Ultimate Captain America 1
Reviewed by Martin Skidmore 12-Jan-11
This seemed a good randomish pick this week: I like most of the Ultimate line, and Aaron seems to be building a reputation, so I’d meant to try him. He confuses the hell out of me, to be honest.
This seemed a good randomish pick this week: I like most of the Ultimate line, and Aaron seems to be building a reputation, so I’d meant to try him.
He confuses the hell out of me, to be honest. I know this isn’t the old Cap we know well, but I have read lots of Ultimates comics, so I know he’s pretty damn similar – much the same values, in particular. This one is a different person, surely. He starts by shooting people in the back. He says “Kiss my ass” in the opening, and later tells some soldiers to “Move your asses” – mild enough, but not like Cap, and since these are two of just five speech balloons he gets in this first issue of his own comic, there isn’t anything much to balance it. He seems to be lighting a cigarette just after that, but that may easily be poor drawing. He seems to be on some mission to massacre everyone in a secret research base in North Korea.
Okay, I can take a hint – this is obviously a fake Cap of some kind. In fact, I thought I had read something about this that suggested something along those lines. When he gets the shit beaten out of him (having apparently thrown his gun away once he has someone tough to deal with) by some masked guy without even landing a single blow, that idea is confirmed.
Except no it isn’t. This is indeed Steve Rogers, the Captain America, and his fighting skills apparently now extend only to machine-gunning enemies in the back. I won’t give away who the masked man is, but he basically tells us (in a way not at all far from a Next Issue! blurb) that we are going to get some lectures on the evil secrets behind American imperialism, with particular focus on Vietnam. I’m certainly not asking that Cap be a blind symbol of America, with no attention given to the country’s very substantial dark side, but if the bright face that Cap represents consists of shooting enemies in the back, Aaron will have to go some to create much contrast. Since we also start this issue with old-fashioned evil behaviour by the North Koreans, he is setting himself an even bigger challenge.
Also, we have been reading such things for decades now, and it’s very hard to make it fresh and interesting again. The guy yelling “I’ll show you what America really stands for!” and then running away in the next panel is bizarre too. Also, the explanation of who his enemy, who appears to be as far superior to Cap in fighting ability as Cap is to, well, me, is totally inadequate – a dramatic reveal is rather weakened if your instant reaction to it is “well, that can hardly be it – this doesn’t make sense. What’s the real story?”
The scripting irritated me a bit too – he has someone use the word “facilitators” when it is not at all what is meant, giving the impression of using a fancy word without quite knowing what it means. Yes, this could be telling us something about a character, but since this a nameless throwaway figure who we’ll never encounter again, there is no point to that. The rest of it is okay, tightly told with mostly minimal words.
Fortunately Garney is an efficient enough artist with a suitably rough edge to carry the story through most of the time – apart maybe from that cigarette moment, and the shooting-in-the-back moment, where shots are blatantly coming from two directions, yet it’s only Cap who appears. The worst is the splash page where we first see Cap: very weirdly, he is clearly shooting past the enemy (who is cooperatively dying anyway) and, disturbingly, Cap’s crotch seems to be exploding. Honestly, I am not making this up.
I really don’t see anything here to keep me interested: Cap doesn’t appear to be Cap, there are a few irritatingly silly moments, the big reveal falls flat on its face, and the promise for future issues is dreary and ancient. Did I get a false impression of Aaron getting a good rep?
Tags: Captain America, Jason Aaron, Marvel, Ron Garney, Ultimate
I read this with an eye to reviewing it, and was distinctly underwhelmed. It wasn’t just mediocre, it was boring to boot. I wonder if it’s an indicator as to the tone of the forthcoming movie? The costume design looks almost identical to the stills I’ve seen released.
Sorry to beat you to it, Peter! I don’t see why it would necessarily have any connection to the movie. I haven’t bothered finding out, but since it’s released before the Avengers movie, I am guessing they will save the resurrection for that so the Cap film will be set in WWII.
The Cap film is mostly set in WWII, but I believe it opens and closes with stuff in the modern day, so presumably the block of ice will at least be found in his own film.
Released right now so that the release of the first trade will time up mid-summer for the movie release, yes?
Yeah, I imagine so – there have been a whole bunch of Thor things starting lately, presumably with the same thing in mind.
I’ve only read the Ultimates and Ultimate Avengers in the Ultimate range and both of those are now looking very tired. I’ve not really fancied reading any of the other Ultimate titles. Your reviews of recent additions to the line have reinforced my decision.
The initial interpretation of Cap in the Ultimates was picking up on the soldier aspect of Cap being a Super-soldier, so the fact that he behaves like that here does not surprise me, in fact I prefer that to the 60’s goody two-shoes image of the soldier who doesn’t believe in killing – unless it’s to avenge the death of Bucky, in which case the villain deserves everything he gets ! Pacifist Man: he’s here to win the war !!!
As for the film series, I was under the impression that the Avengers film will be closer to the Ultimates, you just have to look at Nick Fury.
Another great example of the always-hilarious Heroic Code against killing being applied in even more idiotic circumstances than usual was Darwyn Cooke’s New Frontier, where Hal Jordan, even though he’s not yet a Green Lantern, somehow contrives to be an ace fighter pilot without ever killing anyone. Right.
This is the first Aaron comic I’ve bought, because I’ve read a lot from the library, they’ve all been at the very least good and often very good indeed, and after his previous work on Vietnam, The Other Side, the mixture of him, Ultimate Cap*, that inglorious moment in US history and the old ‘false Cap’ storyline sounded like a winner.
And yet, I also found myself baffled. Admittedly, I was quite drunk when I first read it, but rereading it I still couldn’t work out what was going on, or what had gone wrong with what should have been such a good comic given those factors. I’m left unsure whether to have faith and persevere, or save the best part of a tenner and abandon the miniseries here. But I would urge you not to judge Aaron on this one issue – I’ve just read another trade of his Ghost Rider run (now complete in four volumes) and that is excellent.
*Ultimate Cap is somewhat different to the 616 version – much more Republican/authentically 1940s in his attitudes. Indeed, I’d been thinking about how you could do a rightwing reworking of Warren Ellis’ superhero-kills-Dubya romp Black Summer by having him assassinate Obama. But this still doesn’t feel like him.
I didn’t so much have a problem with killing – as you say re GL in particular above, it’s generally very silly – but since the only successful action he gets in the comic is machine-gunning people in the back, it didn’t feel like Cap.
If I see other Aaron stuff in the library, I’ll give it a go.
I didn’t register that bit in itself as a problem; a readiness to do that (because Hell, a special forces soldier would, wouldn’t they?) is the sort of thing which distinguishes Ultimate Cap from the standard model.