Comic Book Review Captain Britain When Slaymaster Strikes
A good thriller spoilt by a robot octopus, piranha fish and sharks all being used at once – don’t you just hate it when that happens?
COMIC BOOK REVIEW CAPTAIN BRITAIN WHEN SLAYMASTER STRIKES 1977 (2009 Reprint). Marvel.
One of the more imaginative Captain Britain adventures, pitches him against a formidable assassin, Slaymaster, and the British police who assume Britain is responsible for the killer’s crimes.
The treacherous Slaymaster kills collectors of weaponry, vintage cars, and even comic book collectors, using their favourite obsessions as a weapon against them. A Mr Archer, weapons collector, is killed with a bow and arrow for example.
Slaymaster is also a master of disguise, posing as the daughter of one of his victims (Archer), to trap Braddock (Captain Britain) at the crime scene, Britain finds himself desperately trying to clear his name and always one step behind the murderer who always manages to kill his victims.
The Slaymaster story draws Captain Britain closer to the existing Marvel pantheon of heroes, when he fights the villain in a wax-work museum dedicated to the comics, with Slaymaster posing as Spiderman’s recurring bad guy, Electro. A wax effigy of Spiderman is used as a weapon in this sequence.
After a genuinely thrilling first half of the story, the second half sinks into silliness with Slaymaster using the collected spoils to bribe a group of businessmen who hope to bankrupt Britain by withdrawing investments in any British products. The negotiations take place on Slaymaster’s ship, from which he tries to kill Captain Britain in the most preposterous double method ever presented. A/. He has the hero attacked by a giant robot octopus, which renders the good Captain unconscious underwater. B/. Instead of leaving the octopus to finish him off as it holds him helpless. Slaymaster has the robot drag him on board the ship to leave him to drown in a flooding ballast tank (the ship is really a submarine), and throws in a shoal of piranha fish for good measure. This is simply preposterous, as he had the hero bang to rights and helpless enough in the open sea. Oh yes, then he has sharks on board the sub too, which seem about to finish of Slaymaster himself by the time the Captain has cleaned up the whole affair.
What starts off as a well-controlled story soon goes into over-kill, and mindless action set pieces? As with many Captain Britain adventures this was a lost opportunity, but Slaymaster is a genuinely impressive character, worthy of a comeback from the Jaws of the sharks he seems to be doomed to die by.
Arthur Chappell
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