Gone Before Their Time: Series That Were Cancelled Too Soon

This past week, DC Comics announced it would be cancelling a group of comics, many of which barely made it six issues, leading to a good deal of head-shaking among fandom; also this week marked the sadly premature end of Secret Identities, Jay Faerber and Brian Joines's excellent super-hero title from Image (but more on that come Monday). I'm not going to talk about the pros and cons (mostly cons, I admit) of cancelling low selling titles before they get a chance to get their feet under them, because it's not a new phenomenon. What I am going to do is talk about some of my favorite comics that ended before their time. I went back and forth on what constituted "before its time"; whether it was a plot thing, where the book felt incomplete, or a number of issues thing. I settled on an admittedly arbitrary number: no comic that lasted more than twenty four issues would make this particular list. So without further ado, here are ten series that I feel should have been given more time, presented in alphabetical order.

Captain Britian and MI-13
Ran: 15 issues and 1 annual

I wrote a whole recommended reading for this series a few years ago, but when it comes to short-lived series, it's one of the ones I miss the most. Captain Britain and MI-13 was a supernatural superhero book starring a group of British characters, including Captain Britain, Spitfire, Black Knight, Blade, a new character who was named Excalibur, and my favorite British Marvel character, Pete Wisdom. Over the course of its short run, written by Paul Cornell, the team fought Skrulls, demons, and vampires, and has the distinction of being the final appearance of what I like to think of as the real Marvel Dracula, the classy cape wearing one from Tomb of Dracula. Cornell captured Wisdom's voice just right, and did interesting things with Blade and Spitfire, pairing off the two daywalkers in a way no one had thought to before. In a time before Marvel's push for diversity, Excalibur was Faiza Hussain, a British Muslim doctor, and is more than just those things, but a fully formed character in her own right. Sadly, the introduction during Marvel's Secret Invasion crossover and the tangential ties to the X-Men family of titles didn't get enough attention to the title, though Cornell was able to wrap the book up in the exciting "Vampire Nation" story. The trades for the series are sadly out of print, but with some digging you should be able to find them, or the original single issues.

Chase
Ran: (9 issues and an issue 1,000,000 as part of a crossover)

Chase is a case of unfortunately bad timing. A superhero adjacent procedural, about a government agent who dislikes superheroes but is forced to investigate and work with them, is a great pitch, but the industry wasn't quite ready for it in the late 90s. Writer D. Curtis Johnson built a hardass yet multi-dimensional character in Cameron Chase, one who had an elaborate backstory that the series only scratched the surface of. Factor in early work from now superstar J.H. Williams III and you have a book that a few years later, at the height of popularity for titles like Powers, Alias, and Gotham Central, would have gotten more attention and would have lasted a few years. Instead, we got ten issues, counting a crossover with DC One Million. Still those nine issues included Chase having to work with the Suicide Squad, investigating Batman's secret identity, and a glimpse into her father's time as a member of a 70s superhero team called The Justice Experience. Johnson and Williams were able to co-write a series of Chase shorts that appeared in various DC Secret Files issues (these sort of primer issues that gave readers backgrounds and lost stories of different major characters and teams), and Chase went on to appear in a good number of other series, including John Ostrander's Martian Manhunter and a regular spot as a supporting character in Marc Andreyko's Manhunter (both series I would have liked to last longer, but they both ran well beyond the twenty four issues limit I set for this piece). Williams even brought her back as a character in his run on Batwoman as part of the New 52. But those first issues are outstanding, and should be read even if you have no intention of following the character. DC released a trade of the series a few years back, and it should still be in print.

Crossing Midnight
Ran: 19 issues

In between epic runs on Lucifer and The Unwritten, Mike Carey wrote another series for Vertigo. Crossing Midnight was a series that mixed Japanese mythology with a more Western fairy tale aesthetic. The tale of two twins, one born just before midnight, the other just after, they each have distinct abilities that attract the attention of supernatural forces. Carey mixes in some social commentary along with the mythology, and built an interesting take on many tropes. I wish I had a chance to reread it before I wrote this up, so I could lay out more details, but time is at a premium right now, and so I might have to do a fuller "Lost Legends" piece on it in the future. Jim Fern's art is luscious and he draws some excellent monsters throughout. Carey clearly had a long game planned on this series, and the last arc, and especially the last issue, are rushed, as he knew the series was ending, but there is at least a degree of closure. The trades are currently out of print.

Loveless
Ran: 24 issues

For this title, I pushed the issue limit of this piece from eighteen to twenty four. Loveless was a western from 100 Bullets auteur Brian Azzarello and initially his previous Hellblazer collaborator Marcelo Frusin (and later with Danijel Zezelj and Werther Dell'edera) that is in the traditions of the darkest of tales of the old west. Wes Cutter arrives home from his time in a prison camp after the Civil War to find his home occupied by carpetbaggers, and the people of the town, Blackwater, hating him. The series follows Wes's reunion with his wife, Ruth, and their plans to revenge themselves against the people of the town for all the ills that occurred during the war. As with much of Azzarello's work, pretty much every character exists in varying shades of grey, no one being a purely good character, and frankly the characters here are even greyer than those in 100 Bullets. Wes and Ruth both have their reasons to be as angry as they are, and in many cases rightly so. The series moved forward in time shortly before the series ended, after a final conflagration at Blackwater that saw one of our main protagonists dead, to a series of stories that dealt more deeply with racial and social issues in America. Azzarello had a four year plan for the title, but with the end after just two, there were a lot of plot threads left dangling. The trades are currently out of print.

The Movement
Ran: 12 issues

Here's an example of how even a big name creator can have a title that ends too soon. The Movement was a noble experiment by Gail Simone to create a team of brand new young heroes set in the DC Universe. Set in a new city, Coral City, the team was fighting against a city that is even more corrupt than Gotham City. The series had a slow build, and it gradually revealed more and more about the characters, who worked outside the law to try to defend the people of the city who had no other respite from the corrupt establishment. As with much of Simone's work,the cast is diverse in all respects, and I enjoyed the simple fact that all but two of the cast were brand new characters (of those two, one, Katharsis, was introduced by Simone in her run on Batgirl, so was practically new as it was; the other, Rainmaker, was a member of the Wildstorm team Gen13). Part of the title's problems was in how it was marketed; lumped in with another title, Green Team, it seemed to be DC trying to catch the rising tide of the then very relevant Occupy movement. Simone had to explain in interviews it wasn't just Occupy DC, but was a book about power and disenfranchisement, with more of an appeal than the particular pigeonhole it seemed to be set in, but from responses I got when working at the comic shop, most people didn't get past that initial advertising to try it out, which is a shame. Simone has also said DC stood behind the book, and it did last considerably longer than Green Team. The entire series is collected in two trades, both of which are still in print.

Near Death
Ran: 11 issues

Near Death was a title I reviewed on my very first week writing this blog. A crime comic out of Image, Jay Faerber and Simone Guglielmini tell the story of Markham, a cold as ice hitman who has a near death experience and sees what is waiting for him on the other side. With that in mind, he decides to clean up his act, not only not killing anymore, but defending those who other professional killers are after. Through a series of crime stories, we see Markham's progression from someone who views other people as a means to an end into someone who can make the right choice for the right reason. He's a layered and morally grey character, which is something I always like in my crime story protagonists. Add in Guglielmini's great art, and you had a crime comic that I would have loved to read more of. Faerber has indicated on Twitter that he's working on another Near Death story now, so in a few year's time, adding the series together, this book might fall off this list, and I would be pleased to see that. The original series is available in two trades that are available at finer comic shops and on-line.

Saucer Country
Ran: 14 issues

Paul Cornell makes a return to this list, this time with his Vertigo series, Saucer Country. A mix of politics and modern UFO legends, the title was often addressed as a combination of The X-Files and The West Wing, which are two of my favorite TV series of all time, so I was sold from the moment it started. The series focuses on Gov. Arcadia Alvarado, who is running to become the first Latina president of the United States when she is abducted by aliens. Or is she? She and her campaign team, along with a scientist who is studying UFOlogy, begin to dig deep into a web of conspiracies that may or may not involve aliens, but certainly involves the US government, to find out exactly what happened to Arcadia. Was she abducted? Is this part of a decades long project? Is it just her opponents trying to discredit her? And what do the visions Professor Kidd, the scientist, has been having of the couple inscribed on the gold disc from the Voyager space probe have to do with anything? Filled with interesting characters and more twists and turns in one issue than most series have in a year's worth, Saucer Country was a great series for those of us who love a good conspiracy story. The series is currently unavailable, but Cornell has stated he would love to do more when the rights revert to him.

She-Hulk 
Ran: 12 issues

She-Hulk, the gamma powered lawyer Jen Walters, has had plenty of series over the years (four ongoings at least). And this most recent volume, from Charles Soule and Javier Pulido isn't the first to focus on her career as a lawyer as much as her superheroic one (that goes to the Dan Slott series from the early 00s). But this series impressed the heck out of me. Soule, who is a practicing lawyer as well as a comics writer, balanced Jen's two lifestyles beautifully, and wrote some great courtroom cases for Jen, including an asylum request from Dr. Doom's son, someone seeking to sell his patent for knock-off Pym Particles, and a suit for wrongful death against Captain America. All of this was set against the backdrop of a mysterious Blue File that names Jen and a group of other superpeople as defendants in a case no one can remember. I love how he portrays Jen, as someone trying to make it in a world that isn't cooperating, and her supporting cast, her investigator Patsy Walker (that's Hellcat) and her mysterious paralegal Angie Huang are delightful. And Pulido is one of the most capable artists in comics, doing great things with She-Hulk and her... it's not really a transformation, but bulking up (Ron Wemberly, who pinch hits for a couple issues, also does an able job). Soule was able to wrap up his plotlines before the book ended, but I hope to see She-Hulk show up in his upcoming run on Daredevil. Oh, and the series created a phenomenal new character who I hope we see again somewhere: Matt Rocks, an unabsorbed duplictae of Jamie Madrox the Multiple Man who is now and entertainment lawyer. Comics, everybody! The whole series is available in two trades, and if you want to see more about the series, check out my reviews here.

Star Wars: Agent of the Empire
Ran: 10 issues over two mini-series

Dark Horse Comics losing the Star Wars license saw quite a few books come to a premature end. Both Dawn of the Jedi and Invasion could have been on this list as well. But the title I felt got the most disservice was the excellent Agent of the Empire. John Ostrander, Matt Signal favorite creator, created Jahan Cross, an Imperial Intelligence agent who is the James Bond of the Star Wars Universe. The two mini-series, Iron Eclipse and Hard Targets, had very different feels, the former a techno thriller and the latter a tale of political intrigue, but both featured Cross as a slick operator with complex morality; this wasn't a goatee stroking villain like Grand Moff Tarkin or Cross's boss, head of Imperial Intelligence Armand Isard. No, Cross was doing what he was doing because he thought he was making the galaxy a better place; he is one of the tradition of Noble Imperials, a trope I love that includes characters like Thrawn, Admiral Pellaeon, and Baron Fel. Over the course of the two adventures we saw, Cross crossed paths with such characters as Han Solo, Boba Fett, and Bail Organa, putting Cross firmly in the thick of the Star Wars universe. The second mini-series ended with Cross starting to question some of the Empire's methods, and I would have been curious to see where his story went (and what would have happened if he had a run in with Armand Isard's daughter, the notorious Rogue Squadron villain, Ysanne Isard). None of the Dark Horse Star Wars material is available to order any longer, but many stores still have it in stock, so you can find it with some industrious searching.

SWORD
Ran: 5 issues

By far the shortest lived title on this list, SWORD was a series dedicated to the alien fighting military organization of the Marvel Universe. Starring Abigail Brand, thee head of SWORD, her boyfriend Hank McCoy, the Beast, her lieutenant, the alien Sydren, and Lockheed the alien dragon, SWORD only got one story before it was cancelled, written by Kieron Gillen and drawn by Steve Sanders, has Henry Peter Gyrich, described as the Marvel Universe's answer to Ghostbuster's Walter Peck, gets all aliens banned from Earth, and SWORD must do its best to balance obeying their duty with finding a way to get the law overturned. It's a great story, and introduces the strange villainous android UNIT, who Gillen would use to great effect in his run on Uncanny X-Men. The five issues of SWORD were collected in a trade, which was recently on one of Diamond Comics Distributors clearance sales, so you should be able to find that at a lot of comics shops.


So those are ten series I wish had lasted longer. I would love to hear from you, readers, what series you wish had some more issues. Reply to this post, over on Facebook, or on Twitter (@mattlaz1013) with your suggestions.

Greetings from Battleworld: Secret Wars Week 11

Welcome back to another exciting week on Batteworld. Two number ones this week. First from Dan Grote...

Captain Britain and the Mighty Defenders #1

 Story: Al Ewing

Art: Alan Davis, Mark Farmer and Wil Quintana

Finally, someone outside the main Secret Wars book remembers life before the incursions. Not just someone, a whole domain of someones!

Welcome to Yinsen City, the most peaceful domain in all of Battleworld, born from a reality in which Tony Stark sacrificed himself all those years ago in the cave to save the life of fellow captive Ho Yinsen, who it turns out did a better job of being Iron Man – or Rescue, rather – than Stark ever could.

Like any other domain, everyone is obsessed with Doom’s laws about heresy and not crossing borders, but everyone in Yinsen City gets along so well that when the local Thor – She-Hulk – gets wind of it, she all but brushes it off.

Perhaps that’s because she, Yinsen, and others are starting to remember: Remember the incursions, remember the time before Doom was god, remember their true origins before becoming barons and Thors and Spider Heros.

And then they get a sword-wielding visitor from beyond the city limits who remembers even more: Dr. Faiza Hussain, who goes by Captain Britain even though on Battleworld there is no such place as Britain. The defenders of Yinsen City take her in, because they’re good people, which immediately triggers the wrath of Doom. Rather than throw them all over the Shield to the zombies and Ultrons, Doom knocks down the wall between Yinsen City and neighboring Mondo City, a fascist domain where everyone dresses like Avalanche from the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and their tanks have many, many guns. Yinsen is killed, Faiza is kidnapped and what becomes of the others is unclear.

What I like about this book is that it pulls elements from lesser-known but no-less loved series: Paul Cornell’s Captain Britain & MI:13, Ewing’s own Mighty Avengers, and creates a diverse team (all people of color with the exception of She-Hulk). It also has a great “What If?” element in the Yinsen baronage. Most importantly though, it addresses, head-on, many of the questions I asked around the time I started reading A-Force, about how many people remember what came before and how certain characters can still have codenames that hinge on the existence of lands that do not appear on Battleworld. Many of the other books are fun, great reads, but they do little to address the greater mechanics of Secret Wars, which is probably to their credit. This book, like the reader, isn’t afraid to ask “What the hell is actually going on here?”

Also, it should be noted that She-Hulk-Thor’s hammer is a tiny courtroom gavel. Why? “Because I’ve got my hammers right here” (puts up fists). Jen Walters, I love you. Never change.

And then from me...

Guardians of Knowhere #1

Story: Brian Michael Bendis

Art: Mike Deodata & Laura Martin

Dan talks above about how people in Yinsen City are starting to remember incursions and the past. Well, it seems like that isn't the only place where Doom's little fiction is fraying. Guardians of Knowhere opens with an explaination of how Doom killed the Celestial to leave the head that serves as Knowhere floating around Earth like Unicron's head circling Cybertron in late Transformers stories. Well, Angela comes up to Knowhere to find Gamora and exact the will of Doom, to instead find a drunken Drax the Destroyer. We don't get an answer as to why Drax seems so at ends and lacking in his usual drive at first, but the issue gives us some hints towards the end. Drax starts a fight with Angela and Gamora arrives, still cosmically powered as she was at the end of "The Black Vortex" storyline. Rocket shows up, helps get the Guardians away from Angela, and then our team talks. Angela is looking for Gamora because she's breaking the cardinal rule of Battleworld: Gamora is moving between domains. And when Gamora brings up Thanos, neither Rocket or Drax know who he is (and since Drax was created to kill and counter Thanos, I figure that's why he's drinking himself to death). I don't know if it's the cosmic awareness Gamora has now, or just the beginning of the end of Doom's reign, but it's clear Gamora is getting suspicious. It's an interesting first issue that is one of the more direct follow ups to an existing Marvel title into Secret Wars. As Bendis was writing Guardians of the Galaxy before the event began, he's carrying those characterizations over, and I wonder if, because of the Guardians alien nature, if they might be the actual 616 Guardians, not alternate versions. Mike Deodata is an artist who draws a mean fight scene, and the battle between the Guardians and Angela through Knowhere is top notch. More tied in with Secret Wars than many of the crossovers I've been reading, if you enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy in recent years, this book will nicely scratch that itch until All New All Different Marvel starts up.

The Matt Signal Advent Calendar 2014 Day 8: Excalibur #86

Excalibur #86, December 1994

He’s rude, he smokes, he’ll martyr himself for his friends and he’s British. He’s Pete bloody Wisdom, and you better recognize.

Excalibur #86 marks the first appearance of Warren Ellis’ spy game-weary spy, who is attached to the British superhuman team via his employer, Black Air. After one issue of the new character, the book got hijacked for four months by the "Age of Apocalypse," but once it came back, Ellis quickly set about the task of making Wisdom my favorite character in any book I was reading at the time.

I loved his back-and-forth (both verbal and, soon enough, physical) with a maturing Kitty Pryde. I loved the way he came off like a boorish, boozing a-hole, only to find out he’d pulled all his spy friends’ fat out of the fire at one time or another because “Job needs doing.” And I loved how he had no reverence for the admittedly pretentious Xavier or his Scottish counterpart, Dr. Moira MacTaggert. (There’s a great panel in which Wisdom dons a shower cap, sits in a chair and presciently mocks the professor’s resemblance to Patrick Stewart).

Sadly, for whatever reason, not many writers have been able to nail Wisdom’s voice. Excalibur foundered after Ellis left with issue #103, and it wasn’t until Paul Cornell’s MAX series and, later, Captain Britain and MI13 that the character as I knew and loved him returned to the page. When a writer has one of your all-time favorite characters match strategic wits with Dracula and win, that’s a bingo. 

Extra credit: Read Matt’s original pieces on Ellis’ Excalibur run and the MI13 series.

A Halloween Visit to the Darker Corners of the Marvel Universe

Happy Halloween, everybody! Instead of a normal recommended reading, or a post of the kind you normally see, I thought I'd do something different. After thinking about Doctor Strange, I realized that while most corners of the Marvel Universe have been reawakened and retooled in recent years, the supernatural corner remains dormant. So, Dan and I sat down and came up with some ideas for ways for Marvel to do some new supernatural titles! It's a fun little trip into our brains, so don't get too scared!

Doctor Strange

As I stated when I talked about Doctor Strange earlier this week, Strange has had any number of reboots and new series, so coming at him from a new angle was tricky. But I got to thinking about the Ancient One, Strange's master, and the numerous apprentices Strange has taken over the years. So, what happened if Strange learned that, through some magical confluence, thirteen children were born, each with a different magical gift, and the balance of all magic would rest on whether or not they chose light or dark magic? With the kids now teenagers, Strange must race across the globe, gathering these kids and then training them, all the while competing with someone else, let's say Baron Mordo, to keep them on the side of the light. It's got a similar vibe to classic X-Men stories, only told from Xavier's point of view instead of the students, or Harry Potter from Dumbledore's perspective, clearly with Strange in the Xavier or Dumbledore role. It would introduce a group of new magical characters, characters who could be from any country, of any race, religion, or sexual orientation, meaning it works with so much of what Marvel has been doing to diversify their line. And Strange can team up with various other magical characters, like Doctor Voodoo, to help teach the kids different disciplines. Extra points for a convenient crossover with Uncanny X-Men, when one of Strange's team turns out to not only be magically gifted but a mutant, and Strange must work with his ex-apprentice, Magik, and team his kids up with the kids from the New Xavier School.

MI-13

OK, I know, I know. I'm a sucker for Pete Wisdom, and I would probably try to pitch a new book featuring Wisdom to Marvel in any way I could. But bear with me. Nearly all stories of MI-13 and Wisdom have had some magical angle, so we give the British spooky intel agency a new specific mission. With S.H.I.E.L.D. overwhelmed with all the supercriminals and terrorists, international magical items trafficking has skyrocketed, and Maria Hill goes to the experts: Pete Wisdom and MI-13. Now MI-13's goal is to shut down an international cartel that is selling, and in some cases handing out, magical items of incredible dark power. What exactly is their angle? And exactly who is the mastermind behind it? With a core team of Pete Wisdom, Spitfire, Black Knight, Union Jack, and Excalibur, there could be any number of supernatural heroes who could guest star. Blade's a little busy over in Mighty Avengers, but he could come back, as could Captain Britain and Megann, but I think Elsa Bloodstone, who is free since the end of Fearless Defenders, would make a good replacement for Blade as monster hunter extraordinaire. I'd also like to keep Alistair Stuart around, and reintroduce the original version of Romany Wisdom, the hippy magic user version, as she is both Pete's sister and Union Jack's ex, as the support team for the unit.

Dracula and the Legion of Monsters

When Mark Waid brought the Legion of Monsters back in Daredevil, he gave them a mission: track down and contain the dispersed pages of the Darkhold, the most evil books of magic in existence; picture the Marvel Universe version of the Necronomicon and you get the idea. So, when team leader Jack Russell, the Werewolf by Night, discovers a page of the book that allows the possessor to control vampires, Jack and team hunt down the vampire of vampires, Dracula. And this is the Dracula of Tomb of Dracula, Doctor Strange, classic X-Men, and Captain Britiain and MI-13, the one designed by Gene Colan. He's no longer wearing red armor and wearing his hair all long and white; nope this Dracula has style. Russell uses the page, and Drac is now under his control. Well, sort of. Dracula can't turn on Russell and his team, but whatever they ask him to do, he can do in whatever way he sees fit, so it's a classic monkey's paw situation: use Dracula to track down more pages, but say one false word and he'll massacre everyone between him and the page. And Dracula is always scheming to come up with a way to get the page from Russell so he can be free and exact his revenge, giving a constant sense of tension to every issue.

Midnight Sons of Anarchy (working title only) 

Marvel relaunched Ghost Rider earlier this year with a new host for the Spirit of Vengeance, Robbie Reyes, who drives a black muscle car instead of a motorcycle. Frankly, I see a missed opportunity here. Because you know what’s cooler than one Ghost Rider? A gang of them. A Spirits of Vengeance series ran from 1992 to 1994, teaming up original-recipe Ghost Rider Johnny Blaze with Crystal Pepsi Ghost Rider Danny Ketch. I say revisit the series, uniting Blaze, Ketch, Reyes and the Alejandra and Vengeance characters, along with some new recruits, as a team of demon-possessed hotheads riding together, righting wrongs and whipping people with hellfire-covered chains. Yes, it would be a blatant rip-off of the popular FX series Sons of Anarchy, but that fruit’s hanging low for a reason.

Resurrect Gail Simone’s Night Nurse MAX series 

Years ago, Simone and artist Jill Thompson were developing a mature-readers series featuring the Night Nurse, a superhero health care worker and the sometimes girlfriend of Dr. Strange. The series was shelved in early 2002, and Simone went on to write Deadpool/Agent X. Brian Michael Bendis made the Night Nurse one of his pet quasi-Avengers in the 2000s, patching up anti-registration heroes in the pages of New Avengers as well as Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker’s Immortal Iron Fist. If nothing else, should a new Dr. Strange book comes out in time for the movie in 2016, I’d love for the Nurse to be a part of it.

House of Z 

Pretty sure this one hasn’t been leaked along with the kajillion other crossover redux teasers for next summer’s Secret Wars. Zombie Wanda Maximoff grunts “No more zombies” to avoid having her brains eaten by her brother, Zombie Pietro, and magically undoes the zombie virus for all but 198 of them. A restored humanity led by some of the company’s best supporting characters – Thunderbolt Ross, Pepper Potts, J. Jonah Jameson, Dum Dum Dugan, Foggy Nelson, etc. – must figure out how to live in a world destroyed by zombies. In so doing, humans become the hunters, and the zombies are chased across the country onto an island in the San Francisco Bay that the humans nuke without a second thought, because, as Ross tells Nelson, “Can’t destroy a world that’s already been destroyed.” In promotional materials, Marvel will act like they’re finally getting rid of all the zombies, as a red herring to distract those who’ve said Marvel’s done too many zombie stories. But the blast actually radiates the zombie virus and makes it airborne, creating a whole new batch. This sets up House of Z 2, in which the remaining humans scour the globe searching for Zombie Wanda, whom they failed to round up the first time around. 


Now, go out and enjoy Halloween!

Recommended Reading for 11/30: Captain Britain and MI13

I love Pete Wisdom. Now, I'd think about two-thirds if you out there are asking who the hell Pete Wisdom is. And the other third are saying, "Of course you do! How could you not love Pete Wisdom?" For the unenlightened, Pete Wisdom was a British mutant and secret agent introduced by Warren Ellis during his run on Excalibur. He was the prototypical Ellis protagonist: snarky, hard drinking, hard smoking, trenchcoat wearing, and haunted by his past and all the friends and family he has lost(so, in all fairness, he's pretty much the mutant John Constantine).

While I know the series I'm talking about today, Captain Britain and MI13, isn't called Pete Wisdom and MI13, it always will be in my heart. It's the first major work from Paul Cornell, who has since made his name with runs on Action Comics and Demon Knights, as well as Saucer Country out of Vertigo, and will be writing the Marvel Now! Wolverine ongoing. His principal artist was Leonard Kirk, one of comics' great utility pencilers, and who's best known for his collaborations with Peter David, including a long run on Supergirl and X-Factor.

If the title isn't a giveaway, the series is about a team of superheroes who work for British Intelligence solving problems that normal law enforcement can't, problems dealing mostly with the vast occult population of the British Isles, but they have no problem dealing with alien invasions or mutant issues too. MI13 is the British occult services division, in the same way MI5 deals with problems domestic and MI6 deals with problems foreign. The series was tragically short-lived, only fifteen issues and an annual, but they were great issues, full of action, humor, and great characters.

Aside from Brian Braddock, the titular Captain Britain, England's leading superhero, and Pete Wisdom, the team was made up of a group of mostly British heroes. MI13 includes Spitfire, the World War II era British heroine who has been made young again and has certain vampiric traits, The Black Knight, former Avenger, and Blade, the vampire hunter. The series also introduces Dr. Faisa Hussain, a kind and intrepid physician,w ho becomes the bearer, and takes up the heroic alias, of Excalibur. Hussain is of Muslim faith, and Cornell does and excellent job of making that an important part of her character without making it all of her character.

Pete Wisdom, trying to draw the sword from the stone

 

The series began spinning out of Marvel's Secret Invasion crossover, about an invasion from the shape-changing alien Skrulls. Specifically, the Skrulls have come to England because t serves as the font of all magic This is something new to the history of the Marvel Universe as far as I know, but makes for a logical reason why the Skrulls are targeting England. Series beginning during events can be problematic, as sometimes the event seems tacked on, but this specific crossover worked very well.

Cornell also used the crossover to clearly define his two chief protagonists. Captain Britain fights valiantly, but is killed early on by the Skrulls. He is eventually resurrected by Merlin, and made into the true embodiment of England. Captain Britain as a character had always been haunted by doubts, but with this resurrection he became the symbol of a united England, and moved forward as a stronger character. Pete Wisdom, on the other hand, remains a man torn by his past and who must make the hard choices. With the Skrulls having taken English magic, Wisdom is told by a mysterious voice that he must break open a gate to the Dark Dimensions, the prison for demons and the like, to free the being who can save England. Wisdom does it, freeing a trapped Merlin, but also unleashes hordes of the worst demons and monsters of the Marvel Universe. This is the act of a man who is not a hero in the classic sense, not a noble knight, but a man who does what he needs to; a man whose motto is, "Job needs doing."

The second arc adds Blade to the mix, which seems an odd choice until you remember that, from his original appearances in Tomb of Dracula, Blade is English. It also creates an interesting dynamic between Blade and Spitfire. Blade is the legendary vampire hunter, after all, and Spitfire has been feeling the influence of a vampire curse she long thought broken returning. Blade's initial reaction is to stake Spitfire, but the two form a bond over the arc, as they are both half-vampire. We also begin to see more of Faisa, who accidentally received powers during the Skrull invasion and picked up Excalibur at the end of that story. She somewhat serves as the audience proxy, since she is new and asks the questions a reader might, but she's also a noble soul, which puts her in company with only Captain Britain on this team. Each of the others (Wisdom, Spitfire, Blade, and Black Knight) all are tarnished, by their curses or their past deeds, so her innocence adds to what makes her distinct.

 

The main story of this second arc deals with the first of the demons that were freed by Pete in the previous arc. Plokta feeds on the dreams of those he has captures. Because of this, we get to see a good view inside the heads of our heroes, and what each of them wants and needs. It's a great way to give the audience that kind of infodump without it being an infodump. We also get some really cool scenes inside Plokta's dream corridor, fiery hallways, and a creepy monster on Plokta himself.

 

Tragically, the final arc was hands down my favorite, and really saw the series hit its stride. "Vampire State" sees the return of the classic Marvel Dracula, who my regular readers read about in my Tomb of Dracula recommended reading. Cornell writes Dracula brilliantly, keeping him perfectly in line with how he's been represented in the past, with his cool, cold grace and style. Dracula has decided to take over England and turn it into a Vampire Nation, and along the way makes accords with Lilith, another of the demons freed at the beginning of the series, and with Dr. Doom.

What I especially love about this story is that it is an intricate chess game between two masters of manipulation: Dracula and Pete Wisdom. Dracula is of course based on Vlades Tepes, a great military leader in his native lands, and so Cornell presents Dracula as a brilliant military mind, building a complex strategy and campaign against his foes. Meanwhile Wisdom is a master spy, who is used to manipulating situations to his won benefit, and his skills are shown off amply here. Cornell does wonderful things with the history of Dracula and his nemesis Quincy Harker as well, although that's a twist I don't want to give away.

Other than spotlighting my favorite underutilized mutant hero, the thing I love about Captain Britain and MI13 is that, while its a serious superhero comic, it keeps an air of fun and adventure about it. The seriousness is there, but it doesn't drown out the fact that these are characters in tights (well, maybe not all of them; Pete Wisdom wouldn't be caught dead in tights), who are having big adventures. It's got witty dialogue, great art, and intricate plots. Plus Pete Wisdom. What more do you want?

 

Captain Britain and MI13 is available in three trade paperbacks: Secret Invasion, Hell Comes to Birmingham, and Vampire State. If you enjoy them, you might also want to check out Wisdom, the Pete Wisdom mini-series from writer Paul Cornell under Marvel's MAX line. You can also see more MI13 action in this week's new issue of Gambit.