This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post here on Balladeer’s Blog looks at the further adventures of Marvel’s Captain Britain when he was still published ONLY in the U.K.
CAPTAIN BRITAIN Vol 1 #37 (June 22nd, 1977)
Title: … And the Highwayman Came Riding, Riding
Villain: The Highwayman
Synopsis: Having returned to Earth after his adventures in the Otherworld, Captain Britain turns back into Brian Braddock. The next day he goes to the hospital to visit his girlfriend Courtney Ross. She was injured during Captain Britain’s battle with Lord Hawk a few issues back.
Brian, a graduate student in physics at Thames University, heads to see how Courtney is doing alongside his uni friend Jacko Tanner. On their way they come across a Silver Jubilee event for Queen Elizabeth II.
The event is crashed by a new supervillain called the Highwayman, who rides a high-tech motorcycle which uses laser cannons and other weaponry. The villain also wears a monocle that shoots energy blasts and wields a battle chain.
The Highwayman easily overcomes S.T.R.I.K.E. (the British version of S.H.I.E.L.D.) and its leader Lance Fortune in addition to all other security people. Meanwhile, Brian slips away to become Captain Britain, then starts battling the Highwayman himself with his new weapon the Star Sceptre. Continue reading
THE GERM GROWERS (1892) – Robert Potter wrote this work of “ancient” or vintage science fiction dealing with biological warfare and alien abductions. 
MICRONAUTS Vol 1 #29 (May 1981) 
Acroyear’s wife, Cilicia, condemns her husband for using the Worldmind against Karza, thus causing so much damage to Spartak that it is now uninhabitable. Even now, the survivors must be leaving the planet to find another home elsewhere in the Microverse/ Quantum Realm. Cilicia quits the Micronauts in disgust.
A MODERN DAEDALUS (1887) – By Tom Greer. No, the title’s not referring to James Joyce’s character Stephen Dedalus (sic) but this tale IS about Ireland. The main character is a young man named Jack O’Halloran, a recent college graduate who returns to his native Ireland. 
2. THE BOURNE IDENTITY (1980) 
LONGSHOT Vol 1 #1 (September 1985) 
At length, Longshot escapes through a random portal and ends up on Earth. We readers learn he has lost his memory and has two hearts and only three fingers and a thumb on each hand. His first superpower (aside from his incredible agility) is revealed to be incredible “luck” and that luck prevented his pursuers’ blaster fire from actually hitting him and instead hitting everything around him. 
A VOYAGE INTO TARTARY (1689) – The real author of this work is unknown. It is a fictional encounter with a lost race, advanced technology and more. It’s possible that the writer wanted anonymity due to his then-blasphemous attitudes toward religion. 
Superheroes have been huge in pop culture in recent decades. Will Eisner’s iconic superhero the Spirit – who debuted in June of 1940 – rose from the grave of his secret identity, Private Investigator Denny Colt, after his apparent death when he got saturated in some chemicals of the supervillain Doctor Cobra. 
GREATER THAN HUMAN STRENGTH – Taking this hero’s origin story at face value with no ret-conning necessary, when Denny Colt came to in his coffin he dug his way to the surface. It would require much more than the strength of a normal human to burst through the coffin lid AND force his way upward through six feet of soil. For all I know The Big Bang Theory guys may have once done a calculation on how much actual strength it would take to accomplish this feat. 
IN THE DEEP OF TIME (1897) – This story was written by George Parsons Lathrop, who also wrote the libretto for Walter Damrosch’s opera version of The Scarlet Letter. Though Lathrop credited an interview with Thomas Edison for the scientific concepts in this tale, it is NOT an Edisonade. In the Deep of Time is instead one of the many 19th Century stories about “present day” characters waking up in the far future. 
The multi-step procedure begins with Gerald being administered a drug that prepares his body for suspended animation, followed by another drug (mortimicrobium) that renders his body germ-free at all levels. Next, Bemis is placed in a glass cylinder at body temperature to “sleep” away the centuries. 
CAPTAIN BRITAIN Vol 1 #28 (April 20th, 1977) 
A very eccentric old professor, Robert Willard Scott, has retired from the university and lives alone with his hawks. When those birds die, Brian Braddock uses his scientific genius to construct a large hawk-shaped remote-controlled android to keep Professor Scott company. 
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