I don't understand why Brian Braddock doesn't have as much trauma as he should, because he's survived some nightmares.
Take issues NO. 5-7 of Captain Britain. Brian is very new to his role. He lives with his mentor, Dr. McKenzie, who is his landlord and a professor at his university. His parents are implied to be dead. All he has is his role and his studies. No sign of his siblings either.
He gets his first-ever villain - someone genuinely out to kill him. Hurricane. This man demolishes the school and attempts to trap and kill Brian in a hurricane. Brian makes it to the eye of the hurricane and isn't too injured, but the rain and wind are unbearable after a while.
Soon, Hurricane escapes, and Brian has to do some radiation experiments to find him. He spends the rest of his day, we know this began at breakfast tea time, doing this. At night, he dons his suit to hunt Hurricane down, and he says, "I've never felt truly alive until I put this suit on," which is already sad.
When he finds Hurricane's lair, an abandoned warehouse by the factories at the London Heathrow Airport, they duke it out. Hurricane tries to drop an oil truck on Brian, but he escapes, instead causing an explosion that alerts the airport. While they rush to find security and the fire brigade, Brian is fighting for his life. Hurricane is merciless and threatening to murder him.
He traps Brian in a full-blown personal hurricane. Brian is bruised, but he can't escape as he quite literally suffocates and goes unconscious. When he wakes up, Hurricane has strapped him to a Concorde SST. A supersonic plane that can travel from London to New York in three hours. That's normally eight hours, for reference. The plane, even back in the 80s, could fly at Mach 2 speeds. That's double the speed of sound.
Hurricane planned to turn the engine on and let Brian get sucked into the turbine. He said he'd turn Brian into mince meat.
This is Brian's third mission ever. All he's done so far is save a factory on the day he got his suit and stop a bank robbery on another day. That motherfucker is at most twenty-two years old.
Brian managed to escape by de-transforming, slipping out of the shackles, since he was slimmer without the Captain Britain magic muscles. That made the injuries worse because he didn't have that magic suit, making his pain slightly more bearable. He was probably already dizzy since he had just suffocated five minutes before. He lands on his feet and transforms again.
When he starts fighting Hurricane again, he gets hit with a mini-hurricane going at two hundred knots. He calls it unbearable and falls to the ground again (just pretending to trick Hurricane, but still a major owie in my book).
Finally, he pulls Hurricane's backpack off his back, which destroys the villain's superpowers but also causes it to explode. Brian hits the deck, and the only way that didn't kill his hearing is if those hurricanes and exploding cars from earlier had already burst his eardrums.
That's the end of Hurricane, and Brian seems a little too calm. Then again, he's usually pretty awkward and monotone, so I don't imagine the adrenaline has worn off.
I need Brian Braddock to flinch at hurricane warnings, hate being suffocated, never fly on planes, and so much more. Lord knows that's the logical response to the trauma from that storyline. Especially because he had no support system at all. Not family or friends to calm him or fix up those horrid injuries.
Debate me all you want, but he deserves a real, genuine reaction for this bullshit he goes through. Even if not full-blown PTSD, which I doubt he isn't going to develop soon, he's still young... that should have an effect on him.
