PopSyndicate.com

Call me weird, but I love British superheroes. Maybe it’s the anglophile in me. My favorite has always been Union Jack ever since the Stern/Byrne run on Captain America where they introduced Joey Chapman as the new U.J., and then later in the Rieber/Cassaday limited series. He’s just awesome. But running a very close second is Captain Britain, who I also first saw in Captain America, when they teamed up to fight Modred. Many years later, I read the actual issues of the Marvel UK Captain Britain series collected in trades, first by Jamie Delano and Alan Davis, then finally they released uber-writer Alan Moore’s work on the same character, also with Davis. He was a hero of great power, mystical origins and absolutely bizarre adventures. Now, I haven’t really been into Excalibur so I’m not entirely sure what he’s been up to lately, but when I saw that he was going to have his name in the title of a comic again, I knew I was going to pick it up, and that’s where we come in here with Captain Britain and MI-13 #1.

This is a massive tie-in to the whole Marvel Secret Invasion storyline, but this one has a decidedly different take on the whole affair. This isn’t a bunch of superheroes beating up other superheroes because the one thinks the other is a Skrull. This is an out-and-out war. And the Brits and their heroes are pulling out all the stops. But first, the issue begins with a very strange prelude. Apparently, there is a Skrull living in London who has looked like John Lennon since 1963. He’s actually a prisoner of MI-13, which is apparently the most secret of organizations within the Military Intelligence section of the British government. And right before Skrull Lennon is about to be executed by the Joint Intelligence Committee Chair of Military Intelligence, the crazy-powerful mutant Pete Wisdom uses his ‘heat-knives’ to tear the Chairman in several tiny pieces because he himself was a Skrull agent. Then we cut to Captain Britain fighting wickedly badass Super Skrulls over London, and Cap is not at all afraid to use lethal force. He doesn’t like it, but he knows the score, which at one point he demonstrates by punching a Skrull’s head clean off. Eventually, we get The Black Knight, who is not British, but he lives there, and forever-young (and really hot) Spitfire, who has apparently picked up a trick from Jack Bauer in dispatching Skrulls. Once the main team of Cap, Spitfire, Skrull Lennon and Wisdom are together, they see that the main target for the Skrulls in England is The Siege Perilous, which is the source of magic for Great Britain and if the magic is destroyed, then the war is that much closer to being lost forever.

This is actually the first part of Secret Invasion’s storyline that I’ve really enjoyed. It’s gone beyond “Who Can You Trust?” to “Who’s Next?” and I like that transition. With the American superheroes, it’s still very much beating on each other and not fighting an actual threat, but overseas, they are fighting a war, as opposed to a series of battles, and they are trying to be as proactive as possible about it. Sure, you could argue that it’s easier for the Brits to fight the Skrulls because most of them look like Skrulls. But bear in mind that these are Super Skrulls, and with the imagination of writer Paul Cornell and artist Leonard Kirk, we’re getting some really awesome and fun hybrids (one is a Ghost Rider/Iceman/Angel hybrid, one is a Morbius Skrull which just makes me giggle when I think of it, and my favorite is an original Avengers hybrid), but also some really interesting ideas with good dialogue and really very good art. It’s a little sparse at times, but this is a very good first issue and I’m very much looking forward to more of the adventures of this very motley crew.

Especially the Lennon Skrull. That character is a shining example of how crazy this series can get.

Captain Britain and MI-13 #1
Written by Paul Cornell
Pencils by Leonard Kirk
Inks by Jesse Delperdang
Colors by Brian Reber
Letters by VC’s Joe Caramagna

4