Captain America #17: For the last few months (actually, probably years at this point), Brubaker has been portraying an America made increasingly more violent by fringe elements promoting their agendas. He's done it skillfully, like Bucky's encounter with the fake Cap from "Captain America" #602-#605, and less skillfully, like the Madbomb issues a few issues ago. In the former case, he uses the extremism of the antagonist to show how Captain America stands against using violence to express political opinions. Mark Gruenwald used similar themes on his run on "Captain America," and Brubaker adroitly updated them for an even more divided age. In the latter case, however, he used such extremism as a convenient way to put Cap in a difficult position, rather than really as a way to explore more philosophical themes, if you will. Here, it devolves into a lecture when the whole issues goes "after-school special" pretty quickly. It's hard to believe that Cap would be unable to conceptualize that people might be angry but that HYDRA is the one causing them to express that anger through violence. In other words, I might be against animal testing, but I'm not going to shoot anyone over it. I think Cap gets that, no matter how disillusioned he's become. As such, it's hard to believe his scene with Sam here; in fact, it's getting almost impossible to believe his disillusionment writ large. Although it was interesting in the beginning, I think that it's time for Brubaker to end this practice of having ordinary people attack Cap because of psychological manipulation and focus more on Cap trying to stop bad guys from doing bad things. Also, I'm particularly hoping that these stories do not involve Diamondback, if the Diamondback that we're going to get is merely there as a romantic rival to Sharon. Brubaker generally writes strong female characters, but I really wish we could see Rachel and Sharon just, I don't know, work together and not immediately become the "Real Housewives of S.H.I.E.L.D." This issue was a really rare miss for Brubaker.
Captain America and Black Widow #636: I mentioned in my review of the most recent issue of "Captain America" that I'm over the "extremists fuel Cap's disillusionment with America" plot. Similarly, I mentioned in my review of the most recent issues of the "Secret Avengers" that I'm over the whole Shadow Council business. At risk of being repetitive, I am really, really over Kashmir Venema.
I'm not entirely sure why authors lately have found themselves so enamored with these sorts of long-brewing plots. Although I understand, theoretically, the allure of such a plot in narrative terms, I can't think of any comic book that really successfully pulled off one without ultimately annoying the reader. I'm thinking about two 1990s storylines in particular, namely the Clone Saga in the various Spider-Man titles or the Gatherers in the "Avengers." Both storylines spanned years and suffered from constantly changing creative direction, leaving you with the distinct sense that the creative teams didn't know where they were going with the story from the start and kept writing themselves into corners. (In case you haven't read it yet, the "Life of Reilly" blog in my blog roll goes to great lengths to show how true that was in terms of the Clone Saga.)
In this issue, we learn that Kashmir Vennema isn't just a weapons dealer working for a shadowy organization that has yet to be revealed. Instead, she's a weapons dealer working for a shadowy organization that has yet to be revealed who appears to work ACROSS DIMENSIONS. Does that feel like a Captain America plot to you? Yeah, me neither.
Kashmir is the type of character who would work better at playing a Baron Zemo role, appearing every once in a while to frustrate Cap, but not really posing such a threat that she needed to be eliminated once and for all. Instead, she suddenly becomes some sort of weapons-dealing Kang. I don't think that Bunn really does anything here that leaves you thinking that his plan all along was to reveal the cross-dimensional aspect of Kashmir. Instead, it feels like he's having problems jumping from one arc to another, so he's using a common antagonist for as long as he can until he can't develop any more stories involving her.
It's time to put this Kashmir business behind us. I'm starting to feel like this series would be better if it rotated writers for each arc, letting it feel more like the team-up book that it's supposed to be rather than an odd companion series to the main title.
Winter Soldier #10: NOT SITWELL! Damn it. I mean, as I said last issue, I was pretty sure that Sitwell was going to die here, but it doesn't make me any less upset. I'm upset for him (obviously), but I'm also upset for Natasha, because, as Bucky says here, she's going to hate herself when she returns to herself. But, I'm most worried about the idea that Natasha won't remember her relationship with James. For most authors, it would be an idle threat, but, with Brubaker, you never know.
Beyond the emotions related to Sitwell's death, Brubaker does great stuff here in terms of the appearance of Cap, Hawkeye, and Wolverine. Bucky's conversation with Steve about feeling helpless at the loss of Natasha (similar to what Steve felt when he lost Bucky) was poignant, and I'm thrilled to see members of the New Avengers discover that Bucky isn't dead. (OK, sure, Logan kind of ruined the moment a little, but, whatever.) Brubaker has keyed up the emotions behind her abduction so well that I feel like the next few issues are going to be explosive as Bucky (and the reader) hunts for Natasha and seeks revenge on Leo. If I'm excited to see Leo get his ass handed to him, I can only imagine how Bucky feels. As Clint said, let's go get our girl back.
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