Today I'll be going over the continuing adventures of Captain America as covered in Road To Reborn, Reborn, and Two Americas. The books, written by Ed Brubaker, continue the masterful character studies of the previous volumes. James "Bucky" Barnes is learning to fill his roll as the new Captain America, Sharon Carter continues to live with the guilt of knowing she was brainwashed into firing the shots that killed her lover, and things continue to get really complicated. Sharon remembers that she was pregnant with Steve Rogers' child, who was then stabbed in utero by Sin, Red Skull's daughter (Yes, in utero murder happened in a Captain America book well before it was shoehorned into an episode of Game of Thrones.) Anyway, this realization gets her to start trying to recover any other memories she may have lost and at the end we learn that (SPOILER!) the gun the killed Captain America was no ordinary gun! So while the characters remain endlessly compelling, the storyline is getting a little ridiculous. Which leads us to:
Captain America: Reborn! So, before we get into this, I have some thoughts about bringing Steve Rogers back from the dead. (please keep in mind that most of my knowledge of early Captain America comes from cultural Osmosis/that one time I looked it up on Wikipedia) So, we should all know that Captain America was created during WWII. He's the super hero who punched out Hitler and killed Nazi's. Yes, killed, he's a soldier, not Batman. He was great, then we hit Vietnam and Captain America loses his relevance. He starts to represent American Imperialism, which bums out the nerds and hippies. Then some weird stuff happens, we find out that the Captain America of the late 40's-50's was a drugged up super fan, the real Captain America becomes the Nomad because he doesn't believe in his country anymore...it's bad. Finally we have Ed Brubaker's run, which redefines Steve Rogers as the man who represents the best of what America has always tried to be. He fights for the ideals of America, regardless of whether or not the folks in Washington D.C. agree. So Steve Rogers dying was a big deal. George W. Bush was in office, we were in two endless wars, a lot of people were pretty bummed. Cut to 2009, we're in the worst of the recession, still in 2 wars, but we have a new president, and we're trying to believe again. Whether you agreed with it or not, people were looking to be inspired, looking for a message of hope and a better America. It is in this climate the Steve Rogers returns. All of our superheroes were getting pretty complicated and we needed and honest to God Hero back. So how do you bring back a dude who was shot 4 times at point blank range with no super armor or Wolverine healing powers?!
Well, turns out you turn the gun into a Billy Pilgrim device. You remember Billy from Slaughter House Five? He was unstuck in time. Turns out the Vonnegut Ex Machina gun caused Steve to become unstuck in time as well. So now he has to float around in the time-space continuum while Hank Pym and Mr. Fantastic blah blah blah random science words blah blah blah something about a constant blah blah blah Captain America is back! Oh wait, he's actually been brought back to be the body of the Red Skull who is living in a Krang suit or something but now he's inside Captain America's body and there's a huge fight with a bunch of super MODOK's...It get pretty hard to follow to be honest. In the end Steve is back. Yay! Although the resurrection was pretty ludicrous, I gotta admit it was pretty great to see the moral compass of the Marvel Universe return. So now everything's back to normal right?
Wrong! In Two Americas, we learn that Steve Rogers is done being Captain America for a while. Turns out reliving WWII makes you adverse to violence. Who knew? So while he settles down for a while with Sharon Carter (the niece of the woman he fell in love with 70 years earlier!) Bucky Barnes will hold on to the shield for a while. Which is good because 1950s Captain America is back and he's an angry angry Tea Party supporter. He wants his old America back and it's time for a revolution dammit! So now New Captain America and crazy fake Captain America square off against each other. Crazy Cap has recruited an army of right wing cuckoo birds while New Cap has the Falcon (who can talk to real birds). It's a much more streamlined story that the previous two books, with the spy movie style really shinning through again. My only real complaint is that the character of the Falcon, who's been in all of the books previously, is really underwritten. As major presence, and one of the few black characters (besides Obama, yeah, Obama's in the book) he really does more that serve as a plot device/exposition dispenser. Where's his inner life? Where's his gorgeous but complicated love interest? I'm sure he gets his moments in other story lines, but here he is sorely underwritten. Overall though, you could find much much worse reading material. I'm mean, at least it's not Twilight, right?
8/10
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