Betsy Braddock, Captain Britain #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
BETSY BRADDOCK, CAPTAIN BRITAIN #3
“The Captain We Deserve”
Writer: Tini Howard
Artist: Vasco Georgiev
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1. The Fury as “Captain Britain”, with Morgan Le Fey behind him, and Betsy in chains, in front of a cheering crowd. Nothing very much like this happens in the issue, but it’s kind of the result that Morgan is hoping for.
PAGE 2. Brian and Meggan leave Betsy to babysit Maggie.
Considering that the Manor was moved to Cornwall in issue #1 and they’re going to see a show in London, they’re either planning to fly there in theatre clothes, or they’ve got a portal somewhere. Maybe there’s still a Krakoan gate they’re allowed to use, or maybe Brian just has something connected with Otherworld.
Brian seems to be hinting that he agrees with the criticisms that Betsy doesn’t spend enough time among actual British people instead of dealing with Otherworld stuff.
PAGES 3-4. Betsy asks her counterparts about Morgan Le Fey.
The first alt-Captain Britain to speak is Elspeth Braddock of Earth-13059. She’s the vaguely sorcery-themed one. The other is Queen Elizabeth III, the monarch of the world that Betsy visited in Excalibur vol 4 #17.
PAGE 5. Brian calls for help.
Brian seems to assume that the attacking Fury is an alternate Captain Britain, and wants Betsy to rein it in. Considering that the Corps includes swans and dinosaurs, this isn’t an unreasonable assumption.
PAGE 6. Recap and credits.
PAGES 7-11. Betsy, Brian and Meggan fight the Fury “Captain Britain”.
“Created by the notorious Mad Jim Jaspers…” The original Fury debuted in the Captain Britain story in Marvel Super-Heroes #387. “Mad Jim Jaspers” is specifically the Jim Jaspers variant from that particular Earth (Earth-238, if you care), and not the version of Jaspers that we’ve seen in Otherworld in recent years, who’s apparently some sort of amalgam or hybrid of other versions of the character.
“They have two traits. They kill super heroes. They never stop.” This is indeed the Fury’s schtick in his early appearances.
“They established … three laws…” This is another echo of the three laws of Krakoa
This, of course, is one of the Furies that Morgan Le Fey had painted in the British flag at the end of the previous issue. For some reason it seems determined to “apprehend” Brian, even though Morgan’s plan last issue was mainly about replacing Betsy as Captain Britain. Presumably there’s a reason for this plan, but it’s not terribly clear what it is. Another possibility is that the Fury is simply distracted by its outstanding original mission to kill him, since it shifts to trying to kill him.
Rather oddly, it’s Brian as Captain Avalon who seems to be doing the public superheroing here, rather than Betsy as Captain Britain. One might reasonably ask quite why they’re in these respective roles when Betsy’s main interest seems to be in Otherworld affairs.
Betsy’s parting comment to Brian seems inexplicably bitchy.
PAGE 12. Data page. Another extract from “The Reflector”, previously seen in issue #1. It’s hard to tell whether we’re supposed to understand this as a right-wing mainstream news source (the name seems to be intended to echo the centre-left Mirror newspaper) or as some sort of hard-right crackpot outlet along the lines of GB News (as the complaint about “the media’s pro-mutant spin” might suggest).
PAGES 13-16. Betsy and Rachel meet with Pete Wisdom and Faiza Hussain
News UK. Presumably meant to be some sort of cable news channel, but it’s actually the current trading name of the publisher of The Times and The Sun (the business formerly known as News International). I’m sure Marvel used to be a lot more cautious than this about using real business names.
“Attempts at a new Captain Britain project…” This is odd. The News UK reporter – who seems to be giving a fairly straight account of matters – assumes the Fury to be part of a project promoted by Reuben Brousseau. I don’t think we’ve heard anything about this before, but it would make sense for him to be pushing the idea that somebody else should be recognised by the state as its Captain Britain.
“I’m worried I made a mistake in cutting myself off from [Saturnyne].” At the end of Knights of X, when Betsy decided that she could operate independently and use Rachel’s powers to monitor the multiverse. Betsy does seem to have a point that, with hindsight, this is asking an awful lot of Rachel’s powers, while the Starlight Citadel had the resources to do the job more effectively. Of course, Rachel is also right that Saturnyne would love to bring about a situation where Betsy was forced to acknowledge her authority again.
“I noticed that in all this ‘who is the real Captain Britain’ bandying, not one of them reached for Miss Excalibur here.” This is a bit clunky – I have no real difficulty with the idea that Coven Akkaba would want someone white in the role, but we haven’t actually seen them propose anyone in particular as the “real” Captain Britain. Also, surely their issue with Betsy isn’t that she “doesn’t fit into their idea of what Captain Britain should look like” – it’s that she’s a mutant. Maybe they don’t like the idea of a woman in the role, but it’s not been presented as their major concern.
PAGES 17-20. Morgan and Reuben.
In the previous issue, Reuben seemed to be vaguely annoying Morgan, but he appeared basically loyal and competent, and simply to be passing on unwelcome but relevant feedback. And she was relying on him and his followers for magical transportation, too. For no readily apparent reason, Morgan seems to have decided that he’s no use to her at all. Are we perhaps skipping early to the conclusion… again? After all, this book hasn’t been solicited past June.
“I’d just put him in a jar with the other one and have two witchbreed to bleed like pigs.” Micromax, who was imprisoned in issue #1 and is being used as a source of mutant blood.
“Saturnyne put all the power of the Starlight Citadel into that Starlight Sword Betsy carries…” In Excalibur vol 4 #13. I’m not sure we were told that it had the entire power of the Citadel, but it was described as being “forged from its very walls”. (And if the power of the Citadel was already entirely in the sword, why were we bothered about Merlyn having control of the Citadel in Knights of X?)
“She was trying to save her own hide while she retreated from a losing war.” Er… no she wasn’t? She created it in an attempt to get Brian Braddock to be Captain Britain again. It was during the “X of Swords” crossover, but they hadn’t reached the crisis yet.
PAGES 21-23. Betsy visits Iron Man, and Morgan visits Dr Doom.
Iron Man fought Morgan Le Fey in Iron Man #150, a time travel story – which is probably why Betsy is approaching him. The Jersey City warehouse is Iron Man’s current status quo, having spent most of his fortune on buying up dangerous technology in the course of Christopher Cantwell’s run.
As for Morgan and Doom…
PAGE 24. Data page on Mongibel. This is basically a recap of how Doom acquired Morgan’s shrunken castle in Excalibur #23. The name “Mongibel” is new for Marvel, I think, but it has been applied to Morgan’s castle (or realm) in Arthurian Romance. It’s actually an alternate name for Mount Etna, which somehow managed to get worked into the mythology for a time, due to being fascinatingly exotic.
PAGE 25. Trailers.
Morgan and Iron Man have had other encounters as well- for example, iron Man 209 and the first arc of Kurt Busiek’s Avengers.
I’m finding the whole thing to be increasingly tedious–a slow buildup over Howard’s entire Krakoan-related portfolio, basically. I still don’t get why A) she’s so fixated on this theme and B) Marvel didn’t get someone more in tune with the material if they wanted to muck about with British themes/folklore/myth/history/culture/etc.
I recall the time when Faiza actually -was- dubbed Captain Britain, in that Age of Ultron story, and frankly I want to see more of an English Muslim doctor superhero wielding Excalibur, done by a writer who understands what that means.
I also recall the original Fury story, where a single Fury was unstoppable and fucking terrifying in its relentless pursuit and execution of heroes. Now there’s a whole nation of them and they’re about as scary as dry white toast.
This whole “but she’s a mutant” argument against Betsy doesn’t ring true because I don’t feel like we’ve actually -gotten- a good in-universe reason for why she’s less desirable as a Captain Britain than Brian.
(If it were up to me, I’d probably emphasize the worry that as a mutant, she might be expected to pay more loyalty to Krakoa than Britain… much like in the ’60s when Americans worried that electing Kennedy, a Catholic, would open the way to the Vatican influencing the country. Hogwash? Sure. But then the first time Betsy is forced to prioritize mutants over humans, or Krakoa over England, that fuels the fire for the nasty xenophobic nutjobs who supported Brexit.
Or maybe go further–suggest that since the CB Corps answers to a mysterious leader from another dimension, question her loyalties in that direction. Never mind when Brian did it, because bigots are hypocrites and that time didn’t count…)
Long-winded way of saying Howard fails to convincingly establish reasons for the narrative conflict against Betsy in this role, especially since she’s served in it before and was grievously wounded in the line of duty…
I don’t like to do the whole TVTropes-ass criticism of “oh now that there’s a lot of them they’re depicted as having a more balanced level with the protagonists” because for starters, a lot of those involved different circumstances: Aliens does it and the thing there is that A: the space marines have guns and B: most of them die anyway, or like Terminator 2 where the opening shows humans fighting with the same level of technology. But also those are good movies and this is maybe the most middling comic I have ever fucking read.
Feels like Tini Howard needed more time to develop her plots and characterization and just won’t get that time. The stories are becoming hurried as a result.
How better the stories would be with the proper time to develop is not all that clear.
The problem is that Tini Howard either needs more time to develop her plots and stuff and she’s not being given that time by Marvel, or she doesn’t know how to condense her stuff/write for Marvel. In the first case, that means she’d probably be better off writing for other publishers or independently… in the second, she needs to adjust to fit Marvel’s model. Because for whatever reason, they just won’t give her more than 5-10 issues at a time.
(Meanwhile, Benjamin Percy gets 2 series and no worry of premature cancellation…)
But Howard needs to go in assuming she’s only writing a mini, and write for that space, rather than expect she’s getting an open-ended book because Marvel just isn’t cooperating.
Benjamin Percy is currently cancellation-proof because perennial American superhero (even though they’re actually vigilantes ) mainstays such as Wolverine and Ghost Rider will always have hardcore fanboys (at least while those who grew up reading them are still alive , Japanese shonen/seinen manga seems to be capturing the imagination of the global demographics who in an earlier era would have otherwise become die-hard fans of American superhero comics) who will buy the books no matter who is writing them
Eh, even her Excalibur series was a chore/slog to read through (but the art was good, at least). Time to give someone else a shot at this title and concept, and see if they can do a better job (assuming there is someone who wants it).
[…] BRADDOCK: CAPTAIN BRITAIN #3. (Annotations here.) On the other […]
I usually check out the review summaries and user reviews on Comic Book Round-Up, and they tend to be fairly high for this title (7.9 critic rating and 8.0 user rating currently, although granted these are based on very small numbers of reviews).
Personally I find it readable but it rarely builds up anticipation or provides much payoff, due to the meandering nature of the narrative. And it’s full of details that don’t quite make sense.
I wonder what accounts for the difference in opinion between there and here? More curmudgeons here?
Absolutely been loving this title. The Braddock isle is now the HQ for team CB & STRIKE. The family is united & Befsy has a great team behind her… things are definitely coming to a head, the next two are going to be action packed! I wonder if we can successfully banish Le Fay & her plans for Britain. She’s been the antagonist since Excalibur #1 & I’m ready for Betsy to end her!
“I wonder what accounts for the difference in opinion between there and here? More curmudgeons here?”
Not so much as curmudgeons, but people who have a working knowledge of Excalibur and Elizabeth Braddock lore. Not every title has to be every one cup of tea. Where as Paul liked SoS, I was nonplussed about the whole affair. I think many people who want to give feedback about the title is that Howard does not have cursory knowledge of Great Britain, and considering in this age of the Internet & Wikipedia, it should not be to hard to do the slightest research. It would be like if a British writer took Captain America and wrote a book and ignored the nuances of American media and politics.
Wasn’t that a good portion of Vertigo’s output in the 1990s? Basically, the commentary came down to a reductionist, “Americans love guns! What is wrong with them? Huh?”.
If people are looking for political nuance in a mainstream superhero comic book, they might be looking in the wrong place.
I find complaints about Howard not understanding the complexity of current-day British politics amusing when referring to an American company featuring an American writer who decided to make Captain America into Hitler after Trump was elected president.
Chris V said: I find complaints about Howard not understanding the complexity of current-day British politics amusing when referring to an American company featuring an American writer who decided to make Captain America into Hitler after Trump was elected president.
In fairness, that got plenty of criticism as a pretty stupid, offensive, and reductive “political” storyline at the time, too. And Secret Empire apparently sold really poorly thanks to bad word-of-mouth.
Oh, I’m not saying you are wrong about that, Omar. The complaints against Howard are definitely warranted. I’m just not sure what people are expecting in a mainstream superhero comic touching on topical politics in another country when the publisher and one of its writers couldn’t even bother to show a nuanced understanding of their own country’s topical politics.
I only follow this series (and the previous ones) through these annotations, so given that Morgan LeFay is usually considered evil because of her opposition to King Arthur and Merlin, and given that Knights of X just portrayed Arthur and Merlin as villains, shouldn’t we be more inclined to regard her as having possibly heroic qualities? Yes, I know that she has been portrayed as a villain in past Marvel comics, but Arthur and Merlin were portrayed as heroic, so I don’t really feel that past comics have any weight here.
It feels kind of Captain Planet-y to me. “Okay, you want to chop down the rain forest and spill toxic waste over the group. Why?” “(blank stare) I don’t understand the question.”
Note that normal civilians are apparently aware of the existence of Captain Avalon and what he looks like. So etiher he did some press, or he’s done some superheroing off-panel. Which again points to the idea that Brian seems to be more invested in Britain than Betsy is.
@ Sam: Definitely not a nuanced Morgan in this story. From this very issue:
“This is the Britain I seek. Modernity in flames. Betsy Braddock and her friends helpless. I do not care to live in harmony with your mortal government. No. Anyone who rises against me must die, and I expect that they will, in droves. We do not defend the people. We defend the magic of the land of Britain, the power within!”
Also, they did the “traditionally villainous characters turns out fo be sympathetic and misjudged” thing in Knights of X with Mordred, so it’d be repetitive to do it again with Morgan.
Allan M. said: Also, they did the “traditionally villainous characters turns out to be sympathetic and misjudged” thing in Knights of X with Mordred, so it’d be repetitive to do it again with Morgan.
It’s still a bit odd in context, since Mordred has a pretty strong connection to Morgan in both Marvel continuity and in most popularized versions of Arthurian legend.
Why not just use another character entirely?
@Sam- Merlin has been portrayed very inconsistently in Marvel- sometimes as a hero, sometimes as a villain and sometimes as a Manipulative Bastard on the side of good.
It is odd, though, that Howard wrote Mordred as sympathetic considering everything he tried to do to Dane and Jacks in the Black Knight series, which came out just a few months before Knights of X. But we’ve been seeing that a lot lately. In X-Corp, Howard portrayed Selene and Mastermind sympathetically, despite their appearances in Captain America and Hellions just a few months before making it clear that they were irredeemable monsters. And we saw it just last week in the Mary Jane & Black Cat thing with S’ym- MJ and Felicia hand two powerful magic swords over to him despite not only his history of abusing Illyana as a child, corrupting Maddie, staging demon invasions of Earth and trying to sacrifice babies, but his appearances in New Mutants and Jane Foster and the Mighty Thor just a few months earlier, which had him as a total villain.
And let’s not forget Tini Howard’s No.1 “sympathy for villainy” redemption project : OG Marauders’ Malice , who was evil enough to be basically the female counterpart to the Shadow King (himself similarly rehabbed by Vita Ayala) into the XMen’s Rule 63 version of Draco Malfoy LOL
I’m sorry, but saying that Tini Howard needed more time to develop her plot is amusing at best, considering that she had 4 years, in exactly 36 issues. “Betsy Braddock” literally tells the same story that she introduced in the first arc of Excalibur. So, she had more than enough time, but she was too incompetent to get this story moving and is dragging the same plot in a tedious cycle of “monster of the week” storytelling with each issue dedicated to a stupid plan by Morgan that inevitably fails in the end and has no connection to the previous or next issue. At this point, Morgan has come up with so many conflicting plans that I’m not exactly sure what she wants. Anyway, this is simply a terrible comic book.
Finally got around to reading this. It’s shockingly mediocre. The art is mediocre, the writing is mediocre, the characters sound bizarre and out of character most of the time, I have no idea what’s going on and can’t be bothered to concentrate enough to figure it out. This is a waste of ink and paper. Can we please give up on Howard and this concept and quietly forget that any of it ever happened?
The most recent Marvel solicitations didn’t have Tini Howard’s name in them, so…
One comment I recently liked was someone compared this series to Morgan as Wile E Coyote — she tries a scheme, and every issue the Acme bomb blows up in her face