Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Could have been so much better., 26 Jun 2008
Starting with the first black & white tale from the cost cutting days of Captain Britain Weekly 24 onward. The first few stories finish off the Red Skull tale with Captain America, SHIELD and its British counterpart STRIKE - so far so good.
Then an old guy with a robot hawk gives "The Greatest Superhero of All" a good beating in a very poor tale.
Arthurian mysticism takes over as his body lies injured and his "astral form", or whatever, meets his benefactors from the first CB tales who turn out to be Merlin (yes him again) and Roma. He trades in his gimmicky quarterstaff for a Star-Sceptre, sounds a good swap.
Back on Earth he faces The Highwayman, a motorcycle thug with attitude, and his employer The Manipulator, a deposed white Southern African tyrant who wants his old land back, guest starring The Queen -honest! although if we were not told it was her you may have struggled recognising her, it was 1977 - Silver Jubilee year.
It closes with a so-so field trip to Loch Ness and then a half decent tale at the end with a Vampire/Werewolf on the prowl.
As a whole it never rises much above the average and some of the tales are pretty poor. The "awesome" star-sceptre can emit a force-field, can grow and he can use it to fly in 15 minute bursts, and it burns any evil beings that touch it. However, it's just so ungainly and certainly far less appealing than Daredevil's superbly compact, and "man-made", billy-club.
As a completist I had to have this to read the closure of the Red Skull story but apart from that there is very little to recommend it.
The format of 7 page stories did not help and neither did the Captain's inability to stop himself being beaten up by everyone he meets. It certainly does not give much time for development of the background characters who remain pretty stereotyped.
The best bits are the intros by Gary Friedrich and others, a decent full page colour poster and a reminder that you could have bought a polythene vest and two wrist bands and looked like the Captain himself for a mere 75p in those days and a special surprise gift (someone must know what that was-a mask maybe?)
Thankfully the Captain went on to better things.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Brian Braddock - American English , 15 Feb 2008
The days of 10p comics and a decent sized Curly Wurly are long since gone but for all those with a nostalgic want for when the sun actually shone in summer and Tom Baker would be Doctor Who forever then this is for you. Be warned this is not the dark and satirical Captain Britain strip that it became under Alan Moore (which incidently is when I discovered the character) but a more innocent and strangely American take on our British Superman. The oddness that would become common place in the continuity of Brian Braddock is begun here, after the conclusion of the Red Skull/Captain America storyline started in the first volume the stories herein seem to go off at a tangent. The villains seem to move from the more scientific to the mystic almost alarmingly and others are just plain wierd or pathetic (one is a feeble old man with a remote control robot hawk attacking power stations who is later beaten up by one of our heoroes school chums). In hindsight after these two volumes (and future stories) the constant 'testing' of our hero by his mentor Merlin seems almost sadistic and needlessly cruel, you do begin to wonder if he gets some kind of sexual thrill out of getting people beat up (later he became 'Merlyn' and incidently a figure in the Fouth Doctor 'Doctor Who' Marvel strips - Honest, check out 'The Iron Legion' and the Alan Moore stories -same guy!). The jar from the full colour of the last tome to the black and white of this one is a little harsh and although you realise this is to keep the authenticity of the original format it just seems cheap of Panini not to colour it. Created and written by the US staff at Marvel, the Captain sometimes speaks in an 'Imagined English' and has a habit of calling everyone from the States -'Yank' which seems a little uncalled for and even a bit racist, even more suprising considering this is when he's teamed with Captain America fighting Nazi's. The settings also are all very 'Big Ben' and 'Houses Of Parliment' and there are appearances by the PM and the Royal family (in very bad likenesses that remind me of early Viz cartoons) but all this aside if you dont expect much and just want to see the origins of this often overlooked character then give this a go. I do hope that these collections continue and include the long since out of print 'Black Knight' saga, maybe even bridge the gap up to the 'Jasper's Warp' tale currently in print by Marvel US (or even beyond right up to Excalibur....??? Pleeeeeaaasssseee....).
In conclusion - not bad. For completetists only really though, should Panini see the light and give us more of the Captain then I certainly would recommend future volumes.
However, that said, I maybe able to forgive the Red Skull a (German by origin) calling football - soccer, but not my protector of the British Isles!!!
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by Herb Trimpe
by Chris Claremont
by Alan Moore
by Paul Cornell
