Marvel Comics nicely timed the release of the latest Captain America #1—by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Leinil Francis Yu, Gerry Alanguilan, Sunny Gho, and Joe Caramagna—for July 4th, and this is appropriate for so many reasons. The most obvious is that this is a new start for the Sentinel of Liberty, but it also fits the state he's in, struggling to reclaim the trust he lost during the entire Secret Empire episode when a version of Cap, altered by a sentient Cosmic Cube to believe himself to be a lifelong undercover Hydra agent, helped the fascist organization take over America with him as its figurehead. At the end of the story (which I discussed here), the Cube created a new version of Cap from her memories, who quickly defeated Hydra-Cap, went on a motorcycle tour of America (in Mark Waid's short run with Chris Samnee and Leonardo Romero), and now stars in his new run, where he has to come face-to-face with "his" recent past in a number of ways.
This book is everything I want for a launch of a new Cap title: a solid focus on his virtues and his patriotism in the context of fantastic superheroics, with plenty of room for his supporting cast. Coates provides Cap's ongoing internal narrative throughout the book while also doing a fine job of capturing the other characters' voices and motivations (chiefly Sharon Carter and Bucky Barnes). The art is simply breathtaking, with Yu turning in the work of his career, lightly but deftly fleshed out by Alanguilan, and endowed with a subdued palette by Gho, with a wealth of greens and browns to contrast with Cap's red, white, and blue. Caramagna, as always, letters in a way in keep the exposition, dialogue, and art clear, tying the entire effort together. (And we can't forgot the glorious by Alex Ross, shown above! Click to enlarge, and just gaze at it for a while.)
Let me focus here on five aspects of the comic that particularly excite me for this run going forward.
1) The dream, the whole dream, and nothing but the dream.
As I discussed often in The Virtues of Captain America, Cap above all wants to ensure that the American dream is available to all, whether the people in charge of America's government support that or not. He's had a lot of reasons over the years to doubt that, starting with his concerns about racism and poverty in the late 1960s, to government corruption in the original Secret Empire storyline in the 1970s, to the infiltration of the federal government by the Red Skull in the 1980s, and being disowned by the US government and made a "Man Without a Country" in the mid 1990s. (And there was that entire Civil War thing in the first decade of the 21st century...)
In this issue, we find new versions of Nuke, the maniacal super-soldier he first faced in Daredevil #233 (August 1986), a comic that also happened to feature the classic line, "I'm loyal to nothing... except the Dream." While the Nukes gun down people on the National Mall in Washington, DC, Cap rushes to the defend the innocent bystanders, and reiterates (to himself) his one loyalty.
What a glorious full-page shot of Cap by Yu, Alanguilan, and Gho! (I told you the art was stunning, didn't I?)
2) Cap's discomfort with killing.
Despite his military service, Cap has always been uncomfortable with killing, going so far in the early days as to claim he never killed, even during the war, and backing away from this only slightly in the years since. In this issue, Cap tries to talk Bucky down from taking the easy kill shot, at least until they've exhausted all the alternatives.
Part of Cap's reticence, I'm sure, is the fact that the "Nukes" are corrupted versions of him and, as he notes later, wear his country's flag on their actual faces.
He finally decides the danger level is too high, and lets Bucky loose...
...while remaining attentive to the other cost of their actions—the impression they make on the civilians who remember a violent, vicious Captain America all too well.
Cap gets a chance to explain to the Nukes, however briefly, what happened over the last... however long Secret Empire lasted in Marvel time... and to reaffirm what makes him different from them.
Bucky steps in one more time, giving Cap a chance to reflect on his former partner's past and the difference between them.
Other amazing image of Cap, in mourning, even for the man who would have killed him.
3) Cap's compassion and knack for inspiration.
After they defeat the Nukes, the boy we saw above calls out to him to come see his father, who was shot by one of the Nukes.
After the choppers arrive and load the father and son aboard, Cap takes a moment to give the kid a patented Cap speech, which also serves to remind us about what's important (especially on this Fourth of July).
Wait for it...
That's the stuff: Cap, Bucky, and Sharon pitching in to help first responders, the heroes of the real world. (I love scenes like this.)
4) Cap's uncertainty about his position and place in the world... even in his own country.
Ever since he was defrosted by the Avengers, Cap has struggled with issues of identity and purpose, wondering where a super-solider from the 1940s fits in a modern world with superheroes on every corner, supervillains and intergalactic invasions galore, and very different cultural norms and mores. But even worse are the times when he feels out of place in America, such as the times he opposed the US government (as mentioned above)... and it seems it's one of those times again, if General Ross is any indication.
I really like how this ties back to Cap being concerned about the boy seeing him oversee a deadly firefight. Cap is fully aware of the importance of optics—he is, after all, a living symbol of the American dream. Ross's rejection only reiterates how much work lies ahead to restore the American people's faith in him, which promises to be a key theme in this run (after being set on the shelf for the most part in the comics between the end of Secret Empire and this one).
(The teaser for issue #2 says that Cap is "unsanctioned," which sounds more serious and official than Ross implied in this issue, and more like the "Man Without a Country" storyline just before the "Heroes Reborn" debacle. I guess we'll see soon...)
5) "How are you, Sharon?"
Sharon Carter has been through some $%^& the last few years. In Rick Remender's run, she (apparently) died stopping Arnim Zola from invading Earth from his Dimension Z, but actually survived and was held capture there, where time passes more quickly than in the regular universe. When she is found some months later, she has aged significantly—which was fine then, given that Cap has been aged recently as well. But after Cap was restored to his glorious youth (by the same Cosmic Cube that also made him Hydra—a mixed blessing there!), she found herself looking significantly older than the man who made out with her aunt during World War II.
(And don't forget: it was Sharon who, under Doctor Faustus' mind control, shot and killed Captain America after the Civil War ended. So there's that too.)
In what was probably the most touching scene in the issue, Sharon and Steve enjoy a romantic dinner—not unlike their first date in Tales of Suspense #95 (November 1967), when Steve proposed before he knew her real name!
Just had to throw that in there.
Anyway, in the current issue, Steve is trying to get Sharon to share the privileged intelligence she gets from working with Ross, and when she refuses and he asks who is going to get to the bottom of the recent violence, she says, simply, "I am, Steve." And then we see one of the finest pages devoted to Sharon Carter in recent memory.
It's so rare for Sharon, much less any supporting female character/love interest in a male hero's book, to express her feelings and concerns, not just about the hero but about herself. This was a very welcome surprise, and I hope the team keep this going throughout the run.
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