In 1972, Marvel decided to break into the comic book market in the United Kingdom, which had its own long history and distinctive identity by that point. British publishers had been licensing Marvel stories for many years, but the characters never really caught on there, and by the early ’70s all such deals had lapsed. Seeing an opportunity, Marvel tasked Tony Isabella with setting up an imprint, known as Marvel UK, that would package existing stories in the weekly black-and-white anthology format the target audience was accustomed to. Isabella, based in New York, worked with British editor Pippa Melling, who had experience working for one of the previous license holders. The result was The Mighty World of Marvel and Spider-Man Comics Weekly, which formed the backbone of the line. Other titles were launched over the following years, but they were all merged into each other or absorbed by the two main titles due to weak sales. By 1976, it was decided that launching an original character—a London-based superhero—might revitalize the struggling imprint. Isabella and Melling had long since moved on to other projects, so it fell to Stan Lee’s brother, Larry Lieber, to oversee the creation of what would become Captain Britain.
Lieber developed Captain Britain with rookie writer Chris Claremont and seasoned artist Herb Trimpe, with input from other, more shadowy figures. (It’s not clear who designed the character’s costume.) Both Claremont and Trimpe had some familiarity with life in the UK, which is presumably why they were tapped for this particularly unglamorous assignment. They produced Captain Britain #1, which hit the stands in October 1976 and introduced the new hero in a seven-page installment, filling out the rest of the issue with reprints of Fantastic Four and Nick Fury adventures. To set this new title apart, Marvel printed as much of the issue as they could in full color. In subsequent episodes, Claremont brought in a supporting cast, intentionally following the successful Spider-Man formula while trying to lend the proceedings an Arthurian flavor. Trimpe’s artwork was perfunctory at best. Clearly a low-budget affair, Marvel UK’s first original creation got off to a rough but promising start.
Note: The following timeline depicts the Original Marvel Universe (anchored to November 1961 as the first appearance of the Fantastic Four and proceeding forward from there. See previous posts for a detailed explanation of my rationale). Some information presented on the timeline is speculative and some is based on historical accounts. See the Notes section at the end for clarifications.
Attend the tale of… The True History of Captain Britain!
January 1967 – Brian Braddock spends a couple of weeks with his parents at Braddock Manor in the English countryside before returning to college for his final term as an undergraduate. As usual, though, his enigmatic father, James Braddock, spends most of his time working in the vast computerized complex he’s built in the mansion’s basement. Brian’s mother, Elizabeth Braddock, often assists her husband in the lab, leaving Brian to ramble around the 280-year-old estate on his own. Their longtime maid, Emma Collins, is a familiar presence, though she and Brian have never been particularly close. Brian has spent much of his life in this way—a lonely, studious child with few friends—though when he was younger he at least had the company of his twin sister, Betsy Braddock, who’s spent the last four years working as a fashion model in London. He’s relieved to get back to the hustle and bustle of university life.
April 1967 – Reluctantly, Brian returns to Braddock Manor for the Easter break and starts hanging out with a local girl, Valerie Campbell. Valerie is the latest in a long line of brief, shallow relationships that Brian has pursued to satisfy his sexual urges without having to make any deep, emotional commitments. One evening, Brian stays out late with Valerie at the local pub even though he promised his parents he would help them set up a complex laboratory experiment to run overnight. When he finally drives Valerie home, she entices him into making out in the car. Brian parks on a secluded side street and disingenuously tells Valerie it’s his first time being with a woman. They have sex, and as a result, it’s quite late when Brian finally arrives at home. Entering the laboratory, Brian is horrified to discover that both his parents have been electrocuted in some kind of freak accident.
Brian is overwhelmed with guilt that he wasn’t there when his parents needed him, thinking he might have been able to prevent the tragedy from occurring. Luckily, Betsy immediately comes up from London, along with their much-older brother, the professional race car driver and businessman Jamie Braddock, and they take the lead in making all the necessary arrangements. The funeral is a low-key affair, as the reclusive Braddocks never seemed to find their place in society, caught as they were somewhere between traditionalism and modernity. Jamie convinces Emma Collins to stay on at the house to keep the place from falling into disrepair, but the computerized laboratory is locked up and abandoned. Soon after, Brian and Betsy celebrate their 21st birthday, but under the circumstances it’s a melancholy affair.
July 1967 – Betsy attends Brian’s graduation from college and spends some time with him before he heads to Northumberland for the summer. Brian has secured a coveted internship at the Darkmoor Research Centre in the Cheviot Hills, where a team of 50 scientists is working on developing a fusion reactor in hopes of providing the world a clean, renewable source of energy. There, Brian meets with Dr. Travis, whom he’ll be assisting, as well as the project’s director, Dr. Walshe. Both men are impressed with Brian’s academic record and believe he has a bright future as a scientist. Late in the month, the staff of the DRC are baffled by bizarre weather phenomena that sweep the globe, but the cause remains a mystery. England is subjected to an unprecedented heatwave, and Brian and his colleagues find themselves frequently called upon to fight wildfires in the area around the isolated complex.
August 1967 – The Darkmoor Research Centre is suddenly attacked by a huge war machine that disgorges two assault teams in full body armor. As they shoot the scientists with stun-beams and release a sedative gas, their leader identifies himself as Joshua Stragg, a.k.a. the Reaver, and announces his intent to kidnap the project personnel. Brian manages to escape and takes off on a motorcycle he finds in the parking lot, but he is quickly intercepted by the Reaver’s hovercraft, loses control of the bike, and careens off a cliff. The bike bursts into flames as it crashes to the ground, but Brian is able to drag himself away from the wreckage despite severe internal injuries. He hears a woman’s voice in his head calling to him and soon finds himself in an ancient ring of standing stones. The youthful woman appears in the sky above him alongside a stern man with a long, white beard, looking to Brian like a pair of pagan gods. They refer to the megalithic monument as “the Siege Perilous” and warn Brian that he will be judged on peril of his immortal soul. The young scientist doubts his senses as they demand that he choose between a sword embedded in one of the stones or a magic amulet draped over another. However, as the Reaver and his men arrive to finish him off, Brian lunges for the amulet, believing himself to be a scholar rather than a warrior.
Instantly, Brian is struck by a massive surge of magical energy that seems to arc down from outer space. The voice of the woman, referred to as “the Lady of the Northern Skies,” fills Brian’s mind, telling him that he will become one with the legendary knights of King Arthur’s Round Table—should be survive his first test. Brian then finds himself garbed in a form-fitting red costume with a golden lion symbol on his chest. He feels his body becoming larger and stronger as his internal injuries rapidly heal. The Reaver, realizing that he’s facing a new superhero, pulls the sword out of the stone and, in a blast of eldritch energy, is suddenly encased in golden armor like a medieval knight. The villain’s confused henchmen tackle Brian, but he easily tosses them aside. He then discovers a metal cylinder on his back which telescopes into a quarterstaff. Armed with this new weapon and unexpected fighting prowess, he defends himself from his foes. He is surprised when he refers to himself as “Captain Britain,” a name that just popped into his head.
During the ensuing half hour of brutal battle, the Reaver discovers how to fire energy blasts from his enchanted sword, which puts Captain Britain on the defensive. However, Brian soon deduces that the sword and his quarterstaff are evenly matched, and hoping that their respective magical energies might cancel each other out, he makes a risky move, using the quarterstaff to absorb one of the sword’s blasts and hurl it back at the Reaver. The resulting shock is too much for the Reaver, and he is knocked unconscious. The Lady of the Northern Skies congratulates Brian on his victory, and he agrees to take up the mantle of Captain Britain. When the police arrive on the scene, Brian reverts to his normal appearance just by touching the amulet. The Reaver and his men are placed under arrest as the Ministry of Defense takes charge of the situation at Darkmoor. The focus of Brian’s internship necessarily shifts to helping repair the equipment damaged in the assault, while at night he experiments with his new abilities as Captain Britain.
September 1967 – Brian starts working toward a graduate degree in physics at Thames University in London. He rents a room from one of his professors, Dr. Neil MacKenzie, in Seraph Mews, a quiet residential street just outside of campus, and starts frequenting a nearby pub called the Flying Finish. He quickly becomes enamored with a fellow student named Courtney Ross, who is pursuing a graduate degree in economics. Brian is irritated to find he has a romantic rival in the boorish Jacko Tanner, who makes a habit of putting him down in front of Courtney. Although Courtney seems friendly enough, Brian isn’t sure how she feels about him. In the evenings, Brian takes up fighting street crime as Captain Britain and soon becomes a media sensation. He is the first superhero to operate in the UK since the Black Knight disappeared two years ago and captures the public’s imagination as the first British one since World War II. He is inevitably compared to both wartime heroes known as the Union Jack, which Brian takes to be a great honor. He vows to uphold their proud legacy of service to queen and country.
Captain Britain foils a bank robbery near campus carried out by an armed gang whose distinctive green body armor marks them as being in the employ of the notorious female crime boss known as the Vixen. Their fight is captured on film by a BBC news crew outside. However, as the defeated bank robbers are taken into custody, Detective Chief Inspector Dai Thomas of the Metropolitan Police Criminal Investigation Department informs Captain Britain that he doesn’t take kindly to “super-vigilantes.” Despite Thomas’s antipathy, Captain Britain hangs around the bank while the police process the scene, then accompanies them back to Scotland Yard for the requisite interviews. He becomes increasingly uncomfortable as his discussion with the belligerent Thomas devolves into an interrogation, especially after he refuses to reveal his true identity. After being released, he changes back to his civilian identity and returns to campus, deciding he’d better give the police a wide berth in the future.
October 1967 – Captain Britain leaps into action as a man in a high-tech suit of black-and-gold armor calling himself Hurricane tears through the Thames University campus on a destructive rampage. Unfortunately, Brian’s inexperience in dealing with super-powered menaces puts him at a serious disadvantage, and he is knocked unconscious almost immediately by the hurricane-force winds the villain can generate around himself. When he comes to, he finds that Hurricane has left the scene and people are milling around in shock. Courtney asks Professor MacKenzie if he’s seen Brian, who vanished when the attack started, and Brian is surprised to realize that Courtney is really worried about him. Suddenly, a damaged residence hall collapses, prompting Captain Britain to carry Courtney out of harm’s way. He spends the rest of the morning helping rescue workers dig survivors out of the rubble, using his indestructible quarterstaff. Several other structures collapse as well, and the death toll is tragically high. Captain Britain vows to do whatever it takes to bring Hurricane to justice. DCI Dai Thomas soon arrives with his assistant, Detective Inspector Kate Fraser, and berates Captain Britain. Thomas is clearly irate over the thought of superheroes and supervillains turning London into a war zone, but Professor MacKenzie argues with him, pointing out that Captain Britain saved lives through his heroic efforts. The crimefighter takes the opportunity to slip off and change back into Brian Braddock. When Brian returns to the group, Courtney is overjoyed to see that he’s okay, having feared the worst. A fellow student shows them photos he’s taken of Hurricane with his Polaroid instant camera. The images of Hurricane are obscured by a strange glow, and Brian deduces that the villain’s armor must emit a form of radiation that affected the photographic chemicals. Thus, he collects several pieces of debris that Hurricane came into direct contact with.
Brian works late into the night in Professor MacKenzie’s laboratory to develop a tracking device tuned to his foe’s distinctive radioactive emissions. He then changes into Captain Britain and tracks Hurricane to a warehouse at Heathrow Airport. He immediately crashes through a window and attacks the villain with his quarterstaff. Their fight quickly spills out onto the tarmac, where Hurricane’s wrist-mounted force-blasters keep Captain Britain off balance. The hero finally finds a weak spot in his enemy’s defenses when he jabs his quarterstaff into Hurricane’s backpack, causing his force-blasters to malfunction momentarily. Before Captain Britain can really take advantage of it, though, Hurricane causes a DC-8 jet aircraft to crash just as it’s taking off and then creates a vortex that sucks the air out of the distracted hero’s lungs, rendering him unconscious once again.
Captain Britain revives a little while later to find himself in a large hangar, chained up in front of the air intake for one of the turbojet engines on a prototype supersonic transport plane. Hurricane then announces that he plans to run the engines up to full throttle, creating enough suction to pull Captain Britain into the fan blades for a spectacularly gruesome death. Hoping to stall for time, Captain Britain complements Hurricane’s genius and asks him why he uses such impressive talents for criminal purposes. Hurricane obligingly reveals that he’s a disgraced meteorologist named Albert Potter, who was fired from the London Weather Research Centre for wasting ten million pounds on a failed weather-control system. Undeterred, he initiated an unauthorized test of the technology, flying a plane into a hurricane that was raging to the southwest of the Azores. The plane was ripped apart,and his device exploded, but he somehow survived and was rescued by a passing boat two days later. Convinced that his test had been sabotaged, he went into hiding and designed his battlesuit so he could use the power of the hurricane to exact vengeance on the world. Noting that Potter believes he had somehow merged with the hurricane and absorbed its awesome power into himself, Captain Britain assumes that his foe is insane. Then, while Hurricane is starting the engines, Captain Britain manages to free one of his hands and touch his amulet, reverting to the slimmer form of Brian Braddock. In this way, he is able to slip out of his bonds. Assuming his superhero identity again, he uses his quarterstaff to break into the cockpit and throw Hurricane from the fuselage. When Hurricane retaliates with more category 5 hurricane-force winds, Captain Britain pretends to be knocked unconscious and waits for his enemy to come within reach of his quarterstaff. He then leaps up and pries Hurricane’s backpack off. Immediately, the villain’s armor shorts out, and without the cooling unit in the backpack, the tremendous heat generated by his armor roasts Potter to death. Brian is horrified, having hoped to bring him in alive, but takes comfort in the fact that Potter won’t cause any more death and destruction. Captain Britain departs after the airport security team takes charge of the situation.
November 1967 – Captain Britain’s victory over Hurricane is widely reported in the British media, and his reputation as a superhero grows. Since no other supervillains come along, Brian focuses on his schoolwork and his deepening friendship with Courtney Ross. He also makes time for a trip to Buckinghamshire to visit one of his favorite teachers from his undergraduate days, the reclusive Professor Robert Scott, who was an old friend of his father’s. Though Scott was often derided as a reactionary nutcase, Brian always enjoyed his lectures, as well as his infrequent visits to Braddock Manor. While Brian is there, the last of Scott’s beloved hunting hawks dies, a victim of air pollution. Seeing how bereft his old teacher is, Brian decides to design and build a radio-controlled mechanical hawk as a replacement.
December 1967 – After several weeks, Brian finally completes the mechanical hawk. He takes it out into the countryside to test it, changing into Captain Britain so as to really put his invention through its paces. Despite his best efforts, Captain Britain is unable to capture the hawk as it soars around the meadow. He begins to worry that he may have done his work too well, as in the wrong hands the robot bird could become a real menace. He is relieved that it will be entrusted to a harmless, retired gentleman and scholar. Brian then takes the mechanical hawk to Professor Scott’s home in Buckinghamshire and gives it to him as a Christmas present. Scott is fascinated by the robot bird and very grateful to his former student. Brian is glad to have brought some happiness into the life of a lonely old man.
Notes:
January–April 1967 – The deaths of James and Elizabeth Braddock are shown in the flashback in Captain Britain #14, with more details provided in The Daredevils #1–2. We also learn more about Brian and Betsy’s childhood in Uncanny X-Men #256.
July 1967 – A photograph of Brian and Betsy at his graduation is seen in Captain Britain v.2 #1. Brian is unaware that DRC director Dr. Walshe is a rogue construct created by the mad scientist Arnim Zola sometime after World War II, as revealed in Excalibur #36. The weather anomalies result when Dormammu holds Gaea prisoner in Doctor Strange v.2 #8–9, and Brian mentions fighting the fires in Captain Britain #8.
August 1967 – Brian begins his superhero career in Captain Britain #1 and following. It will be a few months before he learns that his saviors are the interdimensional wizard Merlyn and his daughter Roma. They have their own secret, multiversal agenda that Brian will eventually discover.
September 1967 – Thames University is the Marvel Universe equivalent of University College London, much as Empire State University is a stand-in for NYU. The Black Knight (Dane Whitman) was kidnapped by the Enchantress shortly before Defenders #4, as depicted in a flashback in that issue. She left him turned to stone, and his petrified body was taken back to the United States by Doctor Strange. During the Black Knight’s relatively brief career as a London-based crimefighter, the Vixen and her syndicate were almost certainly major foes. She’s no doubt been able to expand her operations in the years since he disappeared. Dai Thomas blames superheroes for the death of his wife. The couple was in New York City for an international police conference, which, given the flashback in Captain Britain v.2 #1, most likely happened in December 1965, during Ulik the Troll’s invasion of the city, as seen in Thor #211. The Thomases were hit by debris during Thor’s battle with Ulik, and Valerie Thomas was crushed to death without the thunder god even noticing.
October 1967 – Hurricane’s grisly defeat brings us up to Captain Britain #7.
November–December 1967 – Brian’s interactions with Professor Scott are seen in the flashbacks in Captain Britain #28, and his generosity will soon come back to haunt him.
OMU Note: Captain Britain’s final canonical appearance was in Excalibur #67.
Next Issue: The Sub-Mariner Strikes Again!
