This Other Eden

I just returned yesterday from a school trip to Stratford Upon Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare. I took ten teens from East Ren to see Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra at the towering riverside RSC complex.

Despite the somewhat stressful responsibility in loco parentis, I was very excited by the productions and as a veteran of seven Shakespeares, my acting muscle memory was stirred. I can't remember the last time I visited a town as quaint and fantastical.

Watching the rowers, the dancers and the enormous swans on Thursday afternoon, in a town where everyone in the service industry seems to be a muscular and extravagantly whiskered Eastern European, I had a very acute sense of being in another country. In the meantime, discontent and resentment were seething in London.

In the wake of last week's general election, author Paul Cornell tweeted that he felt he had his country back. Would I could say the same. I wonder how he feels today, as the right-wing billionaires who own the UK media apportion blame for the Grenfell Tower fire on the poor and bereaved?

Coincidentally, since I bought a Target book from the actress Kirsty Miller today that prefigures the range, I first discovered Cornell's work for the 1990s Dr. Who New Adventures from Virgin Books. He was the creator of the archaeologist and adventurer Bernice Summerfield and his Who stories often weave historic, mythic and Christian imagery. Among the most celebrated of these is Human Nature, both a novel and a pair of tv episodes, which examine a Time Lord posing as a human being in the days before World War One.

Equally coincidentally, I bought a hardback graphic novel reprint of the late 80s Claremont and Davis Excalibur today also. Therefore, this feels like the right time to revisit the Captain Britain series Cornell wrote for Marvel. Last autumn, I briefly commented on volume one
 http://somefantasticplace-dougie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/dear-britain.html

Hell Comes to Birmingham blends Clive Barker and Coronation Street. Plotka, Duke of Hell, traps  Midlands residents within  a "dream corridor" where they re-enact their hearts' desires. Blade joins the team and there is a rather sweet sequence as Crusader manqué Black Knight meets Fazia's parents. There are also cameo roles for Sixties Marvel bigots, the Sons of the Serpent and the monstrous Mindless Ones. I'm not familiar with Captain Midlands, whose actions drive the story. He feels like a transplanted character from the world of Grant Morrison's Zenith and the tpb has a strong flavour of the bleakness and sadism of that title ( very much borrowed by Morrison from Moore's Marvelman). This is Excalibur viewed through the prism of 1990s horror. Yet again, however, Captain Britain is eclipsed by almost all the other characters on the team.

I felt the third volume, Vampire State, was more successful. Britain is attacked from the Moon by Count Dracula and his space faring army, reminding me of Cornell's Fifth Doctor novel, Goth Opera.

There is a plethora of Marvel Universe references: the skull of Quincy Harker from Tomb of Dracula; Sir Clive Reston from Shang-Chi; Viscountess Lilith from Midnight Sons;  Satannish, Dormammu, Mephisto, Hela and Pluto; Dark Angel, Digitek, Motormouth, Killpower and Death's Head from the Mys-Tech series of the early Nineties. In addition, Cornell's Doctor Doom is a fascinating and devilish antagonist. He is wonderfully acid with Vlad :" I'll call you the Little Prince" and manipulates Brian's wife, Meggan: " "It's just a fellow gypsy, offering you a way out".

There are also references to Purdey, Hilda Ogden, BBC2 Horror Double Bills and Fist of Fun.
Cornell ends the series with a reference to British telly and Perry and Croft with "You have been watching..." This connects with his stated vision of English culture as" tragedy right up against sitcom". He reunites Meggan and Brian and gives her the codename Gloriana but again, CB is diminished by the vampire agonies of Spitfire or the abduction of Fazia's father. While I would prefer a Captain Britain series which actually focused on the Lion of London ( and in the iconic 70s costume!) it is, nonetheless, an exciting climax to the series, viewing Excalibur through the prism of Seventies horror this time.

Coming soon: The Helm of Awe, the Eaters of Light, Dan Dare, Jack Palance and Bugs Bunny

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