Captain Britain and MI-13 #8 Review

Creative Team

Inks: Michael Bair, Jay Leisten, Craig Yeung

Art Rating: 9 Night Girls out of 10
Story Rating: 9 Night Girls out of 10
Overall Rating: 9 Night Girls out of 10

Paul Cornell has taken a dysfunctional group of characters, removed one of the most interesting(a Skrull who impersonates John Lennon) and added Blade the Vampire Hunter to make an even more dysfunctional team. This team consists of Captain Britain, Pete Wisdom, the Black Knight, Farisa, and Spitfire (who is a vampire).

The team pulls together to help when a distress call comes in from Captain Midlands (an elderly version of the American hero-Capt. America). They confront an invasion by Plotka (the maker of the Mindless Ones in Dr. Strange). Plotka is more of a threat than the army of Mindless Ones. He has the ability to fulfill your greatest desire…in exchange for your soul. Captain Britain is tempted with the return of his lost wife-Meggan.

Even though this is part 3 of “Hell Comes to Birmingham”, I was able to easily follow the story. Paul Cornell first came to my attention through his scripts for the Dr. Who show. I expected his comics to be good and I was not disappointed.

Cornell writes stories with histories behind them. Plotka was able to come to Earth because of the team’s actions in a previous story. The Mindless Ones appeared in the old Stan Lee/Steve Ditko stories where Dr. Strange fought Dormammu. Just like in life, characters actions have consequences later in the series.

Enough can’t be said about Leonard Kirk’s art. The design of Plotka is inspired. He does as great a job drawing the special effects and action scenes as he does with the normal people.

One of my favorites from this issue was Blade’s papier mache sword. Normal swords cannot hurt demons. So Blade crafted a sword from the pages of magical books. Blade says the only drawback is if it rains. Papier mache swords do not hold up in the rain. This sounds like one of Grant Morrison’s concepts.

Highly recommended. I would suggest going back and picking it up from the start.