Shelf Bound Auction: Day 10 – CAPTAIN BRITAIN: THE GUNS OF AVALON!

This auction is now closed.

The bookcase purge for charity continues! You can see a complete list of all auctions here, in chronological order starting with the latest, here. Full auction details are included at the end of the article, but to bring the new folks up to speed real quick:

Every weekday until Friday, June 5th, we publish a new Shelf Bound article announcing a bind or bound set up for auction.

Each bind auction’s bidding starts when its article is published and ends 72 hours later, so today’s auction will close at 3 PM EST on May 11, 2020.

Bids must be posted in an item’s comment section to be considered for that item; highest bid posted before close of auction wins.

Bids from outside the U.S. are welcome, although shipping outside the U.S. may incur additional fee.

The winning bidder emails me (greg at multiversity comics dot com) to verify donation particulars, then makes the donation and send me verification.

I send out the bind.

Everyone wins.

30 weekdays. 34 binds. All proceeds going to charity. Sound good? Let’s get to it!

CAPTAIN BRITAIN: THE GUNS OF AVALON AND OTHER STORIES

Written by: Paul Cornell, Al Ewing
Drawn by: Leonard Kirk, Pat Oliffe, Trevor Hairsine, Mike Collins, Alan Davis
Inked by: John Livesay, Mark Farmer
Colored by: Brian Reber
Lettered by: Dave Lanphear

Published by: MarvelMAX | Marvel Comics

Collecting:

• Wisdom #1-6 (Jan 2007 – July 2007)
• Captain Britain and MI:13 #1-15 (Aug 2008 – Sept 2009)
• Captain Britain and MI:13 Annual #1 (Aug 2009)
• Spitfire OS (Oct 2010)
• Captain Britain and the Mighty Defenders #1-2 (Sept 2015 – Oct 2015)

Additional Material: None

Bind Details:

• Oversewn binding
• Sky Blue Arrestox cover material
• Black/white headbands
• White endpapers
• Page edges trimmed

Signatures: None

Sketches: None

Bound by: Herring & Robinson Bindery.

Captain Britain has always been one of my favorite characters. From seeing him in New Mutants Annual #2 and then later in Excalibur (with a stop-off in issue #11 of the Marvel UK Daredevils series, featuring a menacing cover of an unconscious Cap being held by the faceless killing machine The Fury!), I’ve always had a spot-spot for the United Kingdom’s chosen champion and the heroes he fought alongside.

Enter Paul Cornell and his Wisdom mini for MarvelMAX. That series’ main character, Pete Wisdom, was a cigarette-smoking mutant spook for British Intelligence introduced during Warren Ellis’s run on Excalibur. He was interesting during that run, but subsequent writers never really seemed to have a handle on what made him tick. Cornell was the first writer post-Ellis to make Wisdom a compelling character to me, and his limited series was a great mash-up of UK sci-fi and fantasy. Not only that, it was successful enough to spawn an ongoing series during the Secret Invasion event that expanded on the cast and scope of the book.

Fifteen issues and an Annual may have been all the market would allow for Captain Britain, but man, those issues were great. Skrulls, demons, Excalibur (the sword), vampires, magic, space galleons . . . I could go on and on. My favorite legacy of the series is the introduction of Faiza Hussain, a new character on par with Kamala Khan, IMO. She’s so good I made sure to add the two-issue Secret Wars mini written by Al Ewing that she headlined. Of course, being drawn by Alan Davis didn’t hurt — and how can you have a book about any iteration of Captain Britain without Alan Davis involved somehow?

Unfortunately, this bind falls just short of being the complete Paul Cornell MI:13 collection because while I did remember to include the Spitfire oneshot, I somehow managed to NOT include the short story from The Age of Heroes by Cornell and series regular artist Leonard Kirk. Mea culpa.

Why You Should Bid

Aside from the fact these are really entertaining superhero comics, reaching the level of “so good it’ll inevitably be canceled because we can’t have nice things . . ..” I’m not sure Marvel would ever do a complete MI:13 omnibus in this manner due to the Wisdom series being a Mature Readers book while the main series isn’t. There’s nothing super-explicit in the mini so it’s possible, but that might be one of the things keeping a big collection off the store shelves.

But there’s another reason you should bid on this book, besides it’s awesomeness: I reached out to Cornell prior to this and he has graciously agreed to write an inscription for the book as if he were signing it at a show!

Logistics could still shift a bit on this, but the plan is that once the donation is made, I will send Cornell the winner’s address and he will write & sign a card to be mailed back to the winner. That cardcan then be either kept with the book or pasted inside the front cover or a variety of other options. So the book doesn’t have a signature NOW, but it looks like it’s getting one soon. Maybe yours!

So you COULD take the time & effort to track down issues and turn them into your own book via a binder using the techniques & approaches we cover every month in Shelf Bound . . .

OR

you could bid on the bind we’re auctioning today, get the benefit of someone else doing all that work for you, get a Paul Cornell inscription plate, AND do some good for the comics community we all love in the process!

Starting Bid: $25
Auction Ends: May 11, 2020 at 3 pm
Proceeds Benefit: The Hero Initiative

AUCTION FINE PRINT

• This auction ends 72 hours after the date & time of this article’s posting.
• Bids MUST be placed as comments below to be valid.
• DO NOT TRY BIDDING FOR THE BOOK BY REPLYING TO THE ANNOUNCEMENT TWEET!!!!! BIDS SENT IN THIS MANNER WILL BE IGNORED!!!!!
• Highest bid posted before the end of the auction wins. The winning bidder has 24 hours to contact me via twitter or email (see below) to set up payment. If contact is not made in this timeframe, the winning bid is invalidated and the next highest bid will be the winner.
• Winning bidder will make the donation in the amount of the winning bid to the agreed-upon charity. Upon successful donation and receipt of receipt (hehe) by me, the bind will be mailed out via Media Mail on the following Saturday unless an alternate schedule is agreed upon by all parties.
• Feel free to post any additional questions you may have prior to the end of the auction below; I will do my best to answer them ASAP. Additional and/or specific pictures of the bind are available on request.
• Thanks in advance to anyone bidding on these binds. Good luck!