Published April 1984
Writer: Alan Moore
Penciler: Alan Davis
Inker: Alan Davis
What's Going On?
The Fury finally catches up with Captain Britain and starts attacking him. Cap doesn't have much fight left in him after the whooping he took from Jim Jaspers last issue, so he essentially plays the part of a rag doll here. In the process of beating the life out of the good Captain, The Fury accidentally runs into Jaspers. Jaspers doesn't like The Fury because he didn't create it, and The Fury doesn't like Jaspers because it struggled against its original programming (which kept it from killing the Jim Jaspers of Earth 238).
Sub-Plots, oh the Sub-Plots!
- Jim Jaspers, playing the part of a bored godling, decides to create life from dirt. The end result is the Crazy Gang.
- Saturnyne and Captain UK arrive on the scene, just in time to witness the Jaspers/Fury fight and take cover.
- Meanwhile, while overseeing the battle, Roma despairs, thinking that the multiverse is doomed. When she tries to get her father to explain things to her, Merlin falls dead.
Writing!
This is essentially an extended fight scene, so there isn't a whole lot of "writing" to look at in this issue. That's not a knock; Moore has clearly been building to this since he started his run, and it's pretty satisfying to see it come to fruition. I am starting to realize that we won't be seeing the traditional heroic ending to this story. Captain Britain seems almost incidental to the overarching plot of Jaspers v. Fury, and it seems unlikely that he will be the deciding factor in a story that is ostensibly about him.
Art!
Alan Davis clearly enjoys the reality-defying possibilities of the Jaspers/Fury fight, and that is fun to see on the page.
Retrospectively Amusing:
- Here's an evocative and bizarre set of captions that would never get past the editor nowadays:
Worth Noting:
- This is the first appearance of the Earth 616 version of the Crazy Gang. Since my only exposure to them had been through Davis' Excalibur runs, I never realized what a batshit crazy origin they actually have. I mean, they're Alice in Wonderland-themed villains, so I didn't think their origin would be "forced into a life of crime" or anything like that, but geez...
- Saturnyne uses the name of Mitras as a blasphemous expletive. So what? Well, Mitras is one of the various gods mentioned in old Conan comics, set in the Hyborean Age. I'm pretty sure that Conan (being a licensed character and all) was not set in the Earth 616 Marvel Universe, so the existence of one of the Hyborean gods on an alternate Earth (Saturnyne is from Earth 9) is a cool little Easter egg for an alternate reality that Alan Moore (and no one else, really) ever chose to explain fully.
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