Pick of the Week
What did the
iFanboy
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Pulls
PENCILS: Butch Guice
COLORS: Dean White
COVER BY: Marko Djurdjevic
Size: 32 pages
Price: 3.99
Hey! There’s that book I used to know and love!
I’ve been a Captain America fan for my entire comic book reading life. He’s my favorite Marvel character. I stayed with his book through out the 80s and into the 90s until they couldn’t figure out what to do with him and gave him an armored suit and then briefly killed him off. I jumped back on the book when Mark Waid and Ron Garney brought Captain America back to greatness and I gritted my teeth through the Heroes Reborn/Rob Liefeld era. It’s been tough being a Captain America fan ever since Waid and Garney were booted off the book in favor of the prodigal sons from Image. Tough, that is, until Ed Brubaker got his hands on Captain America.
For 25 issues Captain America was one of my favorite comic books. A permanent resident in my Top 5. And then they killed Steve Rogers and my heart broke a little. But the new storyline involving his former partner, Bucky Barnes, reluctantly taking over the mantle of Captain America was an interesting one. When Bucky finally donned the (new) Captain America uniform and carried the famous shield into battle it was a triumph.
And then slowly but surely Captain America started to feel aimless. It started to feel like the story, the real story, that Ed Brubaker wanted to tell was the rise and fall of Steve Rogers and then the rise of Bucky Cap. After Bucky became Captain America, the cohesion was gone. The feeling that Captain America was telling one long intricate story was missing. It seemed like there was no plan. A comic book that was once so good month in and month out that we here at iFanboy ran out of ways to talk about how good it was became, well, kind of boring.
Anyone who has listened to the Pick of the Week show lately knows that Josh, Ron and I have all been wavering with this series. I don’t think any of us want to stop buying it, we would take no pleasure in excising it from our pull lists, but it was getting hard to justify every month. I’ve been sticking around because of my loyalty to Steve Rogers and because I find it hard to believe that a writer as great as Ed Brubaker wouldn’t find his feet again.
I’m glad I stuck around, at least for now, because Captain America #606 was great.
As I read this issue I found myself struggling to identify what it was, specifically, that I loved so much about it. Sometimes it’s hard to quantify a gut feeling. I hesitate to fall back on a tired trope like “back to basics” but I really feel like with Captain America #606, Ed Brubaker has taken us back to basics with this world and these characters.
Following the events in the last arc in which he was forced to gun down the deranged 1950s Captain America, Bucky is having a hard time dealing with it. It’s not so much the gunning down of a man that bothers him (he was a soldier in WWII and a Russian killer after all) it’s the fact that the man he killed looked exactly like his buddy Steve Rogers and was wearing the old Captain America outfit. So he is having nightmares and he’s acting reckless in the field and Falcon and Steve Rogers decide that it’s time for them all to get a beer and hash things out. Meanwhile, Baron Zemo is back. He’s the son of the original Baron Zemo, the guy who launched the rocket that fateful day that Steve was frozen in ice and Bucky was thought killed. Once the new Baron Zemo finds out that it’s Bucky who is running around as the new Captain America he decides to finish what his father started and begins to enact his plan to kill Bucky. There’s a lot going on here but it never feels like it. Ed Brubaker gives us a lot of information in this issue and it never feels expository. We get a sense of Bucky and his life and his friends and it is all handled very elegantly within the context of the story.
I appreciate the fact that as deadly serious as Brubaker and his writing can often be, he seems to hold as much affection for the goofier side of these stories as well. In the past it’s been his constant inclusion of Arnim Zola and his TV chest head, and here it’s Baron Zemo busting into the Kurtzberg Institute for the Criminally Insane and pulling off his fake face disguise to reveal he was wearing his full-on Baron Zemo mask underneath! That made me chuckle. I love that stuff.
My opinions on Butch Guice are constantly evolving. I am enjoying him less and less as an inker and more and more as a penciller. Sure he tends to draw the characters a bit older than they probably should look but he’s a pro. He’s been in the business for a long time and knows how to tell a story. The stiffness in a lot of the action that has been present, for the most part, since Steve Epting left the book is, mercifully, gone now. Dean White’s coloring of Guice’s pencils is also a big plus. As much as I have praised Frank D’Aramta’s colors in the past, the dark color scheme that they’ve had on the book since Brubaker came on was beginning to become oppressive. The colors are a bit brighter here and it works.
I’m not ready to plant my flag in the ground and say that Captain America is back. But Captain America #606 felt a hell of a lot like the book used to feel back when it was one of the best comic books around. Maybe it’s because Steve Rogers is back (even if he is wearing that hideous costume and he is just a supporting player), I don’t know. And maybe this is just an anomaly and not the start of trend. But I’m not going to worry about that right now. Right now I’m just going to bask in the warm glow of a great issue of Captain America.
Conor Kilpatrick
Never trust a new bartender.
conor@ifanboy.com
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D’OH!! I cut this and a couple of other recently marginal books in order to pick up Blacksad. From initial flipping through Blacksad I still think I made a good call, but Conor has convinced me to pick this up next week. Zemo!
This is first month I dropped Cap. Why you gotta do this to me Conor?!?
@mikegraham6 You and me both, dude. Gonna wait for the show to see why it was so liked, maybe I’ll pick it up with next week’s pile.
I’ve dug on all the Captain America except for Reborn. I read it in hardcover though and haven’t read the last arc. I still love this book and I’m glad to see it got pick of the week.
I thought Batman #700 deserved it a bit more–was my pick–but Cap was also pretty good. I’m kinda confused why Zemo’s doing this, since I heard he was more of a good guy nowadays, but the rest of the story was good, and the art had cool Staranko vibe to it that was pretty cool.
My affection for this book has never really waned, but I definitely agree this issue was a step up. Zemo & Co look to be the best antagonists since we lost middle-management Red Skull, and I love the crew of Bucky, Steve, and Sam.
God help me…Nomad wasnt bad this week either…
I really want to love Captain America again. Getting back into comics for me, it was a great title to read in issues. I hope you’re right and this has become a set up in the right direction. My only problem is…..I just don’t want Bucky as Cap anymore. With Rogers back it just seems pointless for him to have the mantle.
My pick was Batman #700. Drool worthy cover? Check. Fantastic artwork? Check Grant Morrison at his best? Triple Check.
@AlanRob- Right!?
my random thoughts: Butch Guice definitely took his storytelling vitamins before drawing this issue. not reading Thunderbolts, but it seems continuity is lining up, good to see. I grinned heavily at that note Natasha left him/him reading it and smelling the flower. Steve Rogers has a delorean! one of the Exiles? oh hell yeah! so every issue’s going to start off with that "Classified" recap page, that’s kinda neat. Sin!!
I’m w/ Connor. I’m a man w/ a lifesize Captain America sheild adorning his office wall. (I’ve had it for nearly a year now; best birthday present ever.) After Batman & Superman, Cap’s my all-time favorite hero, but sadly his book has waned. There was a couple of lost story arcs w/ Bucky that I wasn’t all too enthused about; especially, the Man w/ No Face one. But this seems to hit all the right notes.
Cautiously optimistic.
-J.
oh thank god…
Captain America never left, my friend; you did. 🙂
That said, Butch Guice was WAY better here than he was during Reborn and I am seriously pleased.
Keep the faith!
So why is Zemo evil now?
Great review! I’m excited to read this issue.
Great to hear it’s back to good things.
Uh…Why drop a book you had been reading because you hadn’t liked where it was going right at the begining of a status quo change? Now mind you if you just didn’t like Bucky Cap and were tired of those stories that makes sense, but if it was because you thought the story was lacking why drop it now? The only reason I ask is because I have seen the "I just dropped this book" up and down the Avengers line when it seems like the second issue of these stories would make more sense.
This is a great issue – and I had been wavering on continuing with this title as well. The whole Zemo being evil is wholly contradictory to his character development in Thunderbolts and Zemo: Born Better, but Marvel probably needs to make him a villain again in time for the Captain America movie. I think my decision to stay on this book will be the explanation given as to why he is evil again. He was helping Steve Rogers in Civil War for chrissakes.
@WadebeforeSlade I didn’t read the whole thunderbolts run and I have just come back to it but I always thought Zemo was a bad guy. Just like Magneto even though he is a good guy now he will turn back to bad because that is who he is.
Good review Connor. However, I’m starting to feel an odd Planet of the Apes vibe. What if? Zemo and Bucky, Capt., and Falcon get in a fight, they are outnumber by Zemo and his crew, and escape in a plane nearby, which has a bomb on it planted by the neo-Zemo. The real Capt. gets blown up (or so we think), and Bucky gets frozen on a iceberg, and who know what happens to the Falcon. My friend that signpost up ahead reads, "The Twilight Zone."
I think they downplayed Baron Zemo to be honest. I mean where the hell has he been in the past year and a half? Honestly it would have been cooler if he had been utilized as a villain with a dissenting opinion of Osborn, then I’d actually appreciate him more.
It was tough for me to like this book. I’ll argee that Brubaker seems to be taking a back to basic approach, but Baron Zemo didn’t seem right to me. Nicieza really evolved the character over in Thunderbolts. It seemed like Zemo was taking quite a few steps backwards here. I’m all for Zemo as a villain, but he has a lot of depth. He wants to control the world in order to save it. Here he seems to be going back to his dime store villain roots. I shouldn’t care too much about continuity, but Nicieza really defined a character who wasn’t really defined before. Now all of that is being erased so Cap can have another villain.
This issue really reminded me of the feeling I got when Captain America was at the top of its game. Thanks for making this the pick! I totally would have passed it by otherwise.
How does it work when Zemo puts on a latex mask? Wouldn’t it look weird when he opens his mouth and there’s cloth there from his mask underneath instead of the inside of his mouth?
They need to just drop the Nomad backup. Lose it. It sucks. I am not reading it. Give us 8 more pages of main story instead.
I agree, Conor – it was a great issue. But I’ve also got to agree with IroncladMerc – the Nomad backup is pointless, a total waste of space. Drop it and give us more Captain America.
Why’s everyone hating on Nomad? I love those stories.
I think the Nomad stories’ only sin has been being in a book that couldn’t have less to do with them tonally and artistically. Ed Brubaker’s WWII vets and Sean McKeever’s teenage girls are not chocolate and peanut butter. Personally, though, I thought this month’s backup was gripping and outstanding.
@Jimski That was sort of my thought, and then I read the ‘Young Allies’ series that spun out of ‘Nomad’ and it’s all about child trafficking and the ‘Bastards of Evil.’ And this Nomad backup is about a homeless girl who finds dead bodies in the basement — so I wonder if there was a mandate to go darker in order to ‘match the tone’ or whatever. But it’s not like Nomad has ever been about shopping and boyfriends and ponies, either.
Conor, you’re absolutely on target re Butch Guice’s pencils. He has undergone many changes over the 20 years he’s been penciling, and it’s worth reassessing your opinion of his work. This is his best work in at least two years.
I’m reading all of the Brubaker Cap in trades right now, and just jumped on to pamphlet format with this issue. The entire run looks worthwhile to pick up in trades, and I may even go back to #600 in issues. Thanks for the nod. Really enjoying this book, as I catch up on the last 5 years of Marvel continuity.
P.S. The thing that drove me away from Captain America, after being a loyal fan (admittedly not buyer) since the 70s, was that Ron Garney got me to come back to the book, and then they took him off of it for Rob Liefeld! I felt like I had just gotten hit in the face with an adamantium shield. No, check that. I felt like I had gotten stabbed in the back with a Sharpie. Glad to see the title recovered. Steve Rogers is one of my favorite characters. Captain America is one of the top three comic book characters, in my personal universe.
Now I have to find out whatever became of Ron Garney.
@player1: He’s been drawing WOLVERINE: WEAPON X for the last year or so.
Wow. A quick google shows that I need to order Operation: Rebirth and Skaar: Son of Hulk.
http://www.comics.org/credit/name/Ron%20Garney/sort/chrono/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Garney
@conor: Right on. To the library!
@player1: You can see what Garney’s been working on here. OPERATION REBIRTH was a Book of the Month selection: the review, the video review.
@conor: Nice site. Thanks. Duly bookmarked. Cheers.
LOVED the art on this. And while Cap left me a little cold since Reborn, I had the exact same feeling as Conor. Looks like th ebook is back on track.
@Conor What you thought about the short run before Brubaker took over, with Bachalo on art. I quite enjoyed it.
@conor: You would have to recommend so many books on a Tuesday, right? I got Operation Rebirth, CA #449, CA #600-605 and Wednesday Comics. It’s a good thing I talked to my guy about my discount before I went to the register.
😛