The Elgin library edition of Captain Britain: The Siege of Camelot hurled me back to the spring and summer of 1982. Peter Davison's popular first season as the Fifth Doctor had ended with the winter. I was completing my first year at University and American comics were very much in the ascension. Pacific was printing new work by Kirby and Grell. DC had two hugely successful team books: The New Teen Titans and The Legion, plus the Arthurian sci-fantasy Camelot 3000. Meanwhile, Marvel had Byrne's Alpha Flight; the sophisticated noirs Moon Knight and Daredevil; and the juggernaut that was the Claremont-Cockrum-Paul Smith X-Men.
But this collection begins by dipping back a few years into the experimentation of Marvel UK at the end of the 70s; the ragbag of homegrown strips published in the tv tie-in Hulk Comic Weekly ( an idea whose time may have come again?).
Captain Britain guest-stars in the Black Knight serial: a Tolkien-esque High Fantasy. No surprise in an era which saw the rise of Heavy Metal and Role Playing Games and Dragonflight on the radio. Despite its one-dimensional heroes and villains, this traditional British strip stands the test (or Tides) of Time.
Brian Braddock was then revived in Marvel Superheroes, one of the glossy-covered anthology titles of the early 80s. I've never really been a fan of the "Horse Guards costume". Maybe because it reminded me of Vindicator/Guardian; maybe because it says "England " rather than "Britain". I didn't read many of the Dave Thorpe/Davis episodes simply because I'd read most of the accompanying strips before and as a serious youth, the cartoony style didn't appeal.
However, CB migrated to The Daredevils, another anthology title reprinting, er, Frank Miller's Daredevil. Moore was also writing prose vignettes of the pulp avenger Night Raven here. These were hugely memorable, transplanting the character from The Shadow's milieu to the East Side/Wild Side of Lou Reed, Bowie and Iggy Pop.
The chilly, opiated horror of Nightraven explodes into violence and cynicism in Moore's Captain Britain. The series really foreshadows the entire Grim and Gritty Era of the 80s and 90s and much of the face-peeling imagery of DC's derivative, shlocky New 52. But it can also be read as a response to pop culture in the Thatcherite landscape of Britain. Take the derelicts in issue 8 who seem to have escaped from a James Herbert novel. Then there's the fetishisation of Sixties icons that began with Channel 4's re-runs of The Avengers and the Prisoner, expressed here in the massacre of heroes from 50s and 60s UK children's comics- Robot Archie, The Spider, The Steel Claw and Miracl-Marvelman.
The cameos by Arcade, Gyrich and Sebastian Shaw nod back to Chris Claremont's melodramatic early scripts for CB. The X-Men references are also significant because the storyline that looms largest over Moore's tenure is Days of Future Past, the dystopian world where the Sentinels exterminated virtually all of the Marvel stable. An evil mutant is also the principal threat in CB. Mad Jim Jaspers: a reality-shredding version of Terry-Thomas, whose insanity recalls Dr.Phibes, Monty Python, 1984 and Michael Moorcock And above the psychedelia, like Steranko's Dr. Doom and the Prime Mover, Merlin and his daughter play chess, just like the Brit-Thesp gods of 1981's Clash of the Titans.
Perhaps the biggest fanboy thrill for me was "Britain's first superhero team", the Special Executive. These eccentric, time-sensitive aliens were first glimpsed in Moore's Gallifrey backup strips in the early Dr. Who Monthlys. In many ways, they owed much to Douglas Adams ( Hitchhiker's was huge in the late 70s-early 80s... ) but here they were juxtaposed with body horror and brutality . Similarly, Terry Wogan presides over the annihilation of a universe in a sly satire of the Eurovision Song Contest.
The trauma of Linda, Captain UK, in the climactic battle with the implacable Fury is communicated in Brian's misunderstanding of "She's wet". Moore's use of the pathos of mundane humiliations is shocking and groundbreaking. Later writers like Grant Morrison would take that device to visceral extremes.
Alan Davis became CB's caretaker after Moore's departure, guiding Brian Braddock into his own Brit-monthly and then in Excalibur. Unfortunately here The Lion of London became more of a bumbling, "dramedy" character like the Blue Beetle. But as the ancestor of Watchmen and Swamp Thing, it's remarkable that such revolutionary super-hero material could flourish in such a dowdy corner of the Marvel Universe.
Coming soon: The Fortress of S'ahra Sharn
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1982? Wow, 30 years ago - I can't believe it.
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