ADVANCE REVIEW: Captain America #1 – Spoiler-Free

Captain America #1

Before we get too far with this thing here, let’s get any potential griping out of the way. Yes, it’s a new #1, and Captain America has had several relaunches over the last few years, but there’s a big Captain America movie coming out, so it makes sense, and honestly, it doesn’t bother me one single iota.

I was as big a fan of Ed Brubaker’s years long Captain America opus as anyone, and I will admit, it began to lose me. Those first 25 issues are as good as any superhero comics, or any comics really, that I’ve read in the last decade. I was fully on board for Bucky as Captain America, and it was a good time for a while. But I think we all started to feel the loss of Steve Rogers more acutely as Bucky’s tale went on and on. Steve Rogers is the lynchpin of the current Marvel Universe. He connects old to new, and when someone writes him well, it sings. No one in my life had written Steve Rogers as well as Ed Brubaker, and while I had some reservations that maybe the writer has been with the property too long to look on it with fresh energy, I can report to you, that is not the case. Brubaker said he ended up killing Steve sooner than he’d wanted, so he wasn’t close to done with the original super soldier. Really, he’d only put in a 2 year run on the character, so if our luck holds, we should have a good bit of Steve Rogering in our futures.

You can absolutely read this issue if you’ve never read Captain America before. This makes very good sense, since it’s a #1 issue, and it’s coming out around the time of a major motion picture, but it bears mentioning. You want to try Captain America, but never did? This is your chance. You won’t find a better chance, because there isn’t a writer who knows the character better than Ed Brubaker, and Steve McNiven is about as good an artist as you’re likely to come across in comics today. They walk the tightrope of explaining everything you need to know without it ever reverting into tedious exposition, and it’s about as elegantly done as can be.

The threat in this issue is a character from Steve’s past (and the real comics from way, way back) who has a vendetta. The issue shuttles back and forth between the present and scenes from World War II leading to what we’re seeing now. The wonderful thing about Steve Rogers is that his stories can exist in either time. For years, there was a way to bridge them easily, but as time marches on, people who were alive during the War are mostly gone now. Anyone who is still around is obviously something special, like Cap himself. You’ll get to meet the new adversary, but there’s also a taste of some classic Cap villains. There’s a bit of an ensemble feel, as Cap is surrounded by his classic allies, like Sharon Carter, Nick Fury, and Dum Dum Dugan, which makes it a lot of fun, because around these particular characters, Steve can drop the act just a little bit. He still is who he is, but he doesn’t have to act the symbol as he might with some of the younger Avengers for example. It’s a subtle change, but makes for a nice entrance into where his head is in this story.

Captain America always makes for wonderful action scenes, because his fighting is always based on the movement of the human body. Other than his shield, he doesn’t have a weapon, so there’s all sorts of shield flinging, flipping, punching and so on. An artist has to have his anatomy and perspective down cold to do justice to Captain America, and can’t rely on energy blasts to cover up inadequacy. Steve McNiven doesn’t disappoint, and delivers an entire issue of top-of-his-form Captain America. It really is something to behold when he draws Steve in his super-soldier glory, even out of uniform. There’s not quite anyone out there like McNiven, and he seems energized for this one. Where “Old Man Logan” was just an explosion of Marvel overload, this is much more sparse, in all the right ways; in the ways that reflect a man who grew up in the Depression, and represents the best of a nation. And oh that shield. That shield might be my favorite thing in comics. It barely makes sense, but when it’s flung just so, you want to believe.

Is it good to have Steve back? It is most definitely good to have Steve back. The story is very much an opening chapter, and to be honest, it’s nothing groundbreaking. But it’s very well done, and that craft takes the book a long way. If I’m you, and I’m on the fence about whether to go another round with Ed Brubaker and the Sentinel of Liberty, I say grab one of those donuts, and make sure you don’t get any jelly on the pages, because this is one fine example of an American comic book. It will be an honor serving with Steve Rogers again.