Rue Britainnia

Yay! Slightly damaged merchandise! Strange has been selling slightly damaged (fringed spines slightly dog-eared covers) and previously read comic trades.

And now I will review them. My segue ways need work.

Wolverine: Blood Hungry

This is a little easy to miss book for a number of reasons:
1) There are already tons of Wolverine books out there so this one is easy to miss.
2) It never really made much of an impression on readers and the only thing really worth noting for continuity freaks is the introduction of the forgotten villain Cyber.
3) It was originally published in the late eighties in the anthology Marvel Comics Presents, a book which wasn't really known for it's quality stories.

Still, I'm glad that they published this little forgotten story because it is a fun and quirky story featuring Peter David (Hulk, Spider-Man, countless Star Trek novels) and Sam Keith (The MAXX, Four Women, Zero Girl) before they hit it big. The art's somewhat ugly and the story uses the oldest Wolverine cliche of all (Wolverine confronts an old friend/enemy from his past who tries to kill him), but otherwise the story is fun and the book is cheap.

Wolverine, who is in the criminally run nation of Madripoor hanging out with his oddly-named girlfriend/gangster Tyger Tiger, catches wind of a familiar sent that frightens sends chills up his spine. When Tyger asks Wolverine to spy on her competition, one General Coy, only to find that yet another of Wolverine's old nemeses is there on business. And he happens to be the only one Wolverine's afraid of.

Much of this story takes place in a weird quasi-flashback where Wolverine remembers Cyber through a Freudian metaphorical dream in which Wolverine is a high school student and Cyber is the gym coach who takes his gal. Sam Keith's creepy yet slightly cartoony art is more suited to this part of the story more than the lackluster fight scenes near the beginning and in the climax. Keith's art is more acquired to his surreal thrillers rather than super-hero comics, but he still does a good job here. I mentioned that the art is ugly, which it is, but it is an appropriate and well-crafted kind of ugly. Still the subpar coloring doesn't make it look as good as his later work.

For those who have read the MAXX (or have seen the series), they'd know that Sam Keith can handle weird dreams and surreal situations, which makes him well-suited to the hallucinations in the book, but it probably would have been better if he handled that aspect and some other artist did the reality aspect of the book. As I said the fights are pretty weak, but the dreams look great. The visuals are both humourous and creepy, such as Wolverine being sliced to pieces by Cyber, and the exaggerated style is well suited to this aspect of the book.

Still, the real strength of the book is David's writing, who manages to take a very generic Wolverine story and make it clever and funny. Cyber is a generic looking and acting villain, but David gives him all the best dialogue in the book (General Coy: "Greetings. I am Coy." Cyber: "I myself am painfully shy.") and is charming enough to be interesting. There is also an amusing series of scenes in which General Coy and Tyger Tiger are discussing how to deal with the whole Cyber debacle. They eventually hammer out a deal in which they don't kill each other and decide to blame aliens for what may be interpreted as weakness on their parts.

While it isn't the most noteworthy Wolverine comic out there but it is a fun short and relatively cheap read.

3 out of 5 Stars

Captain Britain

Like the previous book, this one is also a relatively easy to miss trade featuring two popular creators before they hit it big: Alan Moore (Watchmen, Swamp Thing, Promethea, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and Alan Davis (X-Men). It's hardly surprising that this book is relatively forgotten despite being Alan Moore's only book for Marvel. This is because the book was originally published exclusively in the UK and Captain Britain has never been a popular character in any country.

Captain Britain begins with the Captain trapped in an alternate universe where super-heroes are hunted down by the government. Being the last hero on the planet, the Captain's plans are to fight the power, but when he has to face the Fury ("It kills super-heroes") and its omnipotent creator, the Captain just wants to run before he's killed. Will he survive? Uh... no. No, he won't.

Alan Davis art isn't as strong as it is later in his career but he does a decent job, especially with the weird goofy alien stuff, the reality-warping stuff and the Fury (who is a really creepy villain), but he really isn't my cup of tea in this book. Good stuff but far from the top of his game.

Same goes for Alan Moore, who tells a good story, but one full of holes. First of all, the book only collects the stories more has worked on, so when the book begins it is clearly in the middle of a storyline and who the characters are is sort of unclear. Then there is the introduction of the villain Arcade who shows up to promise to help one of the villains kill Cap bur then never shows up again. I don't know if they left a non-Alan Moore issue out that explains what happens with that story, but it seems like a plot thread that goes no where. The book also moves ahead to several months in the future in a really jarring fashion which kind of bugs me.

Still Alan Moore adds some humour to the book, which is already fairly silly in principle. One scene has Captain Britain fighting an alternate universe-version of himself (Captain Englande) who asks if he knows what he's getting into. Britain responds: "Of course I know what I'm getting into. I'm in a parallel universe fighting an alternate version of myself alongside a group of parahuman mercenaries who want me to help the wrongly accused majestrix of... Do you ever get through a sentence and find yourself unable to believe your actually saying it?" Englande answers no and beats Britain with a stick.

The villains Jim Jaspers and the Fury are actually rather scary bad guys, which is hard to do in comics. Both are seemingly unkillable, but at the same time, they are a lot more competant and dangerous than the usual lumbering unbeatable forces found in comics. In fact when the two villains battle eachother in the climax, it is a battle that ends up spanning space, time and reality, making for a strange epic battle.

Still the book doesn't really add much to the super-hero genre and its easy to see why this is Alan Moore's more forgotten work (with the exception that it named the Marvel universe Earth 616, which is a term still used by fans today). Still I like the idea of Captain Britain from countless alternate universe (such as Captain Empire, Kommandant Englander, and Captain Airstrip-One) , but a lot of this stuff feels like a warm up for similar ideas that Alan Moore accomplishes better in his later works. Still it is well worth picking up for Alan Moore fans who are looking for some of his more obscure work.

Three out of Five Stars