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Friday Recommendation – Brit

By | June 4th, 2010
Posted in Columns | % Comments

My love of all things that include the words “creator” “owned” “Robert” and “Kirkman” should come as a surprise to no one (except for Haunt…for the life of me I can’t get into it.) While being FAR from his most absurd creator owned character (that award goes to Battle Pope which, rest assured, will get a full recommendation from me once I track down and read the last three trades), Brit has become a bit of an underdog character within the Kirkmanverse in recent years. However, given his prominence in the upcoming Guardians of the Globe mini-series (out this August on Image), I figured now would be a decent time for a look back on Brit’s publication history prior to his becoming a supporting character in Invincible and the leader of the Guardians of the Globe.

For those keeping score at home…the Brit ongoing breaks down into three trades: Old Soldier, AWOL and FUBAR. Old Soldier (Volume 1) contains the three oversized one-shots written by Kirkman with the first two drawn by long time Kirkman collaborator Tony Moore and the third drawn by Cliff Rathburn. These extended length yarns not only introduce us to Brit, the Kirkmanverse’s first ever senior citizen super hero, and his supporting cast (including his stripper wife, his bumbling government agent best friend who also happens to be an android and the very same shady government agency that forms the backbone of most adventures in the Kirkmanverse), but also sees Brit get nuked, fight a Yeti, bite a dude’s head off, get married (again), stop an alien invasion, get betrayed and experimented on by his employers and become a father. As if being completely invulnerable, resistant to aging and owning his own strip club weren’t enough, Kirkman also saw fit to apply the gruff, trash-talking uber-badass formula into the mix as well. Mixed with a healthy portion of high action and adult situations, the result is a more than entertaining first taste of the character.

Both AWOL (Volume 2) and FUBAR (Volume 3) contain the 12 issues that made up the short-lived Brit ongoing and continued the high action, absurd espionage angle of the first volume with one major change: Kirkman himself stepped back into a more “executive producer-esque” editing role, leaving the writing duties up to Bruce Brown. However, Brown filled Kirkman’s oversized shoes perfectly, not only nailing every character’s personality and mannerisms, but writing some of the most absurd comic book fare I’ve seen in a good long while. Volume 2 alone includes Brit dying, coming back, dying again, coming back again (all over the course of four issues), the introduction of Brit’s similarly powered and named sister and her sentient energy companion Becky, flying sharks (and piranhas!), monster platypi and Brit once again getting screwed over by the government, all wonderfully illustrated once again by Rathburn

FUBAR (Volume 3) brought us new series artist Nate Bellegarde and begins not only tying all dangling plot threads together, but tying Brit into the larger Kirkmanverse with appearances by none other than Invincible, Tech Jacket and The Astounding Wolf-Man. Using the plot device of the fight against and defeat of a new, somewhat-surprising-but-not-really-all-that-surprising big bad as the framework of these final six issues, Brown manages to not only bring Brit’s solo adventures to a close in a satisfactory way, but does so with just as much creative, foul mouthed vitriol as all the issues that preceeded it. Michael Bay WISHES he could make explosions and sexual situations that legitimate. Wrapping up with a confrontation with his long lost brother, Brit proves his resolve and dedication to his family and his friends, two characteristics that make up great characters and even greater stories. Plus we see him beat his brother in the face with his invulnerable son…and that’s just hilarious.

High action, thrilling espionage, big explosions, excessive amounts of boob and geriatric super heroes…not bad for a book about a man named Brittany.

Joshua Mocle is actually three ducks in a man costume. To read his non-comic-centric blabbering, check out thoughtgrenade.


//TAGS | Friday Recommendation

Joshua Mocle

Joshua Mocle is an educator, writer, audio spelunker and general enthusiast of things loud and fast. He is also a devout Canadian. He can often be found thinking about comics too much, pretending to know things about baseball and trying to convince the masses that pop-punk is still a legitimate genre. Stalk him out on twitter and thought grenade.

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