Honestly, this issue was hard to read. Remender gives us a totally broken Steve Rogers here, a man willing to commit murder to save his son from a lifetime of Zola worship. The fact that he crosses that line and may have done so for nothing makes it almost too much to bear.
Before getting to the good parts, I will say that this issue isn't perfect. First, it was the second one in a row where the events of the previous issue were difficult to recall. I felt like I had missed an issue, a familiar feeling when I'm reading stories that are expressly written for the inevitable trade, as this one is starting to feel like it is. I didn't remember Zola's forces eliminating the Phrox, as they seemed to have done here (or, at least, as Ian seems to think they have done) and I was bewildered by Zola's claim that he was in love with Ian's mother, Mary. The only human woman I remember in this series other than Jet or Sharon is the woman who Zola kept in a box and tried to turn into a dog. I mean, sure, I could buy that Zola would possibly express his love that way, but I'm guessing that Remender has something else up his sleeve here. But, it would've been nice to have seen an example of Zola's devotion to "Mary" before him professing it to Ian, since it's hard to judge if Zola's just trying to pull a fast one on him or really believes it.
But, for its faults, this issue is still a decent installment in this story. As I mentioned in the first paragraph, Remender builds the tension here as we watch Steve unravel. He pulls in flashback sequences of previous issues to show us Steve's motivation, not to abandon Ian in a world surrounded by enemies as his father did to him. He also beautifully depicts Jet's crisis of faith as she finds herself confused by Steve's nobility. Speaking of beautiful, JR JR is also on fire here: I was particularly impressed by the creepily religious, Kirby-inspired Zola painting that took up a full page. It conveyed the totality of Zola's control of Dimension Z, reminding you just why Steve has been driven to the place where he now finds himself. Along those lines, the revelation that Zola has spent all this time trying to perfect a process to turn the Phrox into Steve-cloned Super-Soldiers so that he can invade Earth also upped the diabolical stakes significantly.
If we're going to stay in Dimension Z much longer, it would be nice for Steve to get a win at some point. As I said in the beginning, this issue was hard to read and, given that Steve is going to fight Ian next issue, I'm guessing that the next one isn't going to be a walk in the park. But, lest we become completely inured to Steve's misery to the point that it stops having meaning, we need something to give him hope, even if it's just going eventually to be taken from him. Without that hope, it's hard to differentiate between shades of black.
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