13, and is from Overkill #5 running back all the way to June 1992.


The cover art was done by Simon Coleby. Simon is currently doing the artwork on Wildstorm's The Authority, with fellow Marvel UKers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning. Back in the early 90s, though, he was doing artwork spells on Warheads, Death's Head II, and did the link artwork for The Incomplete Death's Head which I was talking about not so long ago.

I'm not sure if anybody else drew Motormouth with that pony tail, now that I think about it. But it's certainly an interesting take on the character. And with a focus on those MOPED boots - very useful dimension hopping footwear that they were.

Currently, as readers of the last CB&MI13 issue will know, Harley's been hospitalised, and her partner Killpower is now imprisoned by Dracula.

Which leads us to that time of the month again. No, crass jokes, please. You know what I mean.

Tomorrow is CAP WEDNESDAY.

Wednesday 8th of April (Or Thursday 9th in the UK) is when you can get your hands on a copy of Captain Britain & MI13 #12. I can't guarantee Motormouth and Killpower are in it, but it CAN guarantee it will be good. So hunt it down.

As has become tradition, you can also acquire the latest animated forum banner I've done:


here: http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/8799/issuetwelvefinal.gif

Sorry, not had time to do a proper preview of the image this month. Things have been a little bit mental.

But before I go, I'd suggest all Death's Head II fans, if you are not already, try to track down a copy of Nova #23. The ongoing story of Evelyn Necker takes an interesting twist this issue, which readers of DHII will find eerily familiar...

Right, I'm off to get some shut-eye now.

Speak soon

Mark
(Sword)

Now THAT'S a cover!

Hullo folks,

Thought this might be of interest to some of you. The cover to Captain Britain & Mi13 #14 has been doing the rounds on forums over the weekend. It was on Marvel.com, but no longer appears to be, so I cannot credit the cover artist. Great shame. This one's quite striking, I'm sure you'll agree.



Click on the image for a closer look, because that's quite a body count! Obviously that's Captain Britain in Dracula's grasp, but there's all manner of British characters piled up there - Pete Wisdom, Blade, Union Jack, Motormouth, Killpower, Micromax...

How many can you spot?

Feel free to speculate. As always, I have my theories.