So the news about Captain Britain and MI-13 coming to an end hit just as I was halfway through a reread of the Alans Moore and Davis’s seminal run, and I’m left with the distinct feeling that had Cornell and Kirk engaged more closely with the question of haircuts that their tenure may have had more longeivity, or at least been more enjoyable from my own valuable perspective.

MI-13 never reached the heights of Cornell and Hairsine’s brilliant Wisdom mini. Even that series’ latter issues, the weaker ones, were comparable with MI-13 at its best. And Kirk’s art, sitting halfway between Mark Bagley and Brian Hitch, never rose above merely adequate. Perhaps if MI-13 hadn’t been creatively hobbled by a no doubt sales boosting tie in with Secret Invasion things would have been different; Perhaps if Cornell had opted/been permitted not to stretch the second arc to five increasingly tedious issues, and stuck to the snappy, smart high concept format which had worked so well for Wisdom I would be sad to see MI-13 end, but given that I’d just had the pleasure of wallowing in a youthful Moore’s kaleidoscopic take on the titular character I can’t say that the news bothered me overmuch. Yes it was half decent, yes it was one of the better books on the racks, yes I want to be a cheer leader for Cornell’s work because when it’s good it’s very good, but I know what I want to see in a comic featuring Captain Britain, and MI-13 wasn’t supplying it.

I want to see is a lot more of this…

captain-britain-has-bad-hair

Bad hair

The centrality of haircuts is discussed at length after the jump