Throwback Thursday
This week it’s Brian’s first meeting with Dane Whitman, the Black Knight, in the Black Knight comic strip from Marvel UK’s
Hulk Comic.
Brian is amnesiac, having leapt out of a plane due to either psychic attack from the forces of evil (according to the Black Knight strip), or mental breakdown from the strain of the clash of science and sorcery inherent in being Captain Britain (Moore’s Captain Britain strip). He’s wearing his Captain Britain costume under his raincoat (not actually obvious in these pages, it’s shown in the following issue), suggesting that he’s in his transformed state, but doesn’t seem to have his superhuman strength or agility (Merlin restores these to him near the end of the BK adventure); his staff/sceptre never displays the ability to grant him flight or generate a forcefield whilst he’s adventuring with BK, making him just a fit guy with a magic weapon, and as such a perfect companion to Dane, who is the same. Coincidence? I think not.
The Black Knight strip drew on
The Lord of the Rings and Arthurian legend for it’s backdrop, and the theme of a hero temporarily going mad and living as a hermit was common in the latter.
We get the classic super-hero first meeting where they fight each other due to a misunderstanding.
Brian practices
stand-your-ground in defence of his cave.
The Black Knight is using ye olde speech patterns, despite coming from 20th century Massachusetts; probably because he has been spending time in 12th century, possessing the body of his ancestor - very Assassin’s Creed.
Although his Marvel UK strip was published several years before the Avengers issue in which he re-teams with the Avengers to battle the Fomor (The Avengers vol 1, #255), Wikipedia places the Avengers adventure
before the UK strip, and it seems like the Avengers story was partly to explain how Dane could be in the 20th century to go adventuring with Captain Britain when his consciousness was supposedly trapped in the past inhabiting Sir Eobar Garrington.