As the UK's national superhero Captain Britain, Brian Braddock can fly at supersonic speeds, is possessed of enormous physical strength on a par with Thor, and has a force field that affords him nigh-invulnerability. From time to time, he also owns a scenic manor house with an intermittently psychotic organic supercomputer in its underground cave system that enjoys trying to take over the omniverse. But that just goes with the territory. Brian's admission into the official ranks of the Avengers is a fairly new development, but he has a long history of helping the world stave off disaster as well as fighting off massive hordes of heavily armed invading aliens, from the Dire Wraiths in "ROM: Spaceknight" to the hordes of Skrulls in the more recent Secret Invasion comics event. His 1980s run of Marvel UK comics created by Alan Moore, Alan Davis and Jamie Delano are some of the finest comics produced in the English-speaking world, presenting the Captain as a well-intentioned but constantly thwarted hero. Subsequent American writers utterly failed to get the point of the character and turned him into an alcoholic, wife-beating oaf. Then they wondered why readers didn't like him any more. Why he won't be in the Avengers movies: The people who make the MCU films don't show any particular tendency to dislike the British, so they might very well consider including Captain Britain, at least for a few seconds. Unfortunately, as part of their research, the movie executives will then take a look at some of Marvel's post-Moore/Delano comics featuring the captain and sadly conclude that the character is an unpleasant a*#$hole. Actually, he isn't - the issue is that successive American writers have insisted on projecting their personal prejudices onto Brian Braddock and have, by now, thoroughly poisoned the well.
Mike has lived in the UK, Japan and the USA. Currently, he is based in Iowa with his wife and 2 young children. After working for many years as a writer and editor for a large corporation, he is now a freelancer. He has been fortunate enough to contribute to many books on Doctor Who over the last 20 years and is now concentrating on original sci-fi & fantasy short stories, with recent sales including Flame Tree, Uffda, and The Martian Wave. Also, look for his contribution on Blake's 7 to "You and Who Else", a charity anthology to be released later this year.
You can find him on Tumblr at https://www.tumblr.com/blog/culttvmike
