Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain #5: Thou Art More Near Thy Death

In the final issue of Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain, the story wraps up in a superpowered spy-thriller that resembles much like Ocean’s Eleven: a family-friends-lovers team up to take down the series’ villain to stop a war from happening that could destroy Britain and consequently much of earth. Opening up at the headquarters of Braddock Manor, S.T.R.I.K.E. assembles to walk through their plan of infiltrating Morgan Le Fay’s castle to shut down her and her coven’s operations and rescue Micromax. This issue is a nice wrap-up to the series with hints that more pages and panels were left desired to complete the story entirely.

Writing

The story by Tini Howard (Excalibur, Catwoman, Hack / Slash: Resurrection) was written well as a concluding issue for the story arc. There was a lot packed into the story, but overall the pacing didn’t seem to suffer too much from this. Jumping from the infiltration sequences to Betsy orchestrating behind the scenes, it reached a good balance to give enough story satisfactorily. However, trying to slow down from page to page would have been nice but hard to accomplish in this story. Howard incorporates sentimental, romantic scenes between Betsy and Rachel Summers that are nice but practical at the same time, given that they’re fighting for their lives. The carefully executed plan with Betsy invading Le Fay’s castle to stop her while Summers’ negotiations with the Furies to fight Doctor Doom and his Doombots were juxtaposed very well, much like you would expect if you were watching a spy movie (such as Mission: Impossible). Overall, even though the story had moments of teetering on the edge of feeling rushed, it was really enjoyable to read.

Artwork

The art by Vasco Georgiev (Dejah Thoris, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Batman: Urban Legends), colors by Erick Arciniega (Excalibur, The Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four), and lettering by Arian Maher (Detective Comics, Hellions, Excalibur) were all done very well. The illustrations of everyone’s powers were engaging in visualizing, the framing of the panels was interesting, and the characters were exciting to see (especially when Jamie Braddock came onto the scene!). However, the struggles that some of the artwork had could be attributed more to the sense that the story needed a few more pages to pace it out a little more evenly. For example, the page where (SPOILER) Morgan Le Fay has her coven captures Betsy and then magically electrocute her was a great visual to have on a page. Still, there was a panel where Betsy went through that electrocution moment. In the very next panel, she’s whispering something to Morgan with a smile on her face felt a bit jarring. It would have done the pacing well to have a recovery panel to demonstrate the torture that she went through, but instead, it seems like it barely phased her.

Some of the colorings seemed to be a bit inconsistent regarding Betsy’s skin tones as well. In other scenes, she went from one shade of skin to a more pale version. It wasn’t clear if the coloring was due to lighting in the background or magic affecting her to explain this change. Other than those scenes, however, Betsy looked wonderful, and the colors on the pages were appealing.

Cover Art

The covers were drawn by Erica D’Urso (Red Sonja, Prison Witch, Disney Villains: Maleficent) and colored by Matt Wilson (The Wicked + The Divine, Wonder Woman, Paper Girls). It captures the end of the story beautifully, including the variants of Captain Britain from across the multiverse and even Captain Plumdragon, the dragon version of Captain Britain from Earth-2112. The color palette had an excellent range of colors that complement each other, and the lighting was nice to contrast the various colors on the multitude of characters. Although there were not many details on Betsy Braddock that could be a little disorienting at first, it appears to be drawn to highlight how she is one of many and that even though she’s at the center of the story, she’s not the only one.