REVIEWS/COMICS
CAPTAIN BRITAIN
By Alan Moore and Alan Davis (Marvel)
Readers who just discovered the writing genius
of Alan Moore from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and From
Hell might want to dip into this reprint of his earliest superhero stories
circa 1982. Captain Britain is Marvel UK's version of Captain America, but
in the hands of Moore, these stories were preludes to his revisionism of
the superhero mythology in Miracleman, Swamp Thing and Watchmen.
This is the first time Moore's Captain Britain
is seeing print in a collected format. The revived interest in these stories
is due to the current trend for nostalgia in the American comic book industry.
A recent book on another Moore character, Miracleman reveals the connection
between the latter and Captain Britain as both Moore and artist Alan
Davis worked on both characters in the early 1980s. A lot of the groundbreaking
revisionist material Moore pioneered in Miracleman was previewed in Captain
Britain, which makes the good captain an interesting historical precedence
to comic books buffs.
So how good a read is Captain Britain twenty years
on? Jolly fun, as the Brits would say. All the Moore trademarks are there,
albeit in a less polished manner. Like what he did with Swamp Thing, Moore
was able to inherit existing storylines from previous writers to turn things
around for the bizarre. Incorporating the Arthurian myth of magic and destiny,
Captain Britain is remade into a warrior for Merlin to avert a future that
threatens to wipe out all existence. Hitting the ground running, Moore rewrote
the hero's origins by literally stripping the character down to the basics,
ala 'The Anatomy Lesson', a Swamp Thing story in 1984. Bringing the story
of a world populated by super beings to its extreme and yet logical conclusion,
Moore gave us his first version of a London shot to hell here. In 1988,
five years after he wrote these stories, he would perfect his image of London
in hell in a chapter for Miracleman Book Three. Dante would be proud.
While reading Captain Britain for the first time
would definitely be fun for comic book fans, when this is compared to The
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or From Hell, one realizes the need for
writers to write non-superhero stories to get out of the comic book ghetto
of costume adventures. It is important to write stand-alone stories without
having to refer to decades of comic book continuity and history. Even the
Watchmen suffered from that flaw. It is not surprising then that while Frank
Miller's DK2 is selling like hot cakes in the comic shops, it is not
going to have the cross-over appeal to reach out to non-comic book readers.
The problem with Captain Britain is that it is
still juvenile 'literature', even though it is a fun read. Especially if
you can catch the X-Men references and parodies - all very insider stuff.
What saves Captain Britain from the current crop of angst-ridden and badly
written comic stories is the character's "English stiffness and jut-jawed
pompousness", courtesy of Alan Davis' art. Davis showed a good understanding
of dynamics necessary for an action story.
Even though these stories were originally serialized
in a monthly magazine, the pacing is palatable. There is also an attempt
to vary the size and arrangement of panels to jazz things up. Davis also
has a firm grasp of 'silence' in letting the urgency of the moment captured
by his art to do all the talking.
One final point of trivial: the two Alans had a
falling out over Miracleman in the mid 1980s and had never worked together
since. Captain Britain provides the opportunity for both to contribute something
for one of their earliest work.
Moore wrote an introduction to this collection
while Davis drew a new cover.
BELOW CRITICAL RADAR: FANZINES AND ALTERNATIVE
COMICS FROM 1976 TO NOW
Edited by Roger Sabin and Teal Triggs
(Slab-O-Concrete Publications/112 pages/US$17.95)
Fandom is a funny thing. The obsessive behaviour
and rantings of fans of popular culture cut across all boundaries (geographical
and gender) and demographic stats, and they have produced some of the strangest
and at times, spot-on writings about what truly makes us tick in fanzines.
Below The Critical Radar is a fairly interesting
collection of essays about zines and alternative comics since 1976. Co-edited
by Roger Sabin, author of Adult Comics: An Introduction and editor
of Punk Rock: So What?, Below Critical Radar starts off with a good premise
- that zine revolution since the late '70s is fueled by the same creative
and anarchic forces behind the alternative comics scene.
Why 1976? Underground commix have been kicking
out the jams since the counter culture days of the '60s and zines have been
around longer than that. But for Sabin and fellow editor, Teal Triggs,
that was the year punk broke in the UK, and with that explosion comes the
first punkzine in the UK, Sniffin' Glue, which was to become a template
for other zines to follow - DIY, photocopied, filled with typos, but buzzing
with energy like no others.
This reflects the rather UK-bias of the editors
(understandably, since they're Brits) because punk rock was already making
waves in America in 1975, and John Holmstrom (significantly, a punk
cartoonist) and Legs McNeil have put out the first issue of Punk
by then. There lies the weakness of Below Critical Radar. While one applauds
the attempt by the editors to put together a critical collection of essays
on the zine revolution and the alternative comics scene, the argument for
such a premise of looking at zines and alternative comics simultaneously
from this particular timeframe is just not convincing enough.
Take for example Gary Groth's (editor of
The Comics Journal) chapter on the development of alternative comics
in America. His reason for 1976 being a watershed year is the publication
of his own The Comics Journal. The latter recently celebrated its
25th anniversary with a special bummer issue filled with accolades and nostaglia.
One is tempted to take Groth's word of 1976 being the landmark year. And
yes, the trajectile from the Journal was Fantagraphics which led to the
publication of the groundbreaking Love And Rockets in 1982. Still, 1980
is much better year to mark as a turning point as the first volume of the
influential RAW anthology came out then.
The other chapters are your rather run-of-the-mill
academic style essays with not very much to offer - rather insular looks
at horror zines and comics, the development of zines and comics into cyberspace
(e-zines and online comics) and how the underground themes of zines and
alternative comics have been co-opted by the mainstream. Nothing revelationary
here.
Triggs' piece, Liberated Spaces: Identity Politics
and Anti-Consumerism held promise but fell short of explaining the aura
of 'authenticity' that is attached to zines and alternative comics. With
the Nirvanification of pop culture since the early 1990s, the lines separating
the mainstream and alternative are blurred. The Baffler (a satirical American
journal) got it right when they titled their anthology, Commodify Your Dissent.
On that count, Below Critical Radar came up short on the critical aspect.
--Lim
Cheng Tju | 
