Rule Britannia
Revolutionary War is a 2014 crossover event published by Marvel Comics, revisiting many of the Marvel UK characters from the 1990s.Years after the eventual defeat of Mys-Tech, the Big Bad for most of the Marvel UK stories, some of their minions seem to be active again. Captain Britain and Pete Wisdom find themselves trying to reassemble a team of heroes and work out just what’s going on...
Revolutionary War contains examples of:
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: After Wisdom’s intervention, the Green Knight manifests to save the day… seemingly in the shape of a giant Mo Farah, beloved British Olympian.
- Alas, Poor Villain: The Psycho-Wraiths, demonic entities bound into artificial bodies by Mys-Tech. When Mys-Tech fell they were trapped in the lifeless, powerless robot forms. Once they get a surge of power and reactivate, they ask Dark Angel to kill them all before it happens again.
- The Atoner: Keller, freed from possession by Killpower and the Psycho-Wraith Prime at the end of Revolutionary War: Omega, tries to atone by helping Liger to find the rest of Kether Troop.
- Back for the Dead:
- Killpower, who returns as the tragic villain of the piece
- Technically, all of Mys-Tech’s board. When last seen, they were still immortals and a force to be reckoned with. Now they’re tortured souls in Mephisto’s hellish domain.
- Gregory, who’s promptly shot in the head when he betrays the Warheads.
- Gawain’s body is glimpsed in a flashback, torn in two at the waist. Then again, he’s a Pendragon... so death is sometimes complicated.
- Big Bad: Mephisto. Killpower does all the work and confronts the heroes, but Mephisto’s responsible for so much of the planning and manipulation that you can’t really class him as a Greater-Scope Villain.
- Boom, Headshot!: Liger promptly repays Gregory’s betrayal
- Continuity Nod: Death's Head brings the unconscious Captain Britain to Darkmoor Research Centre ("it's seen better days"), the site where the first Captain Britain story was set.
- Covers Always Lie: Among others, Gawain and Digitek are prominently pictured on the Revolutionary War: Alpha cover. Neither is a protagonist, and they only appear briefly in flashbacks.
- Face–Heel Turn:
- Killpower, abandoned in hell and corrupted by Mephisto.
- Gregory, in flashback - he’s the traitor who betrays the Warheads to Mys-Tech before their final battle.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Most of the Kether Troop Warheads in the final battle against Mys-Tech, shown in flashback. They know they’ll be trapped in hell, and they’re also determined that Colonel Liger will be saved from that fate.
- He's Back!: Colonel Liger
- Karma Houdini: Everything works out very well for Mephisto.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: After many years and many stories, the immortal sorcerers of Mys-Tech finally face a reckoning.
- Killed Mid-Sentence: In flashbacks, Gregory makes the mistake of gloating about his betrayal of the other Warheads. While he’s still standing next to them. Liger doesn’t give him an opportunity to finish the speech.
- Landmarking the Hidden Base:
- The Mys-Tech base that reactivates at the very start of the story is under Canary Wharf, and is disturbed by work on The London Underground Crossrail project.
- MI-13 have a base in the Shard, above London Bridge station. It’s not entirely clear how secret it is, though. Probably less so by the end of the series, after it’s the focal point of a demonic invasion.
- Mercy Kill: Hauer, Liger and Death's Head execute Killpower at his own request.
- Mythology Gag: As befits an event celebrating previous series, there are a few of them in there.
- The activation password for the trojan Death’s Head II sneaks into Necker’s Death’s Head 3.0 goons is “Overkill”. Overkill was also the anthology comic that serialised Death’s Head II and many other Marvel UK titles for the British market back in the 1990s.
- Flashbacks to the battle of London Bridge show that the Kether Troop Warheads had recruited a woman named Bo, “a refugee from Virago troop”. Liger’s narration notes that “I still shed a tear for what happened to them. They were so close to being the best of us.”. This is Bo’s first canon appearance - but Bodecia ‘Bo’ Kildare and Virago Troop would have been the protagonists of the 1993 Loose Cannons Warheads miniseries, which was cancelled by Marvel shortly before publication.
- S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Keller is another character who would have appeared in 1990s Marvel UK stories if the books hadn't been cancelled after scripts were written.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The Battle of London Bridge and the fall of Mys-Tech. There’s a glimpse of it in Revolutionary War, but that’s all. Mys-Tech’s board were the Big Bad of the Marvel UK line - immortal, powerful sorcerers and blessed with gifts from Mephisto. Defeating them was not a small thing.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Subverted. In Revolutionary War: Alpha Death’s Head II seems to play it straight - he beats Captain Britain unconscious and hands him over to the villains, explaining that he was paid to do so and it’s nothing personal. On the other hand, the ending of Revolutionary War: Death’s Head II reveals that he injected Captain Britain with a tracking device and wanted to get an ally inside Mys-Tech’s base. He just didn’t bother to tell Captain Britain that bit.
- Sole Survivor: Liger is seemingly the only survivor of the Kether Troop Warheads.
- The Bus Came Back: For many, many Marvel UK characters who hadn’t been seen (or even mentioned) since the 1990s. A special mention goes to Jackdaw, Captain Britain’s sidekick at the very start of the Jaspers Warp storyline. He was killed by The Fury back then, but as he reappears in Mephisto’s demonic army, death may not be such an issue.
- The Dragon: Killpower to Mephisto.
- The Reveal:
- Mys-Tech aren’t coming back - they’re still securely imprisoned in Mephisto’s hell. The real threat is Killpower, now corrupted by Mephisto and leading a demonic army.
- Keller is possessed and has been manipulating the heroes.
- Training Montage: Directly lampshaded when Wisdom and Keller retrieve Colonel Liger and kickstart his recovery via a biotech tank. (“It was either this or six months of rehab followed by a training montage”).
