scans_daily: What It Takes To Kill The Fury

mrosa (

mrosa) wrote in

scans_daily,
@ 2011-12-11 02:08 pm UTC

Current mood:	excited
Entry tags:	char: captain britain/brian braddock, char: the fury, creator: alan davis, creator: alan moore

What It Takes To Kill The Fury

Alan Moore and Alan Davis' Captain Britain run from the early '80s is one of my favourite superhero stories. It's a legendary story for the way it was so novel for the time. Not enough have read it, although it's influenced Marvel and the character in many ways. You may have heard of the godlike Mad Jim Jaspers and his reality-warping powers; of how he created an artificial super-being, The Fury, which could evolve and adapt to any superhero's powers; how The Fury killed Captain Britain; how Merlin brought him back to life, improved; how The Fury sweeped the floor with his body several more times; how in the end Jaspers and The Fury had an epic creation-killing-the-creator battle. But in the end, it wasn't Captain Britain who took down The Fury; he almost died again, if it weren't for this:

And this is how you write a gripping, exciting fight!

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mrph.livejournal.com
2011-12-11 02:34 pm UTC (link)

Still slightly weird to see this in colour. I think it works slightly better in black and white... but I don't think Marvel were ever going to reprint this for a non-UK audience in that format...

(At some point I should scan some of the original Moore/Lloyd 'Special Executive' stuff, which started life as a back-up in Doctor Who Magazine before jumping into Captain Britain's storyline... I don't think we've had any of those stories here yet...?)

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	no subject icon_uk 2011-12-11 03:22 pm UTC (link)
	I did post the first part of the DW story that would lead to the intro of the Special Executive http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/204124.html But never went further, and I'd love to see you post the others! :) (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent) (Thread) (Hide 1 comment) (Show 1 comment)

	no subject mrosa 2011-12-11 03:31 pm UTC (link)
	Amazing! Someone has to post more! (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent)

	no subject korvar 2011-12-11 02:41 pm UTC (link)
	That seemed to be a theme for Alan Moore for a while - the mighty hero stands around while someone else defeats the Big Bad. Swamp Thing at least got to give the Big Bad - the Great Darkness - a couple of suggestions before watching it do what it did. And boy, can Alan Davis draw the hell out of an action scene. (Reply to this) (Thread) (Hide 14 comments) (Show 14 comments)

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mrosa
2011-12-11 03:12 pm UTC (link)

That seemed to be a theme for Alan Moore for a while - the mighty hero stands around while someone else defeats the Big Bad.

I think the thing is, Alan Moore comes up with such formidable villains - it's usually a team work, several stages to victory type of battle. In here, The Fury first went mano a mano with Jaspers, which drained most of his energy; then he traded blows with a nearly exhausted Captain Britain; and finally Linda had to get the job done.

And then there's Marvelman, where it takes Marvelman, Marvelwoman and the Warpsmiths together to take down Kid Marvelman, and even so it's more about intelligence than brute force. The teleported pebble into his head was a brilliant idea!

But hey, V took down a dictatorship by himself, right?

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icon_uk
2011-12-11 04:15 pm UTC (link)

I'll forgive that on this occasion as this was sort of the end of a longer character arc for Captain UK.

She had watched her world be torn apart by the Fury, including her husband, and had been racked by indecision and survivor guilt ever since. (her husband pushed her into a teleporter seconds before the Fury killed him, IIRC). This is the cathartic moment for her, as she takes control of her life properly again.

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daningram.insanejournal.com
2011-12-11 04:23 pm UTC (link)

What exactly is your defination of 'standing around'?

Because we see Brian tear off a limb and smash up Fury real good before it pins him. And judging from the damage in the first couple of scans, Brian looks like he was mauled by the Fury before this fight too.

He didn't finish it, but Brian did his fair share of work.

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korvar
2011-12-11 04:33 pm UTC (link)

True enough. I just found it interesting - usually the person with their name on the book does the final deed, you know? I mean, would you expect the big bad in a Superman book to be dealt with by anyone other than Superman?

It wasn't really a criticism, just something I noted cropped up a couple of times in Moore's work.

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	no subject daningram.insanejournal.com 2011-12-11 05:21 pm UTC (link)
	I kinda like it. It fleshes out the supporting characters, gives them more identity as their own people as opposed to just foils for the main characters. I see no reason why the main character should be leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of his cast. Inching them out every now and then is fine. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent) (Thread) (Hide 1 comment) (Show 1 comment)

	no subject korvar 2011-12-11 05:32 pm UTC (link)
	One could argue that, if they're not leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the cast, why is their name on the book? :) (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent)

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mrph.livejournal.com
2011-12-11 05:43 pm UTC (link)

True enough. With Captain Britain, I think it's very much that Brian is out of his depth here - and also that Moore rarely resolves a plot by having the hero punch it into oblivion.

One of the things I liked about the story is that none of our heroes are capable of beating the Fury in a straight-out fight - there's no 'villain decay' and it keeps its menace to the final seconds...

This is also the payback for an extended storyline in which Captain UK has been traumatised by the Fury killing her world's superheroes - including her husband and everyone else she knew. In the Fury's previous appearance, before it upgraded itself, she wasn't able to face it at all. Only the Special Executive's intervention kept the cast alive.

There's also the question of whether the fight would have gone differently if Captain Britain hadn't attacked it first - this was effectively a Captain Britain / Captain UK tag team finishing it off after the fight with Jaspers left it weakened.

(On a tangent - from vague memory, didn't Chris Claremont pretty much use the Fury as the basis for Nimrod...?)

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icon_uk
2011-12-11 05:49 pm UTC (link)

(On a tangent - from vague memory, didn't Chris Claremont pretty much use the Fury as the basis for Nimrod...?)

Sort of, inasmuch as the Fury was always a sort of ultra-Sentinel, designed to destroy any and all superbeings.

Of course, when Claremont finally did get to use the Fury, he missed the point of it completely and the story was a complete mess.

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korvar
2011-12-11 05:49 pm UTC (link)

If I recall correctly, he was planning to use Jaspers (who turned up as the prosecution in a United Nations trial against Magneto), the Fury, and other things from the Moore/Davis run on Captain Britain, until the copyright situation was explained (I can't remember why or how, but original stories produced at Marvel UK had the copyright retained by the authors, instead of everything being work for hire). And so he had to invent a Fury-a-like, which became Nimrod.

Although the Fury did appear again, with the X-Men pulling out all the stops to take it down. I think they created a singularity and dropped it in it...

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	no subject mrosa 2011-12-11 07:12 pm UTC (link)
	Although the Fury did appear again, with the X-Men pulling out all the stops to take it down. I think they created a singularity and dropped it in it... Since when does that stop The Fury? (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent) (Thread) (Hide 2 comments) (Show 2 comments)

	no subject korvar 2011-12-11 07:54 pm UTC (link)
	"When" would be that one comic :) (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent)

	no subject mrph.livejournal.com 2011-12-11 09:48 pm UTC (link)
	I was always amused that Moore used the name again for 1963's not-quite-Spider-Man character. Complete with the tagline that "No One Escapes... The Fury" :) (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent)

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halloweenjack
2011-12-13 10:37 pm UTC (link)

There's the scene earlier in the arc where someone mentions that Captain UK is wet after a big fight; Brian snaps something about how they'd all been sweating, and the other person (Opal Luna Saturnyne, maybe?) conveys (without coming right out and saying it) that Captain UK had been so scared that she'd pissed her uniform, and tops it off with "Grow up, Captain."

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	no subject halloweenjack 2011-12-13 10:32 pm UTC (link)
	That's part of how Alan Moore made his bones in the comics biz. Plenty of other people can write stories about big bruisers who save the day, even against absurdly overpowered villains, because they just! won't! give! up! It's teamwork where the team actually makes a difference, instead of just the team tank. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent)

	no subject glprime 2011-12-11 09:20 pm UTC (link)
	I'm reminded of Ralphie finally snapping and taking on his tormentor, Buzz, after so many years of torture. And Dean Venture beating up Dermot. "YOU ARE VERY RUDE!" (Reply to this)

	no subject silverzeo 2011-12-11 11:52 pm UTC (link)
	How can masks that hide your face are able to show SO much expression through them? (Reply to this) (Thread) (Hide 2 comments) (Show 2 comments)

	no subject mrosa 2011-12-12 01:01 am UTC (link)
	It's all in the eyes, isn't it? (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent)

	no subject wizardru 2011-12-12 12:49 pm UTC (link)
	In the hands of a master artist like Davis, the eyes and the mouth are more than enough to convey all sorts of emotion. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent)

	no subject eyz 2011-12-13 01:24 pm UTC (link)
	Holy MOLLY!! °___° (couldn't thought about anything else to say to THAT!) (Reply to this)

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