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X-Lapsed Origins – Marvel Super-Heroes (UK) #382 (1982)


Marvel Super-Heroes (UK) #382 (February, 1982)

“Against the Realm”
Writer – Dave Thorpe
Art – Alan Davis
Letters – Jenny O’Connor
Colors – Helen Nally
Edits – Paul Neary
Cover Price: 63p

Well, here’s a familiar cover to those of us who picked up the semi-recent TRUE BELIEVERS reprint focusing on Saturnyne during the build-up to the massive and bloated Ecks of Tens crossover event.


It kinda makes her look like a looming threat, dunnit?

Hmm… well, the opening chapter of that reprint painted her in a much more sympathetic light… wonder if we’re about to have any interdimensional shoes drop!

Let’s find out!


We open on a kind of clunky exchange between Captain Britain and the Status Crew.  Brian informs them that they’re under arrest… then immediately asks what authority they have.  I think maybe a word balloon was attributed to the wrong fella in one of those panels.  
Whatever the case, the Crew start blasting at our hero who grabs Ms. Opal Luna to protect within his forcefield.  While this fracas continues, other Crew Members pull up a scanning monitor to get all the deets on Beautiful Brian… which seems pretty weird, but turns out to be effective enough in learning what they need to know.  I guess?


By now, the Avant Guard are back in the brouhaha, and they use their umbrella guns to blast open some rips in the space-time continuum to suck in a pair of Status Crewsters.  The remaining Crew-dudes don’t take kindly to that… and make swiss cheese out of the umbrellamen.


They then attempt to put hands on the Interdimensional Witch Queen… which, doesn’t go well for them.


Elsewhere, Captain Britain is being dogpiled by the bad guys… who just keep on coming.  It’s almost as though they’re multiplying.  Brian is zapped by a vibration ray, and beaten down with the Crewsters’ billy clubs…


… until he digs deep and powers his way out!  Unfortunately, by now, he’s completely drained of his power.  One of the Status Crew takes this opportunity to get the Captain in his sights… however, before he can pull the trigger, Brian’s loyal friend Jackdaw dives into the line of fire — and is rendered into ash!


Captain Britain slumps to the ground defeated… while Saturnine nags him for being an idiot.  Way to show some sensitivity for a fella who just lost his drunken elf friend, ya jerk!



This was a pretty action-packed chapter, wasn’t it?  Kind of a blasty break in the “high concept” stuff we’ve been dealing with up to this point… which is neither good or bad, but an interesting aside, I suppose.

I guess our main takeaway ought to be the apparent death of Jackdaw.  It’s been many a year since I’ve last visited these stories… but, I’m not sure this is a permanent “offing” of our sloshy li’l elf friend.  If it is… it’s a decent enough way to give him a heroic exit, sacrificing himself to save his Beautiful Blonde British bro Brian.  That said, I’m pretty sure we won’t be mourning long.

We do learn a little bit about what this chapter calls the “Secrets of Captain Britain”, which all have to do with his costume and helmet.  I suppose that’s handy to know — we also learn via that scan that Brian is genetically advanced.  We’ll be talking more about that as we enter into the Alan Moore chapters not too long from now.

Overall – a fun and sort of surprisingly violent chapter – but, as we’ve learned over the course of all these years analyzing comics – it’s often the stories that we have no problems with that give us the least to dig into and discuss.  Next time out, we’ll be wrapping up the first issue of X-Men Archives (July, 1995) with the seventh chapter of our dive into the early Captain Britain.

NEXT CHAPTER: Faces of Britain

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