Listen to the episode here.
Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.
Hello, Meggan!
Say what you will about Dai Thomas; the man is thorough.
The Crazy Gang tries so hard.
These dudes really really seem like they must be a reference to something, but we were unable to dig up a clear source.
Also how we found Kyle.
She may be the evil dictator of a crypto-Nazi dystopian Earth, but damned if Sat-Yr-Nin doesn’t have great hair.
It’s kind of charming how petty Brian gets when he’s feeling self-righteous.
Sidney Crumb is ill.
Aw, man.
I’m’a let you finish, X-Men, but this is the best team in the Marvel Universe.
Captain Britain is a superhero comic that is also an extended metaphor that is also a superhero comic.
One more Technet group shot, just because.
Brian Braddock summed up in a single panel.
The Cherubim. Don’t get too attached–they’re super doomed.
Okay, then.
Captain U.K. and her therapy mullet.
Meanwhile at Stately Braddock Manor…
The real superpower is adherence to narrow beauty standards, but flight is also pretty cool.
This sequence really needs to be set to the Benny Hill theme.
Oldest trap in the book.
MORE TECHNET! It’s Technet Christmas!
There’s probably a universe where Captain Britain is in fact a girl gang, and that’s the universe where I want to live.
Fridging summed up in a single panel.
Remember that time the protagonist, a superhero, straight-up smashed a dude’s head in with a boulder? Because that definitely happened in this comic.
Don’t quit your day job, kid.
Hardboiled gangster Meggan is the goddamn best.
No, seriously, there should be a whole comic that’s just about the two of them doing this.
That RICK sound effect, tho.
OH, HI.
And they all lived happily ever after, but not really, because that doesn’t make for a very interesting ongoing series.
NEXT EPISODE: Genosha is for lovers!
LINKS & FURTHER READING:
- The original Women In Refrigerators website
- For the first half of our coverage of the Captain Britain solo series, listen to Episode 97 – The Crooked World.
- For additional Captain Britain discussion, we highly recommend Episode 39 of Journey Into Misery!
- In Episode 89 – Giant-Size Special #3, Elle Collins stopped by with some casting suggestions for Technet (You can find a written list–and photos–in the visual companion to that episode.)
It’s funny seeing these in colour, as I only knew them in the original black and white! 🙂
Incidentally, the gangsters Meggan confronts, “McShane” and “Bobbie” are visually very much based on, and named after, the owners of “AKA Books and Comics” one of Glasgow’s best comic shops of the 1980’s; John McShane and Bobbie (whose surname I never knew). It was a great place in the Virginia Galleries just off Argyle Street in the City Centre. Grant Morrison was a customer, and it some amazing signings too, with Alan Davis (obviously) being fairly regular as was Morrison and Steve Yeowell… I remember they did a signing of “Zenith” and Morrison was very excited about his new project; “The Doom Patrol”. 🙂
AKA was also the place I bought my first piece of comic art; The splash page of New Mutants Annual #3 (for a price which seems ridiculous now, even nearly thirty years later)
Ahhhh, nostalgia….. 😉
Man, I wish these were more readily available in the US. I really want to read them. When Excalibur made Captain Britain so central to the story and it was clear that there was a lot of history there, I always craved his back story. Finding out part of it came from Alan Moore was kind of amazing, too….but it’s interesting to see Davis honing his craft right before your eyes, here.
The Cherubim are not ALL super-doomed. Only those bird-beaked, insect-winged ones. The others will turn up again in the Davis-Davis Excalibur run.
That shot of Captain Britain as gangster should definitely be voiced by Stephen Lacey of “The Fantasticast” and sprinkled with his trademark “see?”
Brian seems to have a consistent hot button in crowded houses. It holds through the Davis-Davis Excalibur run, where it will be what precipitates the long-coming throwdown between him and Nightcrawler that resolves the romantic triangle question. It’s also there at the beginning, when a hungover Brian laments that Kurt is bouncing around training on the floor above him. “Have mercy, Nightcrawler. Not everyone shares your penchant for crack of dawn acrobatics.” (paraphrased)
Wizardru: the run discussed in this week’s episode was recently added to Marvel Unlimited, so if you want to read them that is a good way to get them!
Unrelatedly, some of the secondary characters here are so distinctive I am sure they must be based off real people, but I don’t know who because I am not clued in enough to british culture. Is agent matthew/gabriel a reference to peter gabriel? Then who is agent micheal? Dai Thomas is so remenicent of Gene Hunt from Life on Mars that I can’t help thinking there must be an older character they are both based on.
The Dai Thomas and Gene Hunt inspectors are probably both drawn from Detective Inspector Jack Regan from the 70’s cop show ‘The Sweeney’.
Agreed, with Regan being the quintessential 1970’s copper, with perhaps a touch of Charlie Barlow from the BBC’s Z-Cars/Softly, Softly/Barlow at Large.
Thanks! It was so weird thinking that I was seeing echos of a show that didn’t exist yet in these comics. It made me wonder if I was travelling in time… or if my whole world was just a dream.
Re: Women in Refrigerators, Alexandra DeWitt was killed by Major Force who…. Well, Major Force also kills Arisia and is hinted to have done some horrible, horrible things to her too, mostly off panel. There aren’t a lot of things in comics that can trigger full body shivers but Major Force absolutely can because everything about him in Green Lantern is horrible and terrifying and just… gross.