Grant Morrison released a previously unpublished short story written for Marvel Comics decades ago – a short, humorous Captain Britain vignette that builds off Alan Moore's iconic run with the character in the 1980s. The story offers a look at the writer's early career, showcasing that their talent and creativity have been there from the very beginning.
Posted on their newsletter Xanaduum, Morrison's story features an alternate version of the nationalistic character Captain Britain, called Captain Anglia. As the author explained, [Anglia] was just one of many alternatives to "Captain Britain" that they pitched to Marvel.
Morrison noted that while most of these ideas never made it past the conceptual stage, one of them – Captain Granbretan – did manage to make it to the page. The Captain [Anglia] story shared by the author is the only other one they wrote, which readers can now enjoy after forty years of waiting.
With alternate versions of Marvel characters gathering together for a party held by Captain Anglia and his sister Bet, Morrison has ample room to poke fun at the tropes of superhero comics.
In their Xanaduum post, Morrison explained how the story came to be:
A favourite of mine when I was getting back into comics in the early ‘80s was the Captain Britain strip, written by Alan Moore and drawn by Alan Davis for Marvel UK’s The Daredevils comic and later the Captain Britain title...Eager to generate work for myself at the time, I suggested the idea of text stories based around the alternate universe Captain Britain characters.
While the idea was greenlit by Marvel UK, Morrison only produced two of the vignettes, with only one appearing in publication. Now, Morrison has shared the previously unpublished second story, entitled “CAPTAIN ANGLIA in Bri and Bet’s Big Garden Party” for the first time in over four decades. Though it is a very short humor piece, it still contains many ideas that are pure Grant Morrison. As an insight into their early career in comics, it represents an undeniably fascinating piece of primitive work.
Morrison introduced the story this way:
Inspired yet again by Monty Python’s ever-giving ‘Bicyclerepairman’ sketch, it depicts a world where Captain Anglia and his sister Bet are England’s Royal Family, as well as being superheroes in a world where everyone is a superhero.
Copy edit: they couldn't keep the character name consistent