{"id":9108,"date":"2023-05-31T22:59:11","date_gmt":"2023-05-31T21:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9108"},"modified":"2023-05-31T22:59:11","modified_gmt":"2023-05-31T21:59:11","slug":"betsy-braddock-captain-britain-4-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9108","title":{"rendered":"Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain #4 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>BETSY BRADDOCK: CAPTAIN BRITAIN #4<\/strong>
\n“Earth’s Most Furious”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Tini Howard<\/strong>
\nArtist: Vasco Georgiev<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Erick Arciniega<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Ariana Maher<\/strong>
\nDesign: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Sarah Brunstad<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1:<\/strong> Captain Britain and Askani under attack by Morgan Le Fey’s Furies and Dr Doom’s Doombots.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-4.<\/strong> Betsy Braddock and Tony Stark talk.<\/em><\/p>\n

This scene picks up from the end of the previous issue, with Betsy visiting Tony to ask for his help as “an expert on Morgan Le Fey”.<\/p>\n

“I went to Otherworld once upon a time. With Doctor Doom.”<\/strong> If this is meant to be referring to\u00a0Iron Man<\/em> vol 1 #150, then that was a time travel story, not a trip to Otherworld.<\/p>\n

“I dueled King Arthur somewhat recently.”<\/strong> In\u00a0Excalibur<\/em> #26 (which came out back in December 2021).<\/p>\n

“Terrible what happened to the West End.”<\/strong> Tony is referring the Fury attack last issue.<\/p>\n

PAGE 5.\u00a0<\/strong>Recap and credits.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

PAGE 6.\u00a0<\/strong>Rachel discusses the Sacred Timeline with the Askani librarian.<\/em><\/p>\n

I have no idea what this library is meant to be – we haven’t seen it before in this series. From page 8, it seems to be somewhere that Rachel can mentally project herself.<\/p>\n

“Askani – you seek the sacred timeline?”<\/strong> Given the Askani context, Howard is presumably referring not to the core sequence of events that the Time Variance Authority were trying to protect in the\u00a0Loki\u00a0<\/em>TV show, but rather to a line of dialogue from a flashback in Cable<\/em> #52 (1998). In the flashback, time traveller Ch’vayre recounts how he was sent back in time by Askani priestess Madame Sanctity. Sanctity is actually Tanya Trask, the daughter of the guy who created the Sentinels, who fled into the future with her mutant time travel powers. She specifically identifies herself to Ch’vayre as “guardian of the sacred timeline and high priestess of the Askani Church.”<\/p>\n

The notion of the “sacred timeline” here does have some parallels with the Loki<\/em> version, though. In Loki<\/em> (as I understand it) the “sacred timeline” wasn’t a single timeline as such but rather the basic pattern that all timelines were expected to adhere to in some degree. The talking book here seems to be making a point about most lives existing in multiple forms (“every existence in every form”), but Rachel being unique in the multiverse – a plot point from Chris Claremont’s Excalibur<\/em> that was stressed repeatedly in “Cross Time Caper” but never really went anywhere.<\/p>\n

“I know that this Askani title means I’ve caught up to some sort of prophecy…”<\/strong> Various minor characters in\u00a0Knights of X<\/em> made comments to this effect.<\/p>\n

The picture in the book shows Scott, Jean, Rachel and young Cable. Judging from the costumes, it’s early in the Krakoan era.<\/p>\n

PAGE 7.<\/strong> Data page, explaining the Askani record of souls in rather cryptic terms (but no more than is usual for Askani stuff). The page\u00a0seems<\/em> to be saying that “Askani” is the name of the talking book.<\/p>\n

Honestly, with one issue left to go in this series, I have reservations about the wisdom of pushing this complex storyline forward. But we’ll see.<\/p>\n

PAGES 8-9.<\/strong>\u00a0The Braddocks get ready to go out.<\/em><\/p>\n

PAGES 10-11.<\/strong>\u00a0The Braddocks arrive at the charity ball.<\/em><\/p>\n

“What about the rumours of another baby, Meggan?”<\/strong> Oh yeah, whatever happened about that? Way back at the first Hellfire Gala,\u00a0Excalibur<\/em> #21 and\u00a0Way of X<\/em> #3 both strongly imply that Meggan isn’t drinking alcohol because she’s pregnant. Nightcrawler certainly draws that conclusion. It’s never been mentioned again, and presumably the plot has been dropped.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>PAGE 12.\u00a0<\/strong>Data page. An interview with Betsy in\u00a0Woman<\/em> magazine. Once again, Marvel don’t seem to care much about checking whether these names are in use – the UK has had a\u00a0Woman<\/em> magazine since 1937. It describes itself as “the must-have weekly features and fashion magazine that inspired 40-plus women to discover new ideas and inspiration.” It’s the sort of thing you find in supermarkets next to the word searches.<\/p>\n

The Violet Velveteen<\/strong> was the club from Malice’s origin story in\u00a0Excalibur<\/em> #20.<\/p>\n

The Violet Swan\u00a0<\/strong>is, obviously enough, the member of the Captain Britain Corps who’s a swan; she shows up a lot in crowd scenes.<\/p>\n

Betsy’s “recent collaboration with the Avengers” is presumably the next scene.<\/p>\n

PAGE 13-17.\u00a0<\/strong>The Avengers help to defeat the Fury.<\/em><\/p>\n

Pretty self-explanatory, though I’m not at all clear what the point was of bringing in the Avengers.<\/p>\n

PAGES 18-19.<\/strong>\u00a0Jamie restores Mongibel.<\/em><\/p>\n

Doom acquired Morgan’s shrunken castle Mongibel in Excalibur<\/em> #23. Presumably the implication is that Jamie had some hand in shrinking it in the first place, or at least he’s been enlisted to restore it.<\/p>\n

“Felt bad about lettin’ ‘er get experimented on back when I was king!”<\/strong> Back in\u00a0Excalibur<\/em>‘s first year, Apocalypse was cheerfully experimenting on the captive Morgan while Jamie was his puppet king.<\/p>\n

Dr Doom\u00a0<\/b>seems<\/em> to be saying that there is some wider magic-related reason why Morgan Le Fay needs to be in Britain (though he doesn’t seem to suggest that anything more than that is important). Betsy interprets that as Doom backing up his lover on something trivial, but that would be wildly out of character for Doom – and to be fair, his own dialogue is much more in character.<\/p>\n

PAGES 20-23.<\/strong> The Braddocks yell at Jamie and make plans.<\/em><\/p>\n

Again, fairly self-explanatory. We’re told that Morgan will have to co-operate with “the land” in order to achieve her goals, and that this is why she needs some sort of Captain Britain on side. Presumably, with the Fury thing having come to absolutely nothing, that does indeed mean she’s stuck working with Betsy. It’s all very arbitrary, but that’s magic for you.<\/p>\n

PAGE 24.\u00a0<\/strong>Brian confronts the captive Fury.<\/em><\/p>\n

“That old Mothermind computer tried to tell me that the Fury of 238 had lost his identity in the new kingdom.”<\/strong> In the data page in issue #1, though the in-universe version will have been slightly different (our version had references to specific comics). The Fury of Earth-238 was the original Fury, which the data page claimed had become just one more Fury in the Everforge Furies’ hivemind.<\/p>\n

Describing Mothermind as “old” seems to suggest that it’s a rebranded\u00a0Mastermind.<\/p>\n

PAGE 25.\u00a0<\/strong>Trailers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. BETSY BRADDOCK: CAPTAIN BRITAIN #4 “Earth’s Most Furious” Writer: Tini Howard Artist: Vasco Georgiev Colour artist: Erick Arciniega Letterer: Ariana Maher Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen Editor: Sarah Brunstad COVER \/ PAGE 1: Captain Britain and Askani under attack by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9111,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9108\/revisions\/9111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}