Okay, bear with me here: this one's kind of odd.
Remember back when Chuck Austen was writing Avengers? At the time it seemed like some bit of fin de siecle madness, whereas now you may well long for the days of Austen and roses, but I digress. Anyway, in one of his more confusing choices, Austen had Brian Braddock take on the role of 'Not Captain Britain Anymore' and pass the powers and abilities of Captain Britain, as well as his older costume, on to Kelsey Leigh, a young mother of two who could never reveal her true identity as Captain Britain or her kids would die or something. There's a reasonably coherent review of an intensely incoherent story here if you're interested.
Anyway, considering that this was a Chuck Austen storyline, I began to try and think like Chuck Austen in order to understand it. I don't recommend doing that: the cost in liquor alone was stupendous and I didn't know that much cocaine existed, much less that it would require that many prostitutes to ingest it. (Note: I am not implying that Chuck Austen drinks heavily, does cocaine or hires prostitutes, merely that I couldn't think of another way of approaching a state of Chuck Austen-hood myself. I'm not as imaginative as he is.) Anyway, once I'd reached the proper state of Austentation, I began to feel as thought a thick cloud of confusion and doubt had been torn away from me and it was all suddenly, beautifully clear.
In a brilliant move of political satire, Chuck Austen realized what he had to do to highlight the unusual and 'special' relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom in the past two years, especially that between our leaders. Being that he was writing a comic book with the ultimate icon of America itself in it, he had half the formula. So he decided to bring Captain Britain into the Avengers, but he realized that in order to tell the story he wanted to tell, he'd have to either make some changes to the way both characters had been portrayed up until this point, or he'd have to change one of the characters significantly enough so that it wouldn't be as big a shock. His choice of Kelsey Leigh as Captain Britain (and her choice of the sword, which has always been the wrong choice in every other version of Captain Britain's origin, which was a pointed political message if you have sufficent Austenosity to see it... sword = bad, therefore Kelsey = bad decision) made it so that Austen could move towards his ultimate goal. By having her children moved to the mansion but making it so Captain Britain could not reveal herself to them, a situation was created where she would have to turn to someone for comfort... and who makes the most suitable rock on which to lean out of all the Avengers? Who, devoid of children of his own, has always adopted surrogates like Buchanan Barnes and Jack Monroe? Why yes, Captain America.
So you see, if Chuck Austen's run had continued, I firmly believe he intended to show Captain America and Captain Britian engage in a complicated affair that would have served his need to make a political statement about US/British relations. Which is why he had to make Captain Britain a woman, otherwise that would have been a little further than Marvel was prepared to go, I think.
A missed opportunity in 2004. (Or perhaps a dodged bullet. Or maybe nothing more than me being a jerk.) If I come up with any more of these... like, say, the missed opportunity of Identity Crisis, where we could have found out that the new Captain Boomerang is in fact the son of the Reverse Flash's body with Hal Jordan's mind in it and Zatanna's body with Star Sapphire's mind in it.
Seriously, check out Justice League of America 166-168 if you don't believe me. All the clues are there.
Posted by Matt Rossi at January 2, 2005 7:31 PM