Captain Britain's 40th Anniversary (Hopefully) on Marvel's Radar.

In my article from just over a week ago I was talking about how last year Comic Book Resources had asked Axel Alonso half of a question on the subject of Captain Britain's 40th Anniversary.

I say half a question, because the actual '40th Anniversary' part was the detail which they missed out.

My main concern with that was that here we have a landmark anniversary being reached this coming October, and it was just possible that Marvel Comics aren't entirely aware of that. Captain Britain Weekly was, after all, a Marvel UK title (and not an in-house title of their own). Many in the US still think of either that New Mutants Annual (which debuted 'Psylocke' to the X-Men) or the series Excalibur as being Captain Britain's debut issues.

So I decided to be a little bit cheeky and post back to that questions thread for Axel-in-Charge, on Comic Book Resources, asking directly if Marvel were aware of this landmark. I fully expected it to fall on deaf ears, of course. But my plan here was to be a little more determined and persistent about it. MY plan was to politely post the same question, each week, until it either got read out or somebody at Comic Book Resources told me to stop.

And if that happened I would obviously co-operate.

It seemed that I garnered a little bit of support from some of the other forum members, too. Several others echoed my sentiment, and also rather graciously asked this self-same question themselves.

At that point I started to wonder if we weren't perhaps pushing our luck a little.

But no. No cease and desist order (thankfully) arrived..

Instead they actually decided to pass the question on, for this past weekend's column.

CBR: Let's wrap with a question from the CBR Community. Captain Britain super-fan The Sword is Drawn asks, "This October marks the 40th anniversary of the first ever issue of Captain Britain, written by Chris Claremont and with artwork from the late Herb Trimpe. Are there any plans to mark the occasion?"

Alonso: No current plans, but that could change.

So, yes, still no plans.

But that wasn't really the point of this exercise. The intention was purely to make sure that Captain Britain's 40th Anniversary was on Axel Alonso's (and therefore hopefully Marvel Editorial in general) radar. If he hadn't heard about it before, he has now.

That's all we can ask.

So, it's out there now. We'll see if anything comes of it.

As always, I'll be keeping a watchful eye out for any further developments should those occur. Many thanks to the staff at Comic Book Resources for raising the question.