Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
BETSY BRADDOCK: CAPTAIN BRITAIN #2
“Two Captains, One Country”
Writer: Tini Howard
Artist: Vasco Georgiev
Colourist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1. Captain Britain and Captain Carter fight the Furies.
PAGES 2-4. The Captain Britain Corps repel Morgan Le Fey and her Furies.
This continues directly from the end of issue #1. Basically, Morgan’s plan is to find her own, more pliable Captain Britain and use her as a vehicle to promote her own vision of Britain. Last issue, she tried recruiting Captain Pretani of Earth-5411 who, being a member of the Captain Britain Corps, had no interest whatsoever.
Morgan presumably retreats, not because the Furies aren’t capable of doing serious damage to the Corps – they evidently are – but because this fight isn’t achieving her wider goal, which is to find a stooge. We’ll see later that the Furies are unimpressed by her priorities.
Lizzie Braddock of Earth-76. Earth-76 gets a number here for the first time. It’s the setting of the 2022 miniseries Captain Carter by Jamie McKelvie, Marika Cresta and Erick Arciniega. For present purposes, suffice to say that it’s the Steve Rogers story of a World War II national hero being revived from suspended animation in the present day, but with Peggy Carter in the Steve Rogers role, and with Britain rather than America.
Lizzie Braddock is a major supporting character in Captain Britain. As stated here, she does indeed work for S.T.R.I.K.E., and she is telekinetic. In the original series, she expresses doubts about whether she got her job by family connections, rather than it being stated outright, and other characters certainly express that view.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits.
PAGE 6. Data page. Thoughtfully, for anyone who might be motivated to go and read the original on Marvel Unlimited, this is a largely spoiler-free recap of Captain Carter, to the point where Mothermind is apparently unaware of plot developments past issue #2 (somewhat undermined by the decision to use the cover art from Captain Carter #4, which shows her on a wanted poster). The image of Lizzie comes from the cover of Captain Carter #2.
It’s not entirely clear why this particular Betsy Braddock isn’t a Captain Britain. Perhaps it would screw up the Multiverse too much if every Betsy had to be a Captain Britain and none of them were available to be just plain old regular Psylockes – but it seems to follow that there are plenty of worlds without a Captain Britain.
PAGES 7-8. Morgan Le Fey approaches Lizzie Braddock.
“Rather tired of getting snuck up on in my own home.” Referencing Captain Carter #3.
“Brian had been saying mad things for years…” The Captain Carter miniseries is vague about the wider Braddock family, but does make clear that they’re dead, and strongly implies that they were murdered. According to Lizzie in issue #2, “I lost my family a decade ago. My parents were killed. My brother Brian has been missing ever since. Explosion at our old house. Cause unknown.”
I’m fairly sure that the stuff about Brian talking about his encounters with mystical Otherworld types, and Lizzie dismissing him as mad, is all new. Lizzie’s dialogue here seems to imply that her parents were still around after Brian disappeared, which would contradict CC #2.
PAGES 9-12. Captain Britain, Rachel and Captain Carter defeat Morgan Le Fey.
Morgan escapes back to Earth through the magic ritual explained in the following data page.
PAGE 13. Data page: S.T.R.I.K.E. members Alison Double and Pete Wisdom report to Betsy on their infiltration of Coven Akkaba (which we see later in the issue). This is a little confusing since it’s a different S.T.R.I.K.E. from the one in the A-plot – the mainstream, Earth-616 version.
The Hanes Taliesin. This is a 16th century account of the life of Taliesin, who was a (genuine) 6th century Brittonic poet. The title just means “The Tale of Taliesin”. It was written by Elis Gruffydd, and forms part of his Cronicl o Wech Oesoedd, which covers the history of the world from the Garden of Eden right up to 1552.
The Hanes Telisin does indeed tell a story about Taliesin starting as a boy named Gwion Bach, who stole the gift of magic – or wisdom, in the original – from his sorceress employer Ceridwen. Taliesin is not traditionally identified with Merlin but there are certainly parallels in the story – the idea of him actually being Merlin seems to originate from Gillian Bradshaw novels, though other modern fantasy writers had presented him and Merlin as related.
“The Micro-Man.” Micromax, who was captured by Morgan last issue. The basic point here is that these magic rituals need mutant blood and Coven Akkaba don’t presently have enough of it.
PAGES 14-15. Morgan returns home.
Morgan has decided to try her luck with Captain Carter, perhaps because she doesn’t have the psychic defences and the direct experience of Morgan.
Meanwhile, Reuben warns Morgan that the Furies are warmongers who really don’t like being told to pull back. Morgan doesn’t seem especially interested in their views, but at least says she’ll keep it in mind.
Coven Akkaba killed Pete Wisdom in Excalibur #21, and he was promptly resurrected.
PAGES 16-17. Captain Britain and Captain Carter talk.
Betsy disavows any idea of representing the governmental institutions of the UK, but to the extent that she has any vision of Britishness, it seems to be a rather tourist-friendly olde worlde magicke one.
PAGES 18-23. Morgan makes Captain Carter fight Captain Britain.
Straightforward mind control angle. Betsy frees her with the good old psychic knife, a staple of the late 80s and 90s.
PAGE 24. Morgan unveils her Union Jack Furies.
Okay, these things are cool.
PAGE 25. Trailers.
Some very heavy handed exposition as Lizzie gives her family history while being attacked by Morgan..!
Rachel/Askani was in this issue too. No plot for her, though.
The “I’m Captain Britain… Get used to it!” was also too on the nose. So Betsy doesn’t stand for UK institutions. I get it. But there’s so much a writer could mine for plot if the character was allowed to… Be in Britain? Or lean into weirdness and avant garde plots ? I’d let this float off into some kind of creative indie space, as at the moment it still lacks a firm identity as it hasn’t picked on themes to engage with.
There was a time early in the new costume period when Braddock residence was believed to have been blown out, but it ended up being an illusion of some sort, IIRC. It was the result of a fight against their sentient computer, wasn’t it?
I suspect that it will turn out that Lizzie isn’t Captain Britain in this reality because Brian is, and she doesn’t know that.
In an infinite multiverse, there are an infinite variety of Betsy Braddock Captains Britain *and* an infinite variety of Brian Braddock Captains Britain, *and* an infinite number with no Captain Britain at all. There are also an infinite number of universes with Captains Britain that have never interacted with any other universe, and thus are not part of any of the (also infinite!) versions of the Captain Britain Corps.
(Personal head-canon: Whenever anyone says that anything applies to *every* universe (or the equivalent only-one-universe-and-no-others), they are lying or mistaken. It makes no logical sense for any such quality to be unique across multiverses.)
Hardly my place to speak with any authority on this matter, but I believe that from a theoretical perspective that is not a given. Infinity means uncountable, not necessarily boundaryless.
There may be an infinite number of alternate realities, but it may also be that all of them without exception has to exist within certain constraints. There is no inherent contradiction there. It might hypothetically be that an universe must conform to, say, certain physical and logical constraints such as the nature of subatomic particles, the speed of light and more generally the properties of electromagnetism and gravity before it can be an universe at all.
On the other hand, there are some constraints built into this kind of situation regardless of the hypothetical nature of the infinity of Marvel universes within their Multiverse. At the very least, universes which Morgan Le Fay can’t reach or at least learn of do not count. Nor do any which can not hypothetically provide access to some suitable Captain-Britain-to-be.
You could also take into account that pragmatically Betsy and Rachel will not even consider whether there are any alternate realities that they can’t learn of and reach themselves in a reasonable amount of time; they may exist, but they are of no practical interest for the situation at hand. You could even argue that such is the case for, say, the DC universe or the MCU universe. Or for that matter the Ultimate Universe and the realities of origin for the first Squadron Supreme and the two realities that Howard the Duck may or may not have originated in. I believe that there is actually some canon in Marvel about a Megaverse where you could find, for instance, Dreadstar’s reality (which apparently connects to Harvey and First comics beyond Marvel’s, but none of that is definitive).
Then again, it isn’t all that clear what it even means to be a Captain Britain for the purposes of this story. That is probably intentional, although it could be handled better. It is just not clear why Morgan Le Fay would pursue specifically an alternate Elizabeth Braddock. This issue rather suggests that she does not need to, and perhaps that is about to be clarified in the next few issues. It may easily be the main plot for all I know.
Luis Dantas said: Infinity means uncountable, not necessarily boundaryless.
There may be an infinite number of alternate realities, but it may also be that all of them without exception has to exist within certain constraints.
I think it was Mark Gruenwald who proposed thinking of Marvel’s multiverse as follows:
There’s the multiverse, the set of all infinite worlds that broadly adhere to the constraints of Marvel’s superhero universe and its associated side dimensions (the Negative Zone, Dormammu’s Dark Dimension, Limbo, etc.).
Then there’s the Megaverse, the set of all universes Marvel has published, including words that don’t have features broadly like those of Marvel’s superhero universes, which would pull in a lot of the “non-canon” stuff that isn’t simply an alternate of Earth-616, like the New Universe and the Ultraverse.
Finally there’s the Omniverse, which is basically every imagined or real world — ours, every company’s comics, every book, every TV show, etc.
The Marvel Handbook has occasionally given a glossary of these terms.
So by that set of definitions, there’s the inifnity of worlds that do have shared boundaries (Multiverse), and then two additional, bigger sets of infinite worlds with fewer or no consistent boundaries.
Is there a Georg Cantor scholar in the House?
In the past not all CB’s were Brian most notably Linda McQuillan, and though some CB’s were Brian eg. Nazi Rapist Brian but they were the exception; most where not. So the idea that now they should all be Betsy is a misreading of the the lore, and it never made any sense for all the none 616 captains to all of a sudden either be stripped of their power and replaced or forced to change gender. We have met alternate Brains such as AOA who were not CB so it should not be surprising that Lizzie is not their CB.
Yeah, if new universes branch off of existing universes at inflection points (which I think is how the Marvel multiverse works), then one of those points can/should be: does [insert name here] become Captain Britain? Which allows for many, many universes where [name] doesn’t become Captain Britain, making for a much more diverse CB Corps.
Thom H.: Yeah, if new universes branch off of existing universes at inflection points (which I think is how the Marvel multiverse works), then one of those points can/should be: does [insert name here] become Captain Britain? Which allows for many, many universes where [name] doesn’t become Captain Britain, making for a much more diverse CB Corps.
Come to think of it, the original concept for the Corps in the Alan Moore/Alan Davis run was entirely “different people on different timelines” than “they’re all counterparts of Brian Braddock.”
I think the first time we saw that there were multiverse variants of Brian Braddock or others in the role “variants of a single individual thing” dates to the Jamie Delano/Alan Davis stuff, where we got Sat-Yr-9 as Saturnyne’s fascist counterpart, along with Brian Bra-Dhok/Kaptain Briton, and that was for a single arc.
Was the Corps ever shown to be mostly made of Brian Braddock counterparts before Howard’s work on Excalibur and Sword of X?
The fact that the set of universes is infinite doesn’t imply that all possibilities have to be represented in them (even though several writers have got this wrong over the years).
To take a simple example: the set of even numbers is infinite. It doesn’t follow that one of them must be five.
I believe that Alan Moore was influenced by Michael Moorcock’s fictional concept of the Eternal Champion when he created the Captain Britain Corps. In Moorcock’s Multiverse, each universe has its own incarnation of the Eternal Champion, although they are different personae on each universe, they are also the same person. Although, it’s not a simple matter to address the issue with Moorcock, as some versions of the Eternal Champion seem quite distinct, while others comprise members of the Von Bek family or individuals with the initials of JC, if not outright variations upon the name of Jerry Cornelius. So, in that sense, in an infinite multiverse, one could come across multiple worlds where an incarnation of Brian Braddock or a member of the Braddock family was the incarnation of the Captain Britain Corps for his world, while also finding a multitude of worlds where a completely distinct individual became Captain Britain. However, if Moore was following the logic of Moorcock, then each incarnation of the Captain Britain Corps would be connected and, it would seem, all variations upon the same person (however, no, they would not be a Braddock or variation upon the name of Brian Braddock).
So are Captain Carter and Lizzie joining the cast? Because otherwise, this comic didn’t accomplish anything. Morgana is no closer to getting her Captain Britain. Betsy and Rachel are no closer to stopping her. It doesn’t seem good for what’s ostensibly your second issue to be so skippable.
Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain #2 follows a predictable structure that has been used for almost every issue since Excalibur: a villain scheming, Betsy and Rachel foiling her plan, the villain retreating, and a cliffhanger with the villain scheming again. While this structure may work for some readers, it can feel repetitive and formulaic.
Furthermore, Betsy comes across as an incompetent hero, as Rachel has to coach and mentor her every step of the way. This not only undermines Betsy’s character and cements Rachel’s position as the annoying “know-it-all” sidekick but also detracts from the tension and excitement of the story.
The metacommentary, which is meant to be a self-aware critique of the comic book industry, falls flat and feels repetitive. Given the low sales, antagonizing Betsy’s fans any further doesn’t feel like a smart option.
Morgan’s motivation for hating on Betsy as Captain Britain because she’s a mutant seems flimsy and inconsistent, given that she wastes all her time trying to recruit Betsy’s doppelgangers who happen to be mutants as well. This lack of coherence makes it hard to invest in Morgan as a villain.
Finally, the guest appearance of Captain Carter and Lizzie Braddock serves no purpose other than cheap fan service. It doesn’t move the story along and their characters are only brought in to be fridged, which is a far cry from their competent portrayal under Jamie McKelvie’s pen.
Overall, Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain #2 has some notable flaws that detract from the story’s potential. The fact that the standout moment in the issue involves Betsy, a character known for her psychic knife, using said psychic knife, highlights how low the bar is set for Tini Howard’s Betsy. While some readers may find it enjoyable, it falls short of its promise and fails to live up to the standards set by previous Betsy Braddock writers.
I can see the argument that Betsy’s time as Captain Britain has been focused on Fantasy Britain. It’s just – asking as an American – is the current version of Otherworld particularly British at all? When it was about Arthurian and Celtic mythology, sure. What’s British about Bug World, Vampire World, or two deserts?
@MasterMahan I completely agree with you. Although Tini Howard receives praise for expanding and developing the concept of Otherworld, I can’t help but feel that she didn’t do it justice. The Celtic Otherworld and its Gods, such as the Tuatha Danaan, the Green Knight, the Green Chapel, Tir na nÓg, and the Celtic underworld, had so much potential for exploration. Unfortunately, there were cities and places in pre-Dawn of X Otherworld that were never properly explored, and instead, we got random Bug World, Fish People World, Robot World, and Vampire World that don’t make sense in the context of Otherworld. Even worse, any “development” these new kingdoms had was limited to just one data page each.
I’ve theorized here before about how the Captain Britain Corps (CBC) basically represents certain branches of the multiverse based on what we’ve seen…
Representatives tend to come from fairly distinctive alternative worlds–hence the whole Captain Britain, Captain Airstrip-One, Captain Cymru, etc, as seen in the original strips. Alternate Britains across a wide range, basically. And each one of those represents a specific branch of the multiverse unto itself. If Captain Commonwealth or Captain Albion die, the Corps recruits another from that branch as a representative.
This is why the Corps doesn’t have 300 versions of Brian Braddock based on the 616–i.e. ones spun off by 616-level What If scenarios. They only have one or two who represent that branch, maybe more given the prominence of the 616 in the greater multiverse. But for the most part, the original Corps was more interested in diversity–a hippie world, an Al Capone world, a dinosaur world, a Nazi world. This is how we reconcile just how disparate the Corps is when we see them en masse.
But when Betsy rebooted the Corps, she did so with herself as the primary focus, so now the vast majority are just based off her, which is far more limiting in the Corps’ representation as per the multiverse.
But then again, there’s probably another branch where Brian or Jamie or someone else rebooted the Corps.
My belief is that even when all of reality goes kerfloffle, as per Secret Wars, it’s actually limited to the immediate 616 branch of the multiverse, since we’ve no reason to believe that, rumors of the Corps destruction aside, it actually stretched to Earth-Airstrip One or Earth-Saxonia, unless we actually saw those worlds represented on Battleworld.
Don’t even ask me how the worlds represented by the Spider-Verse factor in. But when you take infinity into account… 🙂
@Omar Karindu- It was Claremont’s Excalibur run that created the impression that the Captain Britain Corps consisted largely of counterparts of Brian. We saw multiple Excalibur’s that consisted of Brian, Meggan, Kurt and Kitty but not Rachel. Many Brians played a role in the plot-Hauptmann Deustchlande, Crusader X, the Judge Dredd Brian. Admittedly, we also met a few non-Brian Captains but none of them played a major role in the plot.
Of course, the alternate realities we saw in Excalibur raised questions. For example, in one of them, the team fights an Illyana who’s become corrupted by her Darkchilde side and Rachel used her telepathy to get rid of her Darkchilde side. If Rachel could do that, then why do it to our Illyana? And if Rachel tried and it didn’t work, then why did she think it would work on the evil Illyana?
Let’s face it, this is almost as bad as insisting that a character such as Mojo or Rachel is unique to the multiverse, either persisting across all dimensions or just not represented in other dimensions, when the mere existence of various What If worlds suggests otherwise.
i.e. any 616-centric story involving Inferno as a digression point will have to account for Excalibur being in New York for part of the story. Any 616-centric story involving the X-Men during Rachel’s tenure on the team at any point will have to account for her existence. Therefore… she can’t be truly unique, as there are alternate Rachels digressing from after she traveled to the past. Her trip to the “now” is firmly cemented as something which has happened, making her for all intents and purposes a resident of the current timeline, one which splits often and enthusiastically as witnessed by the Watcher.
And you can’t say that time travelers are exempt, because of the number of What Ifs that happily involve Bishop or Cable.
Now, I guess you can argue that it’s impossible to have alternate timelines splitting in the future, since the MU seems to exist on a permanent sense of “right now” which defines the future–you can have alternate future timelines based on past and present events but not based on things which haven’t happened yet in the main timeline.
(So any “What if Wolverine had failed in Days of Future Past” exists only in the hypothetical DOFP timeline(s) which exists as a result of specific action taken in the past (the Kelly assassination attempt which a time-traveling Kate tries to prevent) or present (take your pick).
So um… I guess there’s only one unique Rachel stemming from the specific DOFP timeline split from the 140-141 event, no matter how many times we might see versions of DOFP, and that’s the one who time traveled to “now” which means she’s indeed unique… UNTIL she gets locked into the 616 and thus prone to alternate reality generation.
I need a whiteboard, some markers, and some heavy alcohol.
This is why trying to say things like “I’ve killed every Sabretooth in existence” or “I’m unique to the multiverse” or “this is every Captain Britain variant who exists” is an exercise in futility.
In a discussion of real-world theoretical physics, or even hard science-fiction, it makes sense to say that infinity still has constraints.
In a shared fantasy universe created by dozens of editors and hundreds of writers over the span of almost a century — I stand by my point that *any* conceivable universe can be presented by some writer as existing.
I mean, there’s a universe which has Earth populated by sentient dinosaurs that still has a Betsy-Braddock-analogue Captain Britain! If we were trying to obey *any* sort of rational constraints, then an Earth with sentient dinosaurs wouldn’t even have a country named Britain, much less a Captain Britain or a Braddock family.
@Alexx Kay: Unless it’s an Earth conquered by Stegron and they were all human once.
By the way, the McKelvie miniseries that introduced this Captain Carter was good fun. And it seemed to actually have something to say about modern Britain.
(I guess I’m adding to the chorus of ‘why won’t they give Excalibur to a British writer?’)
Anyway, the mention of the Spider-Verse here in the comments made me think that there’s potential for a multiversal event series about the Captain Britain Corps coming into conflict with other groups infringing on what they see as their jurisdiction – the Spider-People, the Time Variance Authority… I’m sure there must be more.
They would all get mixed up in a multiversal war of attrition, losing sight of the real threat, until a group of heroes from all sides of the conflict saved everything – and there’s your new team of Exiles ready for a relaunch of the series.
My own personal understanding of the post-Secret Wars multiverse is that OtherWorld is apparently no longer meant to be just the British “Collective Unconscious” (according to Paul Cornell vow Pete Wisdom , in the Wisdom & MI-13 limited series)* , that role has now seemingly shifted to Avalon , while OtherWorld has now become the nexus of the 8th iteration of the Marvel Multiverse. The question now is , are the worlds of fairies and vampires meant to be the OG homeworlds of fairies and vampires or are they just colonies created by the gestalt composite of all of the Marvel Merlyns?
* the pocket dimension where most, if not all, of the distinct British magickal pantheons ultimately originated from (as was stated in the original HandBook to the Marvel Universe, that the deities & demons of the Marvel Earths come from the shadow realms of the astral realm of the planet , who were spawned by the godstuff from the Elder Gods massacred by Demogorge and shaped by Humanity’s collective unconsious)
Bug World, not a clue.
But vampires — there’s a lot of potential there for Britishness, seeing as the classic image of the vampire as we have come to know it (aristocratic, sexually alluring, etc.), including in Marvel comics, is basically a creation of British literature*. You absolutely could use vampires as a vehicle for an interesting examination of threads running through British culture over the last two hundred years or so.
Do I think Tini Howard is interested in doing that? Not so much, alas.
*In the broad sense: the most famous writers, Polidori, Le Fanu, and Stoker were English with an Italian father (Polidori), or Irish (Le Fanu and Stoker) — so all with some aspect of an outsider about them.
Is it time to plug again my pod w Mark Waid about continuity and my pod about Kang, including my love for Gruenwald’s Omniverse fanzine?
I liked the McKelvie series (I believe a rule for posting here is to love Gillen, McKelvie and Ewing books) but still have no great desire to read anything Howard writes.
I agree with above notion about why don’t they just let folks from the British Isles write the British characters? Has anything lately in the X Office been as good as Cornell’s stuff or that mini Grist wrote a coupke years ago now?
The STRIKE Mission Report text page is an odd bit… Do we need to know the details of how Morgan was able to teleport away? Does it have to be so complicated? She’s a sorcerer, poof, she teleports. (I’m less clear on how Rachel is popping herself and Betsy from dimension to dimension — circa the Cross Time Caper she couldn’t do that, but maybe I missed a power upgrade or something.) The only thing Morgan did in this issue that surprised me was splitting into three people.
Also Alison, “Pete and I’s mission”? Really?
I agree that one of the problems with this extended run is that it has the wrong amount of Britishness. Right now it’s just a shallow window dressing, with fox hunts, Brexits, underground druids, and diplomats wearing cloaks. Either the setting should matter or Excalibur should just be Magical X-Men, because right now it’s a millstone.
Don’t forget that Billy Braddock is/was both a member of the Captain Britain Corps *and* a multiversal Spider-Man.
I can’t decide if that’s messier or neater.
Might be a better question for the monthly thread, but have we ever seen a Spider-Versed Logan or Wolverine as Captain commonwealth or Iron Logan?
So the Furies are getting annoyed that Morgan isn’t giving them enough dakka? So I guess that’s how she gets dispatched at the end of the series then.