Saturday, December 8, 2012

Captain America #1 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

If I say anything else nice about Rick Remender, he's going to have to buy me flowers.

This issue is great.  The good and bad news, for Remender, is that he's following Ed Brubaker's spectacular run on "Captain America," a challenge that I imagine most authors would find daunting.  But, Remender manages to extract the best of Brubaker's Cap while injecting in some energy that had started to fade in the last few Brubaker issues.  For example, I loved Cap and Sharon's banter here, from Cap's awkwardly hilarious attempt at sexual innuendo to his comment about "fire and the warmth of a woolly mammoth's pelt" being all the gifts he needed back in the day.  This banter reminds us why Steve's with Sharon, why she keeps him from disappearing into the uniform, and I'm just so glad to see it.  A renewed Sharon Carter was one of the best things to come from Brubaker's run and I'm thrilled to see her here. ( He better damn well say yes to that proposal.)

But, Remender jettisons some of the maudlinness of the most recent series of "Captain America."  Cap might be worried about disappearing into the uniform, but he's no longer lamenting the state of the world as he has been recently.  In fact, Remender establishes that point of departure from past stories by removing Steve entirely from the world, depositing him into "Dimension Z."  I was amazed by the fact that Remender really sells the plot in just one issue.  It makes sense to me that Armin Zola has his own dimension and that he dragged Steve to it to be able to steal the Super-Soldier Serum and create his own Super-Soldier "children."  Time travel and alternate dimensions aren't really the bread-and-butter stories of "Captain America," but Remender makes you feel like you're reading an old pulp science-fiction story, the type that Cap would've read when he was younger.  He successfully portrays Cap as a man confused in a different and hostile landscape.  Adding a baby to the mix?  Hilarious.  I think Remender should bring in Iron Man and Thor and we can essentially have a superhero version of "Three Men and a Baby."

The only negative (and it's not really that much of a negative) was that I wasn't really sold on the opening panels.  I get what Remender was trying to do by showing Cap's mother as defiant in the face of her abusive husband, and the effect that her courage had on young Steve, but it felt somewhat forced to me.  But, honestly, it's a minor complaint.

Overall, it's just so nice to feel excited about comics again.  Marvel NOW! is totally working for me, in no small part thanks to Rick Remender.  Between "Captain America," "Secret Avengers," and "Uncanny Avengers," I am a happy camper.

No comments:

Post a Comment