WHAT IF?: Captain Britain

The theme last week on the ComicTwart blog was WHAT IF?, where the artists all drew something from a project they'd do if they ran Marvel Comics. It was such a great theme I couldn't help but try my hand at a piece along the same lines, featuring one of my favorite Marvel characters, Captain Britain.

As I mentioned in my long post yesterday, I spent a lot of time early in my career pitching projects that I could write to anyone who would listen, and the closest I ever came to getting one off the ground was a Captain Britain mini-series at Marvel, with Guy Davis on board as the artist. This was right as Marvel had put Grant Morrison on the X-Men, and they were open to a lot of new directions for their stable of characters. And Guy and I had planned out a pretty radical new direction for Brian Braddock.

Unfortunately, our editor was suddenly let go before we started work on the first issue and the project got dropped, but Guy had already turned in a radical redesign of CB's costume that would have played in perfectly with our plans for the character, which included him finding Excalibur and becoming tied directly to the Arthur legend.

Years later, Paul Cornell played with some of the same ideas in his much-missed Captain Britain and MI:13 series, but I'd still love a chance to write the story I'd developed for Guy. The chances of that ever happening are slim to none, but in honor of the ComicTwart gang, here's my own rendition of Guy's Captain Britain redesign.

The gloves look way cooler when Guy draws them.

p.s. And this is the second time I've been involved with a redesign on Captain Britain. The first was for the TimeSlip project spear-headed by my old friend, Jim Krueger. When he asked me to submit an alternate universe redesign of any Marvel character I wanted, there was only one character I wanted to do -- Captain Britain.

Sketchbook: NEVERMEN

A quick sketch and color experiment featuring one of the Nevermen from Guy Davis and Phil Amara's THE NEVERMEN. I've been an admirer of Guy's work for a long time now, and I constantly refer to projects like THE NEVERMEN and his own THE MARQUIS for story-telling inspiration. No one packs a lot of story-telling into a page better than Guy.

My Favorite Things

I've been following Guy Davis' work since his BAKER STREET days at Caliber Comics. I loved the way he and Gary Reed mixed my childhood hero Sherlock Holmes with a punk/proto-goth aesthetic to create something new and unique. And boy... was it unique. And very, very cool.

After I'd broken into the industry (through the very same Caliber Comics), I found out Guy was doing the SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE series at DC's new Vertigo line. Needless to say, I picked up every issue, with the exception of some that Guy didn't draw, which is ironic considering a few years later, I was one of the artists brought in to draw a fill-in story arc.

Somewhere along the way, Guy launched his own book, THE MARQUIS. It's jumped from publisher to publisher (Caliber to ONI to Dark Horse), but I've been following it from day one. Guy's work on any title is worth picking up and pouring over, but his work on THE MARQUIS is just exceptional. Not to mention the writing, which is as good as it gets. Always nice to find an artist who writes as well as he draws. It's becoming a rare combination these days.

As much as I love Guy's work on BPRD and other HELLBOY tie-ins (and boy do I love it), I wish he could just do THE MARQUIS full-time. Every time I hear a rumour about a new mini-series, I get ridiculously excited, even if I know the other work will take precedence over his creator-owned material. Still, it gives me something to look forward to whenever I go into the local comic book shop. You just never know when you'll come across a random MARQUIS one-shot that will totally make your year.

Now I hear there's a new collected edition of all THE MARQUIS material to date coming soon from Dark Horse. Can't wait. Even if I already have everything in the collection, my old editions are looking pretty threadbare by now. Whenever I run into a storytelling problem, or need a little inspiration, my old copies of THE MARQUIS are one of the places I always turn to for solutions.

On a personal note, I came very, very close to writing a book for Guy to draw at one of the 'Big Two'. Unfortunately, we lost our editor and the project fell apart. It's been almost 9 years since then, and I'm STILL in mourning. And yet, it's probably for the best... it would have been yet another project that kept Guy from working on THE MARQUIS.