X of Swords, Part 9: Excalibur #13

[superboyprime]

Comments

[beyondthefringe]

I've waxed poetic before about how stupid it is to make the Captain Britain Corps all analogues of Brian Braddock.

Sure, there have been a LOT of Brian variants over the years, but just as many who weren't him, who did a perfectly good job of serving in the Corps....

For one thing, you then run into the problem of him being a such a relatively recent hero. Even taking into account 616's career, there were TONS who were established as long-serving, experienced Captains by the time he met them in Otherworld. So the Corps has only been around what... a decade or two, tops? And it's been wiped out several times in that period alone?

But then again, when you start thinking about the Captain Britain Corps and how it's made up of a bunch of beings from alternate timelines, and then you ask how exactly its membership is composed and drawn from a near-infinite amount of timelines... the Marvel multiverse has always been weird in that so many of the variants are simply 616+What If...? = alternate Earths. But why wouldn't those alternates generate their own alternates as well?

In short: why does the CBC have a dozen versions of Brian Braddock, but only one Captain from a Nazi world instead of a dozen? Why is there only one Captain from Orwell's 1984 Airstrip-One? Does that world not generate alternates? Is there a quota for "types" of Captains, so if Nazi Captain dies, they grab another from the nearest alternate stream?

Yeah, I always overthink this.

[akodo_rokku]

Well ever since Saturnyne has been running the show alone, I'd guess the answer to all of that is, "Saturnyne is ridiculously powerful and incredibly fickle."

[cainofdreaming]

So, kinda like Merlyn?

[alliterator]

Before choosing Brian Braddock to become Captain Britain, Merlyn and Roma chose his father, James Braddock Sr. Presumably, the only reason "Brian Braddocks" are chosen to be Captain Britains is because they are the most suitable candidates -- before his birth, it was James Braddock and before him it was probably a prior Braddock and so on. Other Braddocks have been chosen, like Betsy and Billy Braddock (Spider-UK).

But like the data page said, not all Captain Britains are Braddocks -- Captain UK was Linda McQuillan, Captain Airstrip-One was named George Smith, and, heck, one version of Faiza Hussain was Captain Britain (which happened in an awesome tie-in to Age of Ultron).

[beyondthefringe]

That Avengers whatever issue written by Al Ewing was one of my earliest exposures to the man and his most excellent writing.

I just feel like the whole Captain Britain Corps things has been a little too unnecessarily focused on Brian as the One True Awesomest King of Everything Captain Britain when he used to be a piece in a larger puzzle.

But I love weird alternates like we saw in earlier stories, both pre- and during Excalibur.

[obsidianwolf]

To be fair if a world already has a Captain Brittain and then spawns another AU there's probably a better than average chance they'll already be the same one in that time line when it spawns. It probably explains why we see a lot of Brain Braddocks in timelines close by 616. If you jumped a few million alternate universes away where the divergence point was far farther in the past you might get clusters of very different folks.

Of course the real reason is that Brain Braddock is who most folks think of when they think Captain Brittan so he's the easiest way to short hand an AU version.

[deh_tommy]

I think because they found a near-perfect enough candidate in the Braddocks already, they got lazy and figured that’d be easier to test a reality’s Braddock and look for more worthy Captains should said Braddock fail than to constantly search for new Captains à la the Green Lanterns.

That’s kind of genius in a lazy way.

[gnarll]

I don't think either one of them are mutants. Betsy was in a mutant body for a long time though.

[mastermahan]

No, original Betsy was a mutant. I'm a bit surprised no one's ever retconned Brian into being a mutant, given how his older brother and twin both are. A Claremont issue even declared Brian and Betsy are immune to each other's powers, despite his being magical.

[scorntx]

Reading only the tie-ins to this swordfest, and therefore not experiencing the series as a whole, it just feels a lot like a lot of Excalibur has the cast being nigh-perpetually angry and irrational with one another, or just in general.

And it's not a good look on them.

[coldfury]

I am a little pleasantly surprised that an X-Men event has a non-Mutant as one of their 'Swords'.

[deh_tommy]

Man, this issue really soured me on both the book and the characters.

Not shown in the scans, but after cruelly conjuring and then splintering pocket realities to construct his own private Corps, Jamie flat out MURDERS ONE OF THE CAPTAIN BRITAINS. And gets away scott free! No one points out how fudged up everything he’s doing is!

That’s a tried and true arc of the hero proving the haters wrong, but in her insistence that she’s worthy of keeping the moniker of Captain Britain, Betsy’s gone and proven exactly why she isn’t. If she can’t be Captain Britain, no one can. She’s petulant, spiteful, arrogant, acts more for the sake of Krakoa than she does Britain. And that’s not getting into how she treats poor Brian. She knows he’s struggling with his recent bout with mind control and his failure of the test, and she knows she never went through the test herself, but she acts like such a jerk to him when all he does is try to support her. Heck, she didn’t even want the position at the start, why’s she so desperate to cling to the title now?

So the whole infighting thing was part of the plan? What about the parts where Saturnyne wasn’t watching? Heck, what WAS the plan? Get the sword? Saturnyne was giving them the sword to begin with! And “humble servant to my family’s kingdom”? That’s not Jamie’s kingdom, Brian. Krakoa unlawfully usurped the place and installed him as a puppet leader. Then again, given he’s wielding the Sword of Might, I suppose Krakoa’s imperialism is fitting for the kind of Britain said sword represents.

Again, I reiterate: screw Betsy, screw the Braddocks, screw that • --Å-- •rsehole for causing all this and screw Krakoa.

[thezmage]

So is everybody just standing there waiting for the rest to show up or...?