Captain Britain’s new book

By John Freeman on February 20, 2008

(with thanks to Matthew Badham): Marvel releases the first issue of Captain Britain and MI:13, a new book starring Captain Britain in May, written by Paul Cornell and drawn by Leonard Kirk.

Captain Britain and MI:13 is a new ongoing series which finds some of the Marvel Universe’s most popular British heroes coming together to fight the shape shifting Skrulls’ “Secret Invasion” of Earth when it hits the England of the Marvel Universe.

Paul Cornell and his editor Nick Lowe talk extensively about the series in an interview just posted on Comic Book Resources.

Intelligence organisation MI:13 figured prominently in Cornell’s Wisdom miniseries, whose job is to deal with the weird stuff, using occult, alien or superhero methods.

The inaugural story in Captain Britain and MI: 13 unfolds over the course of the series’ first four issues. “It’s about bare survival for Britain and the team, out of which Pete Wisdom and Captain Britain, in their different ways, manage to conjure up what the major, ongoing situation for our heroes is,” Cornell tells CBR. “There’s a big point to what they do and why they do it, and why they’ll stay together. They’re not just a random super team; they’re here to do a job.

“This isn’t ‘that British book’, it’s a book that uses certain things about Britain to its advantage, but we might well take these British heroes off to the United States in a later story.”

Captain Britain first appeared in Captain Britain Weekly in the 1970s and has gone through many transformations down the years. It will be interesting to see what Paul does with the character and the many guest stars he’s included.

• Read the full interview on Comic Book Resources

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John Freeman

John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.

He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.