Just found out about the 1979 Marvel UK character Night Raven, who seems pretty cool.
Just found out about the 1979 Marvel UK character Night Raven, who seems pretty cool.
I don't mind Betsy having a stint as CB, except that that American writers have been so ungenerous as far as Brian has been concerned I can't help worry that he will be pushed out of the way, if not killed.
I think someone should give Hickman a copy of the Captain Britain omnibus. He'd warm up to Brian somewhere around those Alan Moore issues.
Many of the American writers are not well disposed to alpha-male heroes representing other cultures, it tends to be a thing unfortunately. Now I see that this change is to give Betsy a separate identity & codename from Kwannon to sort out that whole racial identity issue I'm suspecting that this is a permanent change, leaving Brian out in the cold. In the Betsy appreciation thread they're already talking about her being the cinematic Captain Britain, which is not something I'd be happy with before Brian has had his shot in the role.
Yeah - they did say Hickman's X-Men is what they'll be basing the MCU mutants on. I wonder if Brian will be killed off in a movie, which would be why his sister takes over. In the comics they're just sharing the mantle, but Betsy's the one getting the focus.
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Betsy became Captain Britain as part of a government plot to get Brian out of the picture and give them an agent in the field, she was not chosen by Merlyn. She took on the identity to shame Brian back to super-heroism. At the end of the story Brian realises the Captain Britain identity will always be his responsibility.
Last edited by Panic; 07-22-2019 at 08:35 AM.
I have been expecting something like this for years. Of course it doesn't matter if he is killed as Brian always gets resurrected by Merlyn who also never properly dies. I've still got hardback omnibuses of everything Captain Britain until the Excalibur years. Unless Marvel sneak into my place and steal them, I'll have to be satisfied with that.
I just have a really hard time seeing Betys as Captain Britain sticking beyond the usual mantle changes.
I mean, her identity is so entrenched in Psylocke and that iconography...
Except that's been taken by Kwannon. Really, Kwannon has copycatted everything that was uniquely Betsy's before the merge, including the name, in order to give fans of the Asian look as close a character as they could get without it being Betsy. So now Betsy has nothing to fall back on and her creative team is looking in Captain Britain's direction.
I actually don't mind Brian giving up the name (I find it a little jingoistic these days), except that (a) American writers have often given Brian the Aaron-Thor treatment, so if they make Betsy actually win battles and not be a jerk, she's going to be perceived as a lot better in the role, which would be very unfair, and (b) with the "Captain Britain" moniker it becomes easy for Betsy to replace Brian in the MCU and take centre-stage in a Jasper's Warp storyline. Which I really don't want.
But there you go, Marvel is pissing in my cornflakes these days.
Quite. My first favourite hero was the first Captain Marvel so I was unhappy to see him killed off back in the day (even despite the excellent graphic novel) and, despite being okay with the Carol Danvers version of CM I was a little disappointed to see Mar Vell thoroughly wallpapered over in the film. There was no way Marvel will ever let us old fans of CM have anything (except for the hardback reprints of course).
So over the years I've seen them do terrible things with Captain Britain, for which I blame Chris Claremont's misreading of Alan Moore's characterisation.