Captain America 615.1
Reviewed by Martin Skidmore 29-Mar-11
This is certainly the best of the .1 issues I’ve seen so far, which actually isn’t saying much. It tells a story, complete in one issue, which along the way tells us where Steve Rogers is right now, and sets up a key emotional theme for the immediate future.
This is certainly the best of the .1 issues I’ve seen so far, which actually isn’t saying much. It tells a story, complete in one issue, which along the way tells us where Steve Rogers is right now, and sets up a key emotional theme for the immediate future.
Steve actually isn’t Cap right now. A new Cap gets created, and immediately gets kidnapped by AIM, with some sort of plan to create a new Modok using him. Steve Rogers comes to the rescue, and tells this new Cap to quit right now. The new Cap tells him someone has to wear the costume, that America needs a Cap, so I guess Steve will retake the mantle before long. I’ll omit the late twist from this review.
Besides the existence of a story that both introduces new readers to the current state of play and – something the other .1s have totally neglected – implies something of what is ahead, this is a pleasure because it’s so well written. Brubaker makes dialogue sound real, catching rhythms well, and gives it a significance. There’s not a line in this that doesn’t contribute something to the story or our understanding of the characters. It’s a pleasure to read lines with real weight to them, without the generally witless banter that lesser writers use to pad out their scripts.
The art’s not bad either – the storytelling is very efficient, drawing you in without ever making you stop and try to work out what is happening. The drawing is loose, which I like as a style, but unfortunately there is also a looseness in Breitweiser’s grasp of facial and bodily anatomy, as if he has learned these from old Marvel artists rather than actual bodies. This only screws up a few panels, and not too badly, so it doesn’t outweigh the solid narrative flow.
It’s probably unfair to pick this out as a .1 highlight in a way: unlike most of these jumping-on-point comics, I was already sold on Brubaker (see my short piece on his Catwoman recently), so don’t really need convincing to keep reading the series; for me, this was just a welcome place to start buying it regularly, and I added it to my standing order before reading this. Nonetheless, it does seem to fulfil the point of such a comic far better than the others I’ve read by the nature of its approach, not just by the high quality of the writing.
Tags: Captain America, Ed Brubaker, Marvel, Mitch Breitweiser
So hang about, why is Bucky not being the needed Cap as he was in the last trade I read? I know I’m a book or two behind (reading from the library), but I was unaware of him losing the mantle.
(Indeed, the last collection I read was a Bad Cap one, using the mad 1950s rightwing Cap, so this does sound like a bit of a retread when done so soon)
Yes, I thought he was too. It is confusing. I don’t know why we need so many different versions of every major character now – even besides the Ultimate line, this means new Cap (possibly for just one issue), Bucky Cap, and Steve Rogers not-Cap-now-but-we-know-he-really-is, on top of sons and daughters of Wolverine and Spider-clones and Thor/Thunderstrike/Beta Ray Bill and Iron Man/War Machine and all that.
Ah, reading the next issue of Cap fills me in: Bucky is now in jail in Russia, so not being Cap right now.
I think with Cap the idea of doubles and stand-ins works well, because it speaks to the way in which the idea of America gets claimed and appropriated by different groups. As for the others, Beta Ray Bill is one of my favourite characters in comics, so exempt from any criticism.