Top comment: Elfen Inferno, Princess of Incineration, locked in combat with her archnemesis, Esophagus Violator. His dyed eyebrows are the source of his unholy power. –KDBryan
Also: I was going to go with Reverse Gravit-hair-a and her husband, Sir No Longer Appearing in this Comic. — Zifnab
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It’s cancelled already?
Dang. It was better than like, the last THREE Excaliburs.
The thing, it’s not like the comics-buying populace are SO much smarter than Marvel or DC. So why, in God’s name, do they insist on throwing out product that they surely must know will fail?
This is the thing that perplexes me every time I see a new Vigilante series launched, or some such nonsense.
Ouch, man. Ouch.
Patrick C: I imagine it has something to do with hiring people on and needing to make sure that they are producing something so that they can justify them on the payroll.
Kind of like how they hired Kathryn Immonen for Marvel Comics Presents and Hellcat as tryouts to see if the fans would like her style and since she’s getting cut a check and they need someone to write Runaways they give it to her. Or a writer my have a pet project that they want to work on, which I imagine is the case for MI:13 though I’ve got nothing to back up opinion, which Marvel or DC agrees to fund as long as the writer works on something else either at the same time or in the event that the pet project fails. In Cornell’s case he’s doing that Young Masters of Evil mini, which I personally didn’t like, but it helps to fit my theory.
It’s not a personal loss for me as I didn’t read it. The only time, I feel, Wisdom is written well is in the hands of his creator and the book starting with a Secret Invasion crossover didn’t make me want to rush out and read it.
Besides, every so often one of these comics does get the chance to stay around. If you had told me three years ago that Marvel would give Hercules a solo series I wouldn’t have believed you or at least I wouldn’t have thought it would last more then six issues.
I figured it’s Excalibur under a different name, so why not.
Dammit, it was a good series. Between this and The Order, my ability to choose series that will soon be canceled is amazing.
Hey, it got past 6 issues. There are other “ongoing” series that don’t last that long.
stupid time traveling blog entry!
I have no idea who these characters are.
The thing is: sometimes a Too Good To Last turns out popular. Nobody really expected Sandman to go anywhere when it started. And even a title like Green Lantern: Mosaic, which survived nearly twenty issues, had good sales and was only cancelled because someone upstairs in DC didn’t like it — but I never would have expected it to last even half that long, given that it was about an uppity black man solving problems with his brain instead of his fists. Sometimes, the market surprises you.
I would complain but I should know by now that all optimism about the survival of good comics needs to be smashed under an spiked iron boot. It’s the only way to avoid future heartbreak. You’re harsh but fair, MGK.
I have no idea who these characters are.
Elfen Inferno, Princess of Incineration, locked in combat with her archnemesis, Esophagus Violator. His dyed eyebrows are the source of his unholy power.
Stop it, MGK! You are making me sad!
I don’t think I ever saw Wolverine in that book.
Probably the reason it failed.
Dammit, I would like our Captain to stay around for longer.
Here’s the serious answer: the guy is Captain Britain, a.k.a. Brian Braddock. He’s Psylocke’s brother and one of the founding members of Excalibur along with the girl, whose real name and codename is simply “Meggan.” Wikipedia ought to have entries for both of them.
The series is “Captain Britain and MI:13”, which sprang from the ashes of “New Excalibur” and has now turned into another pile of ashes from which nothing will likely spring so somebody’s going to scoop them up in a dustbin or something.
Gutted that it was cancelled and I made the cheap gag about Wolverine not being in it being why it failed as well in my webcomic (blatant plug over). It’s a shame as it’s the best Captain Britain’s been written in years.
*Sigh*…
What this series really needed was more Doctor Who references.
I don’t get the “Bridge” reference…
Rob Brown,
Thank you for your honesty, but now knowing the reality, I think I prefer KDBryan’s answer.
I was going to go with Reverse Gravit-hair-a and her husband, Sir No Longer Appearing in this Comic.
I gave this book a fair shake when it started, but then it went from a super-hero version of Spooks/MI-5 to the Faiza Hussain Is Awesome show all the way down to Let’s Play Twilight. I’m happy this book is gone, if only out of spite for becoming the ultimate GILF cockblock book out there.
My question is, why did they pretend it was going to be an ongoing, and just call it a limited series? It even makes the eventual graphic novels easier, and more tempting for buyers like me.
Serious answer: A common reply to someone who is gullible is to ask them if they would like to buy a bridge in Brookly (the eponymous Brooklyn Bridge).
Gotta agree with Andrew to some extent.
The book became a bore.
The promised tension about Blade and Spitfire being on a team? 5 pages then they snog.
The promised tension between pragmatic Wisdom and symbolic Brian…they work together fine, then go and try to pull at a pub.
Blade’s not really a jerk, he just pretended to be for his every appearance because that’s how you act?
I’m pretty sure I remember seeing something about how Dane was going to show what being a hero and Avenger meant, what with the American teams forgetting that. Oh well.
“Let’s play Twilight”? There’s a huge vampire invasion of Britain and Dracula on the moon in Twilight?
Shit, maybe I should read that. Anyway, sad to see this go. Another £2 a month Marvel won’t be getting from me.
Definitely Marvel’s best book now. Bore? No– probably getting better every issue. I love seeing how Cornell evolves into a stronger comics writer with each script.
(Sniffle.)
This is why I bought the floppies… in case they never release the trade.
Seriously, me picking up the floppy for a book is like some kind of death sentence.
“There’s a huge vampire invasion of Britain and Dracula on the moon in Twilight?”
Are you using sarcasm, or was I?
Vampires are boring. Vampire turf wars, triply so. If Cornell needed to address the bloodsuckers, I’d have preferred he do in an issue or two, much like Spooks/MI-5 clears out a terrorist cell in an episode or such. The book started out as this neat, black ops team, more akin to a sanctioned MIB than Avengers, but it quickly deteriorated into…whatever it is now.
Honestly, I gave up on it when Faiza pulled the sword out of the ground. A Magically Talented Fangirl who Suddenly Discovers New Powers and then becomes King Arthur just kind of struck me a a portent of things to come. Faiza Hussein was the second coming of Donna Noble, and given how little I like the first coming…yeah.
Plus, having seen Blade stab Spitfire and then watching Dracula force Spitfire to eat against her will kind of confirmed what I already guessed, that it wasn’t my kind of book. See, I liked that Spitfire’s powers were *from* a Vampire, but that she *was’t* a vampire. It seemed like a novel idea. Then Cornell started down the path that she was a vampire (or a close enough approximation to suck blood and be controlled by Dracula), it rubbed me the wrong way. Why do writers have to take novel ideas, and grind them into round holes?
In short, if you didn’t think it was a bore, bully for you. I was expecting a different book when I started reading it, and in the course of realizing I was reading a different book got to like the Spitfire character. So, I’m irrationally bitter at not only being seduced by a book I found boring, but torn apart from a (blonde! Golden Age! speedster!) character when I dropped the book.
Overall I’m sorry to see it go, but I’m not surprised. I do wish Cornell made Pete Wisdom more the focus of the book rather than Captain Britain, since the series is primarily a spinoff of the Wisdom Max mini, and I was never interested in Capt. Britain anyway. It was also alarming that Cornell either wrote or killed off most of the characters from the Wisdom mini, which was kind of the draw for me.
And I know that it’s the current economics of the industry, but I wish that Cornell wrote shorter arcs like the done-in-one (or two) stories he had in the Wisdom mini. These six-issue arcs generally lag in the middle too much for my taste, and I don’t know of any writers who really make that format work well.
Sorry Zifnab, that’s not bad but KDBryan got to it first.
…dammit, now I need to know what Esophagus Violator’s origin story is. Where did he get his powers? Why did he turn to a life of… uh… whatever that is?
Frankly, they shot themselves in the foot when they wrote BOTH John the Skrull and Captain Midlands out of the book, by killing one off and imprisoning the other for rubbish reasons. The book deserved to fail for that.
If they wanted to make the team be more representative of Britain’s populace by adding a Muslim, they should have worked her into the Wisdom miniseries rather than waste time introducing her here.
“New Excalibur” failed because it was too much about a bunch of Americans, this failed because they got rid of the interesting British characters.
I loved the book, but really, Dracula! In his castle! ON THE MOON! was done LOADS better in ‘Dr. McNinja’.
Constantinople: No, New Excalibur failed because Chris Claremont isn’t a good writer anymore.
Hell, the original Excalibur only had 2 British characters in its roster.
Y’know, Donna Noble was probably the best of the modern assistants to have cropped up during the RTD reign, and miles above Mary-Sue-Chav-Blondy-Plot-Device.
Stig: I’m more of a Martha fan myself. Though either of them are better then Rose.
[…] Bird was not surprised by the cancellation of Captain Britain and MI-13, but then, he read one of the covers a little differently than most of […]
dammit, now I need to know what Esophagus Violator’s origin story is. Where did he get his powers?
He was violated by a radioactive esophagus.
Yeah, I loved Martha as well, but I liked Donna as well as Mickey and many others – for being a good friend and a capable helper, which is the core of the Doctor-assistant dynamic, and not trying to get it on with him every half a minute.
I really don’t get people slagging off Donna – and for that matter, Faiza – for being some kind of Mary-Sue, when we have unlikeable blonde chav-girl suddenly being named the Doctor’s one true love and the saviour of the universe multiple times, etc. But then again, I also can’t understand why a member of a race dedicated to controlling time would take over one measly planet and spend all of his reign dancing to Scissor Sisters…apparently even the villains have to be dumbed down now. Whatever happened to the old routine of having the arch-villain conducting an invisible concerto while his master plan came into action?
“Serious answer: A common reply to someone who is gullible is to ask them if they would like to buy a bridge in Brookly (the eponymous Brooklyn Bridge).”
Justin Mohareb, thanks but I still don’t get it. How is asking someone to buy a bridge in Brooklyn related to them being gullible? I’m not from the US so I’m not getting this at all.
(A) Cultural idioms don’t always necessarily make sense. It’s a reference to gullibility in part because that’s how everyone uses the phrase. But moreover,
(B) The person offering to sell the bridge does not own the bridge, and hence cannot sell it. A person would only accept the offer to buy the bridge if they were gullible enough to believe the seller owned it in the first place.
(C) Also, there were con men who did sell deeds to the Brooklyn Bridge, hence why it’s usually the Brooklyn Bridge instead of something else that the prospective seller could not possibly own.
He was violated by a radioactive esophagus.
You know, I was going to write an entire Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe-style entry for Esophagus Violator but really, there’s no way in hell I’m topping that. Well-played, Marc. Well-played.
Stig: I blame that on Davies’ undying hard on for pop culture references. Why he feels this version of Doctor Who has to have one every five minutes is beyond me. That being said, I still think the third season finale is better then any other. If for no other reason then it wasn’t the Daleks, again.
Thanks Skemono. I’m gettin’ it now.