Given the events in Woolwich yesterday – and here I’m speaking less of the horrific murder, and more of the ugly response which followed – it’s no surprise that this page, from Avengers Assumble #15AU, has been making the rounds online. In it, Captain Britain, a Marvel hero from the 1970s, relinquishes his title to Dr Faiza Hussain, an Islamic woman of Pakistani heritage. It is all that is right about modern Britain, from English writer Al Ewing (art by Butch Guice, inked by Rick Magyar and Tom Palmer, and coloured by Frank D’Armata):
Hussain was originally introduced to the Marvel universe in 2008 by writer Paul Cornell and artist Leonard Kirk. Cornell, who is most famous for his work on Doctor Who, writing the episodes Father’s Day, Human Nature and Family of Blood, was brought in to revamp Captain Britain, who had been languishing in obscurity for over a decade. In the process, he created a rich supporting cast for the dated hero, including Faiza, the viewpoint character for the series. (It also features a shapeshifting alien who thinks he’s John Lennon, it’s all-round good stuff.)
Speaking about her at the time, Cornell – who is himself a Christian, and is married to a vicar – said:
She’s very into mainstream British young woman culture. She’s on Facebook, she reads celebrity gossip magazines, but her biggest fan rush is for British superheroes, who also pop up in those magazines. She knows about them all, she had Knights of Pendragon wallpaper when she was a kid (Or insert apt reference for Marvel time)…
I have two aims here: to make her a real person and not someone who has to represent the entire British Muslim world all the time – I think superheroes are too prone to being standard bearers for whole communities – and to make her an everyday religious person who you won’t hear anything religious from until it would naturally come up.
Although a critical success, the series was cancelled due to low sales after a little over a year. Captain Britain was used in an Avengers series, but there’s been no room for Faiza until now.
Writing on Tumblr, where the issue has taken off since the Woolwich attack, Al Ewing adds:
This was a thing I thought up in the shower, just a thing that seemed really obvious. Captain Britain knows he’s going to die, who does he pass the torch to? Faiza. Duh. Honestly, who else would it be? In any circumstances?She’s NHS. Come on.
Sadly, due to the contortions of comics continuity, the issue in which Faiza accepts the mantle of Captain Britain actually exists in an alternate timeline the effects of which have already been undone in the wider series. But don’t let that stop you from reading the whole comic; the story of a Muslim woman of Pakistani heritage becoming the living embodiment of all that is British may not be a story which “matters” in the comic’s world, but it’s certainly one which matters in ours.
Content from our partners
Related
