Captain Britain: A Crooked World by Alan MooreMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Very much a nostalgia-fest for me as I read and loved these stories when they were originally published by Marvel UK. It has been many years since I last read this story and it was even better than I remembered it. It is just bursting with ideas. For example, way before the Civil War storyline was a twinkle in US Marvel's eye, Moore was writing about a government clamping down on superheroes and mutants (by concentration camps and killer bio-machines rather than a wimpy registration act). And talking of killer bio-machines, I could be wrong but I think The Fury pre-dates Cameron's The Terminator. How much I enjoyed this collection can be judged from my only criticism: the lettering on the early episodes looks a bit scrappy!
I grew up reading UK comics and was used to relatively short, weekly episodes but, on this re-reading, I am astonished at how much Moore packs into so few pages per issue. There's tragedy and comedy; magic and science; high concept and high camp. To add to the fun, Marvelman makes a brief cameo. The villains range from the morally questionable to the out and out mental. What makes it even more interesting is the line between good and bad is not always clear and we see Captain Britain wrestling with that very issue. Also, unlike most comic books, there is a genuine sense of peril; I wasn't convinced that my favourite characters would come out of the story alive.
I usually get annoyed by the padding at the end of these collections (early sketches, alternative covers etc.) but here the extras (including an article about Alan Moore) were generally interesting.
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
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