Of all the Brian Braddock stories Marvel could include in an omnibus, I don't understand why this one merited inclusion.

Getting through those later issue was a real chore so it was nice to get to the two part Marvel Team-Up issues by Claremont and Bryne. The pre-Moore issues are surprisingly good, with a first look at Captain Britain alternate realities and the introduction of some pivotal characters [7/10]; except the out-of-sequence Paul Neary issue which can pretty much be skipped [3/10]. But it's the weakest of his early hits, even so: unlike Miracleman or V or Swamp Thing or Halo Jones there's no thematic depth or sense of a story with a point to it. Now, thrill to a complete collection of Captain Britain's iconic UK adventures - from questing alongside the Black Knight, to battling Jim Jaspers and the Fury to prevent Earth from becoming a crooked world! Other sections of the comic are rather generic and even mediocre (particularly the X-Men and Captain America issues in which Captain Britain appears as a guest star).The Jamie Delano run that follows it - with occasional dips into writing by Davis himself - is less proficient but more interesting in some ways, those ways mostly being that Delano lets Davis cut loose a lot more, experimenting with layouts and purely visual, lyrical passages - whatever grimness your story includes (and Delano is particularly sadistic towards Betsy Braddock), having Alan Davis on art is a way to bring in magic anyway. Not that it's difficult to outmatch Captain Britain: many a hero would have a tough time against omnipotent Mad Jim Jaspers and the unstoppable Fury, but this is also a guy who spent four issues failing to defeat a radio controlled hawk.

Claremont equips Captain Britain with a solidly traditional supporting cast - relatives, a love interest, a superhero-hating cop - and an origin involving Merlin offering a choice between the Sword Of Might and the Amulet Of Right. From a British perspective, I suppose we can see 'Captain Britain' as a noble failure and, if we were sour, as both the product and victim of American cultural colonialism. First, Moore is the guy who brings the fantasy elements present in Captain Britain together in a way that feels holistic and which sets a tone for his stories ever since. Follow the United Kingdom's greatest champion from the streets of London to the mystic realm of Otherworld!In the end it's Moore's take on Captain Britain that's stuck - a well meaning posh boy miles out of his depth in a much darker, weirder world than he realises - but it's also true that nothing in his earlier adventures contradicts that at all.

Eventually it declines into an X-men 'riff' on intolerance as the logic of Moore's world is explored to its natural limits. This is a bit of a shame but the art from the always reliable John Buscema is not at all diminished by the change.Despite more recent attempts at revival, he has not broken the barrier that would let him back into superhero eminence. Just lovely stuff, much of which was a mystery to me because of the way Marvel reprinted the stories in the early 90s. I really expected and wanted to love everything in this book, since I'd never read any of it before.

But ultimately, he doesn't know what to do with the character either, any more than anyone else did. He was a figure of intense national pride who appeared just when the generations who read 'Commando' were giving way to a more liberal generations of kids.This omnibus lives up to its name with over 1300 pages of Captain Britain material from his first appearance through his various British serials onto an X-Men Annual in 1987. Follow the United Kingdom’s greatest champion from the streets of London to the mystic realm of Otherworld! Grant Morrison subverted this with a prose horror story about Captain Gran Bretan (1986) where the magic is malign.