Publication History
The idea for the series grew out of Cornell's first Marvel MAX limited series Wisdom, which is centered around Pete Wisdom and MI: 13. Editor Nick Lowe said, "I loved working with Paul on Wisdom and wanted to expose more readers to his writing."
In August 2007 it was announced that Cornell was going to take over writing New Excalibur, another series with close links to MI: 13, but, over time, the project morphed into a new series. Cornell explained, "I think there have been so many Excaliburs lately that Nick just wanted to underline that this is a fresh start. And it shows that we have a purpose firmly in mind. And it spotlights Cap, which is fine by me."
The New Excalibur team was wound up in the 2007 crossover mini-series X-Men: Die by the Sword and the major Marvel summer event of 2008, Secret Invasion, was used as a launchpad for the new Captain Britain and MI: 13 series, much like how the fallout of the 2005 summer event, House of M, was used to launch New Excalibur which after issue #4, separated from the event to become an ongoing series.
To help keep the series on schedule after the completion of the first story arc, Pat Olliffe and Paul Neary took over the art duties for issue #5 (the prologue to second storyline Hell Comes to Birmingham) from Leonard Kirk and inker Jesse Delperdang. Paul Cornell has stated that Kirk is with the series "for the duration". Michael Bair, with Jay Leisten and Craig Yeung, took over from Delperdang in issues 7 and 8 before Jay Leisten, at first with Cam Smith, took on the inking duties.
Rumors that the title might have been cancelled, when sales dropped after the Secret Invasion tie-in ended, dropping from estimates of 36,805 to 22,185 by issue #7, were denied by a Marvel spokesman who revealed plans for numerous upcoming storylines, including appearances by Doctor Doom, Dracula and the return of Meggan.
Doom and Dracula feature in the third storyarc "Vampire State" which runs for six issues and an annual.
Outside of the comic series, several members of the team make cameo appearances in Mighty Avengers #22-23, and Paul Cornell wrote an in canon Twitter micro-blog page as Captain Britain for a while, where Captain Britain describes character interactions and missions that take place off-panel between storyarcs.
On May 19, 2009 Paul Cornell announced that issue #15 would be the last one saying:
| “ | while we didn’t know this would be the last arc until comparatively recently, I had it in mind that it was possible it would be from the time I started plotting it. Indeed, the end of this arc marks the end of what I had planned for the book when I started. One of the images right at the finish is what I always felt I was heading towards, and I’m very pleased I got there. | ” |
After the end of the series, the final battle from The Guns of Avalon story makes an appearance during a scene from Cornell and Kirk's following series Dark X-Men. Marvel announced that Cornell and Kirk would reunite to write an MI:13 story in the first issue of the Age of Heroes anthology limited series which would be followed by a Spitfire one-shot written by Cornell.
Read more about this topic: Captain Britain And MI13
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