A Rag, a Bone, a Hank of Hair... (comic story)

 was the main story published in The Daredevils #1 and cover-dated January 1983. It was later reprinted in X-Men Archives Featuring Captain Britain Vol 1 .

The story is notable for featuring a cameo appearance of Merlin the Wise from DWM's The Neutron Knights, and also led to this story's incarnation of Merlin appearing in the reprinted version of Star Death in The Daredevils #5.

Summary
Merlin and Roma begin to resurrect Captain Britain. It is revealed that Merlin has been manipulating Captain Britain's life for a long time, and he failed one of his 'final' tasks. However, Captain Britain is alive and unaware of this; just grateful for his life.

Plot
Following the death of Captain Britain, Merlin considers several theories regarding what happens after death. Alongside his daughter Roma, Merlin begins working on resurrecting Captain Britain. While Roma painstakingly recreates his skeleton atom by atom, and restructures his entire muscle an nervous systems, Merlyn works on piecing together the fractures of his splintered personality.



Looking into Captain Britain's mind, Merlin ventures into his past and sees the path that Brian Braddock took to become the superhero. Having learnt that his parents had died, Brian went on a downward spiral which was worsened when he was attacked by Joshua Stragg. His attack at the hands of Stragg led him to a group of standing stones at the heart of Darkmoor where Brian witness a vision of two towering presences who urged him to take up the mystic amulet which changed his very existence.

Now going by the name Captain Britain for the first time, Brian battled foes while also fighting against his own sanity. Eventually he suffered a breakdown which saw him jump out of an aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean and wash up on a beach in Cornwall. For a time Captain Britain lived like a hermit as his troubled psyche rested, but he was later taken under the guidence of Merlin and transported to Otherworld where the two halves of his warring soul finally became whole again. From there he was taken to an alternate Earth with a companion in the form of an elf known as Jackdaw. He faced off against many of the alternate Earth's residents, including Saturnyne, before being murdered by Mad Jim Jasper's superhero-hunting machine The Fury.



This brought the story full circle for Merlin who plucked Captain Britain from the alternate Earth after his murder at the hands of the Fury. Now the final preparations were in place and Merlin was able to resurrect Captain Britain, and he returned him to Darkmoor in 1982. Roma realised that Merlin was the same incarnation that had trained Captain Britain and questioned why he hadn't let him know that he had resurrected him, but Merlin simply informed her that he had taken many forms over the years so that Captain Britain wouldn't have recognised him.

Characters

 * Merlin
 * Roma
 * Captain Britain/Brian Braddock
 * Joshua Stragg
 * Black Knight
 * Jackdaw
 * Saturnyne
 * Mad Jim Jaspers
 * The Fury

Continuity
to be added