| Posted: 10 February 2013 at 6:06am | IP Logged | 10
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I do like captain britain, but a lot of that may be down to Alan Davis. I do agree with JB's comments about the character's name. Captain anything does sound more like an American kind of thing.•• The British mentality does not lend itself easily to the concept of superheroes. Kind of ironic, really, since the Nation has, oh, a thousand years more history than the US. Yet the traditional [Fill-in-the-Blank]-Man approach doesn't really fit the British personality, and their Military ranks they reserve for... the Military! The difference in thinking is well illustrated, I think, by Donald Campbell's land speed racing car (and also record setting boat). Like his father before him, Campbell built big, powerful muscle machines, and named them all. . . Bluebird. As a kid, growing up in England, when Campbell was one of my heroes, there seemed nothing odd about that choice. But after spending two thirds of my life writing and drawing American superheroes, it feels kinda... soft. Even Canada, which despite itself is still so very British, afforded me a greater range of names when I was cobbling Alpha Flight* together. _______ * That name was Claremont's choice, and is itself very British, and, to my ear, soft. When the group were fan characters (with different members, except for Guardian), I called them The Canadian Shield, after the range of mountains that brackets Hudson's Bay. Marvel nixed that one, for obvious reasons. Marvel also would not, at first, let me use "Guardian", and it was Chris, again, who lumbered the character with "Vindicator". Which, when I heard it, prompted me to ask "And what exactly does Canada need to vindicate?" Chris' choice of the name was based on an fictional fighter/bomber that appeared in THUNDERBALL.
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