Captain Britain and MI:13 #7 – Review

By Paul Cornell (Writer), Leonard Kirk (Penciler), Michael Bair (Inker), and Brian Reber (Colorist)

Captain Britain and MI:13 continues to roll out, and I keep buying it. Though I’m not entirely sure why. Now that it’s no longer part of the Secret Invasion, it feels cut adrift from the rest of the Marvel Universe, and the cast is, let’s face it, a collection of B-listers. Captain Britain is still a goody-two-shoes dweeb, Peter Wisdom continues to confuse me (Is he Peter Pan or not? If not, why should I care about him?), and the Black Knight is still wearing that damn helmet but not the damn armor. I have no problem with superheroes not wearing costumes– I don’t miss Power Man’s yellow shirt, but if you’re going to be getting into sword fights, shouldn’t you wear some protection? As for the Spitfire/ Blade storyline, it is still completely unconnected to anything else going on in the book.

On the plus side, Plokta, maker of the Mindless Ones, is one of the creepiest villains to ever grace a comic book. He’s a white mask floating above a mass of cosmic protoplasm, and he’s not evil as much as completely and unabashedly selfish. His trick is to give his enemies a vision of their fondest wishes and waits until they’re entranced. He then sucks their magic powers to create more of those one-eyed golems that bedevil Dr. Strange from time to time.

The art is pretty good, but the writing lacks the sort of depth that would make me really care about the characters. I have to admit, I haven’t read Captain Britain since Alan Moore wrote him, so a lot of the details of the book don’t mean much to me, but I imagine a lot of readers are in the same situation. Cornell has the rest of this plot line to convince readers that he can make this book work, otherwise I don’t think it’ll be around much longer.

Grade: B-

– Andrew C. Murphy