CAPTAIN AMERICA #49
Review by: flapjaxx
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This review contains spoilers, click here to read
"There are just so many pieces of me missing these days...pieces of my memory that I can feel just out of reach. Like a blur in my mind."
If you can read the above sentences, taken from this issue of Captain America, and not get a faint nauseous sensation, then you're either have exceptionally low standards as a reader, or else you must not have read enough in your life to be able to detect the tell-tale signs of writing that's heavy-handed, lazy and unimaginative. Or maybe the name "Brubaker" on the cover or the past reputation of this title is blinding you, but this is a horrible comic book. Regarding the above quotation: "Missing pieces"--cliche. "Pieces of me"--cliche (this is Ashlee Simpson-level, popsong-for-11-year-old-girls-level cliche, fellas). "Pieces of my memory"--cliche. "Pieces...just out of reach"--cliche. "Blur in my mind"--ugh ugh ugh Cliche Cliche Cliche YUCK BORING.
Almost every aspect of this entire issue screams "cliche" and "hack". If you think this is a "good little character issue", then I hope for your sake you've never read a GOOD character issue by which to compare it. This whole thing is so vapid and faux-meaningful.
Are we supposed to...like Sharon? Are we supposed to feel sorry for her? It's hard to. It shouldn't be hard to--because of what the Red Skull did to her--but Brubaker makes it hard to care about someone whose inner dialogue is so annoying, with so much near-nonsense posing as profundity.
"Aunt Peggy's memory is like the lost and found. It makes me miss her when she's smiling right at me."
Nonsense. Rubbish writing. If you actually think about much of what Sharon says, little of it means very much. Her aunt's memory "is like the lost and found"? How? The lost and found is a place that stores other people's lost things--So is the aunt holding other people's memories? Uh, no. A lost and found is where you go to find something you've lost--So what has Sharon specifically lost that her aunt is holding for her? Steve Rogers, perhaps? That doesn't make all that much sense either, because it's not as though Sharon has lost HER MEMORY of Steve. Moreover, the Steve that her aunt knew isn't the same as the Steve that Sharon, in a sense, "lost". In short, there's no reason why Sharon would need to go to her aunt in order to reminisce about Steve. A) She can already reminisce about Steve just fine on her own, as evidenced by the (very tedious) opening of this issue. B) There are other people with whom Sharon can reminisce about Steve: the Falcon, for example, who isn't a senile old woman. Next: Why does Sharon "miss her" aunt whenever her aunt is "smiling right at" her? This makes no sense. If you've ever had an older relative with Alzheimer's, as your somewhat humble reviewer has, then you know (as any logical person would expect) that the saddest moments, the moments at which you "miss" the person with Alzheimer's the most, don't occur when the person is smiling at you but when the person is "lost", giving you perhaps a blank stare or a look of confusion. A smile from Sharon's aunt is a token of recognition on the aunt's part--this is the moment when you would LEAST "miss" the person! What Sharon says makes no sense!
Am I being too hard on Brubaker? Am I not supposed to analyze this narrative too closely--or perhaps I'm not supposed to analyze it at all but just "go with it"? Oh, gee, I'm sorry, I just happen to be the sort of person that actually takes art to task whenever it tries to shortchange me, when it tries to counterfeit some nonsense that "sounds okay" as if it were meaning.
Let's return to the issue of sympathy as far as Sharon is concerned, since this is apparently the issue where we're supposed to remind ourselves that we're supposed to feel sorry for Sharon. How else does Brubaker try to draw out our sympathy? Well, he portrays Sharon as living a completely carefree life, with a mansion all to herself, not having to work, staring at herself in the mirror while dressed in cool, sexy, presumably expensive clothes. Sharon apparently felt like painting her nails pink while all this is going on. Sharon takes sips from an artsy, angular leopard-print cup while sitting next to a pool. Yep, real good way for to encourage the reader to feel sorry for her, provided that the reader doesn't actually look at what's on the pages and is instead content to just go along with the message: "FEEL SORRY FOR SHARON!"
Oh, but you say that Sharon has bad dreams and THAT's why I'm supposed to feel sorry for her? I'll get to the bad dreams later on in the review, but that doesn't refute what I said in the previous paragraph. Whether she's having bad dreams or not, why show Sharon living the sort of life she's living? If you want me to feel sorry for her, don't show her doing the sort of things she's doing. Show her--I don't know--only huddled in corners, only going out in the rain, only talking to people with extreme reluctance. But instead Brubaker shows us Sharon as living basically a fantastic life, except for the dreams. Sorry, I can't ignore that fantastic life; I can't focus just on the fact that she has bad dreams.
What else are we shown of Sharon? Well, she makes out with a creepy guy the moment after he tells her that he's basically been stalking her for four months and thinks of her as a celebrity ("You're Sharon Carter!"). And right after she readily makes out with him we're treated to the most lifeless "Let's just be friends" moment I can remember reading in quite some time. What was the point of the kiss, and of the guy's apparent worship of her? Just because the "Let's just be friends" moment is another cliche for Brubaker to throw at us? Oh, I get it--we're supposed to think Sharon is actually CHIVALROUS after this? Or are we supposed to think "Oh poor Sharon! She can't have love even though guys treat her like a celebrity and she lives a near-perfect life! Sure she was instrumental in killing Steve Rogers, but wow I really feel bad for her!"? Why does she stay the night, for that matter? She's not drunk--in fact, these two characters treat the "blame it on the booze" moment so nonchalantly, because they know they aren't really drunk. We're given no reason why Sharon would stay the night...other than perhaps Brubaker wanted to throw the guy's kid in our face on the next page, on the next morning.
And where does the kid come from anyway? Was he sleeping in the house the whole time, and we're to assume that he was sleeping as of the previous afternoon, when his father first met Sharon and brought her over? Or was he dropped off that morning by someone else? Really? So the kid would just get dropped off there and his dad wouldn't've already greeted him at the door or explained beforehand that someone was sleeping on the couch? I'm really at a loss. What is the point of this kid? Just to give Sharon a rude awakening? Wow, I really feel sorry for Sharon based on that completely nonsensical, extraneous touch. Or is the introduction of the kid meant to play off of the fact that Sharon lost a kid? No, it's clear that we're just supposed to take it at face-value that Sharon lost a kid and we're supposed to feel sorry for her. We have no real attachment to this lost kid, but we're supposed to feel infinite empathy for Sharon.
Let's talk about the bearded guy himself for a moment. Everything that we see this guy DOING in this comic screams that he's creepy: he's basically a celebrity stalker; with alcohol he seduces a woman to whom he's supposed to be a friend to, and so he's pretty much a bad friend; and, lastly, at least in the moment when we see the kid, he's evidently a father who doesn't have control over his child or his child's experiences. For what it's worth (not much, but some), he introduces a quite confusing element into his son's life by not telling the kid beforehand that there was a sleeping female stranger in their house. Oh, but hang on:We're TOLD that the guy's a veteran who is apparently also an anti-war protestor. So he's a good guy, right? So I'm supposed to be sympathetic to him too, not based on what Brubaker SHOWS me of the guy (creepy stalker seducer not-a-good-parent) but because of what he TELLS me about him (veteran, real caring peace-loving guy don't-you-dare-not-admire-him-infinitely). Great. Oh, and he only has one-arm; I guess that makes him a real fantastic character. No, actually, as a discerning reader it makes me feel like the writer is trying to emotionally blackmail me; it's like the writer is using heavy-handed tricks to get me to see things his way even though he hasn't put in enough genuinely creative work to win me over.
I used to really like this series, from about issue 26 to 35 or so. I had jumped on at 25, liked it enough to stay on, and then I went back and read the first two years' worth of issues. It was great. It deserves all the praise it got back then. I liked the character of Sharon Carter, too. But as others have noted, this series has really been going downhill for a long while now. I decided months ago that issue 50 would be my last issue, barring some great creative resurgence that I don't see coming. I hope the next issue, which will probably be my last, will be much better than issue 49, which is little short of cliche-filled near-propaganda set at getting me to care about a character for a plethora of small, undeserved, uninspired reasons. I liked Sharon a lot better when I could actually SEE her doing heroic stuff, dealing with her problems in more dynamic, less hammer-over-the-head-"Feel-sorry-for-her!" ways.
But, oh yeah, I almost forgot: She's been having BAD DREAMS that might suggest a VILLAIN HAS BEEN PLAYING WITH HER HEAD?!!? Biggest cliche in the book, man. Along with the opening flashback to Cap's death, I can't believe a writer as good (usually) as Brubaker would stoop so low. "Bad dreams!" and "flashback yet again to death of lover that the protagonist is sorta responsible for"--yuck.
The art was nice enough, though. And the Falcon was pretty cool, as always, in what he was doing.
If you can read the above sentences, taken from this issue of Captain America, and not get a faint nauseous sensation, then you're either have exceptionally low standards as a reader, or else you must not have read enough in your life to be able to detect the tell-tale signs of writing that's heavy-handed, lazy and unimaginative. Or maybe the name "Brubaker" on the cover or the past reputation of this title is blinding you, but this is a horrible comic book. Regarding the above quotation: "Missing pieces"--cliche. "Pieces of me"--cliche (this is Ashlee Simpson-level, popsong-for-11-year-old-girls-level cliche, fellas). "Pieces of my memory"--cliche. "Pieces...just out of reach"--cliche. "Blur in my mind"--ugh ugh ugh Cliche Cliche Cliche YUCK BORING.
Almost every aspect of this entire issue screams "cliche" and "hack". If you think this is a "good little character issue", then I hope for your sake you've never read a GOOD character issue by which to compare it. This whole thing is so vapid and faux-meaningful.
Are we supposed to...like Sharon? Are we supposed to feel sorry for her? It's hard to. It shouldn't be hard to--because of what the Red Skull did to her--but Brubaker makes it hard to care about someone whose inner dialogue is so annoying, with so much near-nonsense posing as profundity.
"Aunt Peggy's memory is like the lost and found. It makes me miss her when she's smiling right at me."
Nonsense. Rubbish writing. If you actually think about much of what Sharon says, little of it means very much. Her aunt's memory "is like the lost and found"? How? The lost and found is a place that stores other people's lost things--So is the aunt holding other people's memories? Uh, no. A lost and found is where you go to find something you've lost--So what has Sharon specifically lost that her aunt is holding for her? Steve Rogers, perhaps? That doesn't make all that much sense either, because it's not as though Sharon has lost HER MEMORY of Steve. Moreover, the Steve that her aunt knew isn't the same as the Steve that Sharon, in a sense, "lost". In short, there's no reason why Sharon would need to go to her aunt in order to reminisce about Steve. A) She can already reminisce about Steve just fine on her own, as evidenced by the (very tedious) opening of this issue. B) There are other people with whom Sharon can reminisce about Steve: the Falcon, for example, who isn't a senile old woman. Next: Why does Sharon "miss her" aunt whenever her aunt is "smiling right at" her? This makes no sense. If you've ever had an older relative with Alzheimer's, as your somewhat humble reviewer has, then you know (as any logical person would expect) that the saddest moments, the moments at which you "miss" the person with Alzheimer's the most, don't occur when the person is smiling at you but when the person is "lost", giving you perhaps a blank stare or a look of confusion. A smile from Sharon's aunt is a token of recognition on the aunt's part--this is the moment when you would LEAST "miss" the person! What Sharon says makes no sense!
Am I being too hard on Brubaker? Am I not supposed to analyze this narrative too closely--or perhaps I'm not supposed to analyze it at all but just "go with it"? Oh, gee, I'm sorry, I just happen to be the sort of person that actually takes art to task whenever it tries to shortchange me, when it tries to counterfeit some nonsense that "sounds okay" as if it were meaning.
Let's return to the issue of sympathy as far as Sharon is concerned, since this is apparently the issue where we're supposed to remind ourselves that we're supposed to feel sorry for Sharon. How else does Brubaker try to draw out our sympathy? Well, he portrays Sharon as living a completely carefree life, with a mansion all to herself, not having to work, staring at herself in the mirror while dressed in cool, sexy, presumably expensive clothes. Sharon apparently felt like painting her nails pink while all this is going on. Sharon takes sips from an artsy, angular leopard-print cup while sitting next to a pool. Yep, real good way for to encourage the reader to feel sorry for her, provided that the reader doesn't actually look at what's on the pages and is instead content to just go along with the message: "FEEL SORRY FOR SHARON!"
Oh, but you say that Sharon has bad dreams and THAT's why I'm supposed to feel sorry for her? I'll get to the bad dreams later on in the review, but that doesn't refute what I said in the previous paragraph. Whether she's having bad dreams or not, why show Sharon living the sort of life she's living? If you want me to feel sorry for her, don't show her doing the sort of things she's doing. Show her--I don't know--only huddled in corners, only going out in the rain, only talking to people with extreme reluctance. But instead Brubaker shows us Sharon as living basically a fantastic life, except for the dreams. Sorry, I can't ignore that fantastic life; I can't focus just on the fact that she has bad dreams.
What else are we shown of Sharon? Well, she makes out with a creepy guy the moment after he tells her that he's basically been stalking her for four months and thinks of her as a celebrity ("You're Sharon Carter!"). And right after she readily makes out with him we're treated to the most lifeless "Let's just be friends" moment I can remember reading in quite some time. What was the point of the kiss, and of the guy's apparent worship of her? Just because the "Let's just be friends" moment is another cliche for Brubaker to throw at us? Oh, I get it--we're supposed to think Sharon is actually CHIVALROUS after this? Or are we supposed to think "Oh poor Sharon! She can't have love even though guys treat her like a celebrity and she lives a near-perfect life! Sure she was instrumental in killing Steve Rogers, but wow I really feel bad for her!"? Why does she stay the night, for that matter? She's not drunk--in fact, these two characters treat the "blame it on the booze" moment so nonchalantly, because they know they aren't really drunk. We're given no reason why Sharon would stay the night...other than perhaps Brubaker wanted to throw the guy's kid in our face on the next page, on the next morning.
And where does the kid come from anyway? Was he sleeping in the house the whole time, and we're to assume that he was sleeping as of the previous afternoon, when his father first met Sharon and brought her over? Or was he dropped off that morning by someone else? Really? So the kid would just get dropped off there and his dad wouldn't've already greeted him at the door or explained beforehand that someone was sleeping on the couch? I'm really at a loss. What is the point of this kid? Just to give Sharon a rude awakening? Wow, I really feel sorry for Sharon based on that completely nonsensical, extraneous touch. Or is the introduction of the kid meant to play off of the fact that Sharon lost a kid? No, it's clear that we're just supposed to take it at face-value that Sharon lost a kid and we're supposed to feel sorry for her. We have no real attachment to this lost kid, but we're supposed to feel infinite empathy for Sharon.
Let's talk about the bearded guy himself for a moment. Everything that we see this guy DOING in this comic screams that he's creepy: he's basically a celebrity stalker; with alcohol he seduces a woman to whom he's supposed to be a friend to, and so he's pretty much a bad friend; and, lastly, at least in the moment when we see the kid, he's evidently a father who doesn't have control over his child or his child's experiences. For what it's worth (not much, but some), he introduces a quite confusing element into his son's life by not telling the kid beforehand that there was a sleeping female stranger in their house. Oh, but hang on:We're TOLD that the guy's a veteran who is apparently also an anti-war protestor. So he's a good guy, right? So I'm supposed to be sympathetic to him too, not based on what Brubaker SHOWS me of the guy (creepy stalker seducer not-a-good-parent) but because of what he TELLS me about him (veteran, real caring peace-loving guy don't-you-dare-not-admire-him-infinitely). Great. Oh, and he only has one-arm; I guess that makes him a real fantastic character. No, actually, as a discerning reader it makes me feel like the writer is trying to emotionally blackmail me; it's like the writer is using heavy-handed tricks to get me to see things his way even though he hasn't put in enough genuinely creative work to win me over.
I used to really like this series, from about issue 26 to 35 or so. I had jumped on at 25, liked it enough to stay on, and then I went back and read the first two years' worth of issues. It was great. It deserves all the praise it got back then. I liked the character of Sharon Carter, too. But as others have noted, this series has really been going downhill for a long while now. I decided months ago that issue 50 would be my last issue, barring some great creative resurgence that I don't see coming. I hope the next issue, which will probably be my last, will be much better than issue 49, which is little short of cliche-filled near-propaganda set at getting me to care about a character for a plethora of small, undeserved, uninspired reasons. I liked Sharon a lot better when I could actually SEE her doing heroic stuff, dealing with her problems in more dynamic, less hammer-over-the-head-"Feel-sorry-for-her!" ways.
But, oh yeah, I almost forgot: She's been having BAD DREAMS that might suggest a VILLAIN HAS BEEN PLAYING WITH HER HEAD?!!? Biggest cliche in the book, man. Along with the opening flashback to Cap's death, I can't believe a writer as good (usually) as Brubaker would stoop so low. "Bad dreams!" and "flashback yet again to death of lover that the protagonist is sorta responsible for"--yuck.
The art was nice enough, though. And the Falcon was pretty cool, as always, in what he was doing.
Story: 1 - Poor
Art: 3 - Good
Art: 3 - Good
A really good way to get people to respect your opinions is to attack and/or call stupid people who might disagree with you. Good job.
I didnt find anything wrong with this review conor….Great review flapjaxx
The problem with the review is not that it bashes the book it’s that right up front the reviewer states for all intents and purposes that if you don’t agree with his assessement there’s something wrong with you.
As for the book itself I didn’t mind it so much, but I can’t argue with the fact that it IS just cliche layered on cliche. Reflecting vback O haven’t found this book all that interesting since about halfway through the whole Red Skull takes over America arc. I’m hoping the two upcoming "anniversary" issues get tthings back on track.
Even if you were right on every point I’d have trouble agreeing with this review. You were venomous from the outset.