Captain Britain was an embarrassing superhero

Spectator

6 days ago

The news that the latest Superman picture has been an enormous hit in the United States, but has been received rather more tepidly here, has been taken in many quarters to mean that there is an anti-American mood at large. Maybe this is dictated by America's choice of president and administration, which means other countries are no longer as enamoured of that quintessentially all-American superhero. Alternatively, it could of course mean, as this magazine's critic Deborah Ross has suggested, that the film simply isn't very good and that we should all stick to the 1978 Christopher Reeve picture instead.
Whatever the reason, the USA is Superhero Central, and no other English-speaking country has ever had much luck creating its own comic book superstars – perhaps because we don't have the same traditions of uplift and go-getting optimism that they do in America. There does, however, remain one little-heralded exception to this, and that is none other than Marvel's character Captain Britain. Captain Britain was introduced in 1976 as part of the company's attempt to branch out into the British market via their operation Marvel UK.
Looked at today, the character seems somewhat misguided, to say the least. He was created by the Anglo-American writer Chris Claremont and Incredible Hulk artist Herb Trippe, and his non-heroic alter ego was Brian Braddock – a Fettes-educated aristocratic layabout who is recruited by Merlin and his daughter Roma to save Britain (or Avalon, as it is quaintly known) from the evil ministrations of Morgana Le Fay. Throw in the Captain Britain Corps, Braddock's twin sister Betsy (who eventually took on the mantle of Captain Britain), and you have something that baffled comic book readers when it was launched. It never recovered, and swiftly spluttered to an end after 39 issues.
Marvel have not been known for their willingness to abandon characters, however, and Captain Britain was occasionally resurrected over the following years, with some big names involved in the process. Watchmen and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen supremo Alan Moore briefly came up with some storylines in the early 1980s – only to depart when his invoices weren't paid, a decidedly un-heroic end to his time with the company – and none other than Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant served as the character's original editor when he worked at Marvel between 1975 and 1977. He helped to anglicise dialogue and attempted to point out where characters needed to have additional clothing drawn onto them, for reasons of decency.
Although Tennant had suggested the idea of a British hero, his initial concept had been closer to an indomitable second world war fighter (somewhat like Captain America) than the rather strange concept of a man who dons a Union Jack leotard, likes to hang around the lions at Trafalgar Square, and has an oddly flirtatious relationship with his twin sister. As Tennant remarked to the New Statesman last year, the character was doomed. 'It wasn't my idea – and it was a mistake. I called up New York and said, now, it's 1976 and the National Front are huge. You've got the Stars and Stripes: the United States is a very diverse country, and there's an ideology behind your flag. Ours, there isn't. What it means to a lot of people is 'Nazi'.' Perhaps he's right. Squeamishness about the flag is a peculiarity of the British bourgeoisie. Urban middle-class parents simply weren't – and still aren't – interested in soft nationalism.
Tennant and his fellow Pet Shop Boy Chris Lowe later jokingly alluded to the character in their 2009 song 'Building a Wall', which features Lowe sarcastically joshing 'Who do you think you are, Captain Britain?' A decade and a half later, it remains clear that, while British actors such as Andrew Garfield, Christian Bale and the previous Superman Henry Cavill might excel at playing superheroes on screen, there is something embarrassing, even tawdry, about the idea of anyone seeking to create a Captain Britain. The reason why American superheroes succeed is that they can unblushingly – and unironically – cite truth, justice and the American way as their motivation. The British equivalent would probably blush and say something self-deprecating about wanting to make a difference when it counted, which is not quite the stuff of super-heroism.
Personally, what I'd like to see if ever there had to be a very English comic-book character is a tea-drinking type who, when he or she isn't fixing potholes and trying to calm traffic round the North Circular, is taking part in neighbourhood disputes and preventing Tube fare dodgers from bursting through the barriers. I'm not quite sure, though, whether the world is ready for Jenrick-Man – or whatever this character would end up being called. Still, at least they couldn't be any more of an embarrassment than the ignoble, failed Captain Britain.