British Update: Festival of Britain! First ‘New’ Captain Britain in Marvel Super-Heroes Monthly
*Marvel UK: Following his original 39 issue weekly run and his stint as a perennial guest of the Black Knight in Hulk Weekly, the good Captain was brought back from limbo in 1981 by Dave Thorpe and Alan Davis, the latter of whom redesigned Captain Britain for his ‘second chance’. Davis gave the Captain the Union Jack inspired outfit he wears today, and replaced CB’s lithe physique with a hyper-muscularity based on the comic-strip hero Garth, an exaggerated superhuman ideal. The political analogies by writer Thorpe proved unpalatable to Marvel UK management, and he was replaced by then-neophyte Alan Moore, whom the powers-that-be thought might be less controversial (Good luck with that…). This run introduced the Crazy Gang, Opal Luna Saturnyne, Gentleman Jim Jaspers and other characters who would prove instrumental to the Captain’s legend. We have a complete run of the Captain Britain issues of Marvel Super-Heroes Monthly, commencing with the new CB’s debut in #377 (VG £15), through to #388, after which the strip moved into the Daredevils anthology. Also pictured is #387 (FN £15), the first Alan Moore-scripted issue.