Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Captain America

I don't know if anyone's reading the latest series by Brubaker and Epting, but I think it's fantastic. Captain America seems to have a harder edge to him, though nothing quite like the Ultimate version. I think there's a nice balance. I always felt that Cap was too "boy scout" for my tastes. Seeing him rough up some terrorists in #1 was really nice. The fact is that this is the first time in many years that I can say I enjoyed reading a Captain America story.

I'm reading, but I'm waiting for my shipment with issue 3. Friday, hopefully.

I'm not a Cap fan. I like the character, I enjoy him, just not enough to be a longtime monthly reader of the title. But I do like Steve Epting, and figured I'd give the first issue a try.

The comic really blew me away. For the first time in a long time, Cap seems like a real, full character again, worthy of his own title. He's not just "YAY! The USA is awesome! Go America!" which he has a tendency to become at times.

His harder edge is within what I like to call "the realm of acceptable characterisation". I'd hate to see it all the time, but at this time, under these circumstances, it makes sense, and is how I could see Steve acting after the last few months of his life.

J

This is my exact feeling, Kinetix. I'm also not a Cap fan, but I flipped through the first issue and thought it looked interesting. Frankly, I was amazed that I liked it so much and I'm really loving this new series. It also helps that it's not heavy on fighting costumed villains. Sure, they're there, but they're not the big, flashy costume types.

If Cap was always written this way I would definitely become a Cap fan.

Well, he is like 80 years old. He needs his own "Rebirth" event

For some who have longer memories...

CAPTAIN AMERICA has long been one of my favorite heroes. I don't honestly recall if I ever saw any of his "Marvel Super-Heroes" cartoons, but I do know I saw his brief cameo in F.F. ANNUAL #3 (Reed & Sue's wedding). My big introduction to him was AVENGERS ANNUAL #3, an all-reprint issue. It starts out with AVENGERS #4-- "Captain America Joins The Avengers". WOW!!! Almost every panel of this story is so exciting they could all be pin-ups-- it's a tragedy Stan Lee (in a crunch) got George Roussos to ink the whole book over a weekend. (It's a toss-up-- who butchered Kirby's pencils worse, Roussos or Paul Reinman?) The rest of the book was 3 consecutive C.A. episodes from TALES OF SUSPENSE, beginning with "The Origin Of The Red Skull". WOW!!!!! To this day, that remains one of my favorite C.A. stories, particularly the scene when the newly-christened super-villain actually makes ADOPH HITLER cringe in fear!

Over the next few years I mostly picked up other reprints, and got to see Cap both in the early AVENGERS stories and his run in SUSPENSE. I still feel the Kirby-Stone team was one of the all-time high points of C.A. art, and the stories, while slight on "character", were heavy-duty on NON-STOP action. When you've got one guy without any super-powers taking on a DOZEN thugs at once without breaking a sweat, how can it not just take your breath away?

I eventually (around 1973) began buying the new C.A. comics as they came out. Sal Buscema was the artist at the time, and was still doing top-notch work, inked by John Verpoorten (one of the great unsung inkers of the period, and someone who passed away far too young). Steve Englehart may well have become my FAVORITE writer in the 70's for his work on C.A.-- but of course, he was also writing THE AVENGERS, DR. STRANGE, LUKE CAGE: HERO FOR HIRE, MASTER OF KUNG FU, and other series. Steve gave Steve Rogers a humanity he'd long been lacking, in the same way Don McGregor (around the same time) turned THE BLACK PANTHER (in JUNGLE ACTION) into a full human being. A lot of Marvel's 60's heroes suffered from poor handling in the 70's, but with certain writers, they shined in ways undreamt of before.

Although there's been good and bad runs of C.A. since, I'm not sure in my heart if the book has ever really been as good as when Steve & Sal were doing it. Of course, in many ways, NOTHING beats Lee & Kirby (plus Stone, Giacoia or Sinnott!!!), but that was a whole different style.

Same here. I like the character, but I haven't been enamored with the series ever since the old Zeck issues... such a long time ago. Even the Mark Waid ones were not a fav of mine.

But I picked up the series because I love Steve Epting, and it's so good so far!

I just happened to flip through it in the shop. It looked good so I bought it, read it, and loved it.

[deadpan]Cap has never been better than he was in Liefeld's HEROES REBORN issues.[/deadpan]
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
( )

I remember Cap fondly from the old "Cap and Falcon" series. I also remember a lot of Buscema art, but I forgot where I saw it. I also liked Cap a lot during Perez's first run on the Avengers and when Byrne was doing Cap's title. Zeck was also awesome. The 80's Englehart stuff was ok, and the Waid/Garney stuff was good, but I didn't enjoy it as much as the earlier stuff. I tend to like Cap more as a superhero than a super soldier, which is what he's been a lot more of lately. I'm also bugged by the current depiction of his scale-armor shirt. I liked it a LOT more when it was a costume with chainmail underneath (I blame Maguire for this depiction from that limited series he started but didn't finish).

I started buying C.A. off the rack a short way into Englehart's run. Some time later, I managed to go back and get EVERY issue from #100-up to where I'd come in. The worst of the early 70's must be Gary Friedrich's run. "Incoherent" is the word that comes to mind. What really surprised me was how GOOD Sal Buscema was when he started on the book. Sadly, it seems to me his art has been slipping in quality-- CONSISTENTLY-- ever since! (You wouldn't think a thing like that was possible, would you?) The one exception was the BIRDS OF PREY mini he worked on (Sal B. at DC!! What a shock!!) which I thought was his best-looking art since the mid-70's. Leave it to DC to match pencillers with really appropriate inkers.

Other high points... JIM STERANKO (but talk about an ego-- he left after ONLY 3 ISSUES!!). Stern-Byrne-Rubinstein (WOW!!! --but another MINOR dispute with an editor saw all 3 leave after maybe 8 issues; was that when Byrne started doing that on a regular basis???). MIKE ZECK (the BEST he EVER looked-- I don't even remember who was writing it; the DEATHLOK story was about the tail-end, I always hate when a book finally gets good and then they lose the reason for it).

After that, it trailed off... and I eventually stopped buying. I did get the Steve Rude mini a few years ago, but was disappointed. Mike Royer's inks made it look too much as if Rude had inked it himself-- and between Eric Shanower & Gary Martin, I've been spoiled-- those 2 guys were the BEST inkers for Rude! Also, sadly, Bruce Jones didn't seem to "get" Cap and somehow the whole story was a bit of a downer.

I'm in the middle of reading all my 1960's Marvels in chronological sequence. I'm very much looking forward to the mid-to-late 60's periods when Lee & Kirby really took off! Many of the later ones (1967-up) I've only ever read ONCE-- over 25 years ago-- so going back and reliving the stories with a more mature eye is long overdue for me.

Count me in as another major Cap fan too! My father and I recently completed our run of Captain America, picking up a few early 70’s issues we were missing, and I just had the pleasure of looking at the first 245 issues on our display board (including Tales of Suspense—which my Dad bought off the rack in the 60’s).

I’m liking the new series a real lot so far. I have to say, I hate when old time characters get killed off with no abandon, and I really didn’t like what happened to Nomad at the end of #3, but we’ll have to see where that goes.

However, Brubaker’s writing is so top-notch and the art is so gorgeous, that I’m willing to forgive that for now. Besides, I’m kind of sick of the Red Skull too…it seemed like no major creator could take over the title without doing a crappy Red Skull story. I’d like to see him stay dead for awhile, and if he ever comes back (which I’m sure he will), I hope he’s written as scary and menacing as he was when he first appeared.

The story, the pacing, the strong characterization of Cap and Sharon…all of it is excellent. There is a strong mood to the series similar to Bru’s Gotham Central work, and I like that.

However, my favorite moment by FAR was in issue #3, where I’m reminded why I love Captain America in the main Marvel U again. For two or three pages, he explains to Sharon why he loves the French and considers them to be brave and courageous, and hates seeing his own country men insult them. After all, he fought beside them in WWII. It was a powerful scene IMO, and it finally brought Cap back to me—the Cap I wanted. For too long, I’ve been hating the Ultimate Cap in Ultimates, who I consider a major asshole, and I’m glad the real Cap had this scene (as a strong contrast to Ultimate Cap’s insult to the French a few months ago). This is the heroic Cap that I expect: noble, empathic and appreciative of his allies.

I’m officially ‘into’ the new series.

Oh, and Drake and Prof, you’re comments on Cap’s history are very enjoyable, so keep ‘em coming if you want!

Prof., that sounds like a ton of fun. I've done that in the past, but only with one series at a time, and never with Cap (mainly with Thor, Spidey and Avengers).

Cap has never been a favorite of mine either. I picked this up b/c of Brubaker's name, and so far I have kept buying it.

"I've done that in the past, but only with one series at a time, and never with Cap (mainly with Thor, Spidey and Avengers)."

Long ago, I used to be able to do things like this, when my collection was smaller and runs were shorter. In the 90's I began making a concerted effort to re-read some series from the beginning-- once I had ALL (or most) of the issues. So often, I'd begin buying in the middle. Unlike TV shows in reruns, until recently it was VERY difficult to collect an entire run of anything! And unlike the late 70's, when I started going to conventions and could, for example, get a PILE of SUSPENSE issues for $2-$3 apiece, these days prices are just INSANE.

Over the years, I've reread NEXUS, MASTER OF KUNG FU, THE BLACK PANTHER (in JUNGLE ACTION) and a few others, including John Blackburn's COLEY, which I've read from beginning to end 3 times now! In most cases, I started out buying & reading where I could, and the re-reading was so it would all make sense for the first time.

There were so MANY huge, gaping holes in my 60's Marvels, until recently it just wouldn't have been feasable or satisfying. But I started closing in on my FANTASTIC FOURs over the last 10 years. I believe there's now only 6 issues by Jack Kirby (out of 109!) that I've NEVER read, and all the rest I finally have either originals or reprints. Marvel's MASTERWORKS have helped, but recently their ESSENTIALS have also plugged major holes, like the entire run of ANT-MAN and JOHNNY STORM: THE HUMAN TORCH (both of which introduced a TON of long-long-running villains to the Marvel Universe). And then of course there's THE AVENGERS, which I found over 20 years ago was one of the hardest books to find back issues of at decent prices, due to the fact that you have the fans of ALL those heroes buying the book, not just those who are into it for itself as a "group" book. (Strangely enough, I did manage, more than 20 years ago, to get the complete Neal Adams run before it was ever reprinted. Am I glad I did! In the early-80's reprints, the line-quality dropped terribly. Mind you, those stories have NOT aged well at all-- the Thomas-Adams X-MEN are MUCH better on every level.)

Last year I started out by compiling a list of EVERY Golden Age Marvel story I had in my collection-- ALL reprints-- spaced out all over the freakin' place, often in the back of books. I was never more glad I've spent so many years compiling an index of my collection, including a column that shows where stories were reprinted (or where reprints originally came from). I had around 25 SUB-MARINER stories, and they proved to be the cream of the crop, as good as the Simon-Kirby CAPTAIN AMERICAs, and both several notches above just about everything else Marvel did back then.

Next I did the same with my DC stories by Simon & Kirby. I knew I had too many Golden Age DC's (what with their ARCHIVES) to get thru all of them, so I just narrowed it down to Jack's work. While I was doing it, DC reprinted Jack's CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN, none of which I had ever read! Great timing. After going thru the YELLOW CLAW reprints (in the back of the MASTER OF KUNG FU Giants, of all places), the SKY MASTERS book (the ill-fated short-lived comic-strip) and the MARVEL MONSTERWORKS book (stupid, but fun!) the real moment finally arrived when I reached FANTASTIC FOUR #1. I'm up to about FF ANNUAL #2 so far, and have done my best to read EVERYTHING I have, more-or-less in the order it came out (except where continued stories' schedules conflict, then I make allowances).

The biggest surprise for me was that AMAZING SPIDER-MAN by Lee & Ditko was consistently the BEST-WRITTEN book from Marvel at the time! F.F. by Lee & Kirby remains my favorite series, but many of the early stories betray a "seat-of-the-pants" plotting where they crammed in too much, then realized near the end they were running out of pages. This wasn't as much of a problem for Jack later on, when "continued" or "ongoing" stories became more common. All the same, it was a SHOCK when I realized that some of the 1967 Hanna-Barbera F.F. cartoons adapted directly from the Lee-Kirby originals were BETTER-paced & structured than the comics they were based on! "Galactus" is a prime example-- the comic should really have been a 2-parter, and the cartoon version neatly snipped off the 1st half of FF #48 and the 2nd half of FF #50, leaving only the "main story"-- and an astonishingly large amount of actual Lee dialogue intact. (If only that show, with such good writing, had had a bigger budget-- like JONNY QUEST!)

Prof., you’re reminiscing about rereading these old comics makes me smile! You know, I’ve never even read any of the Golden Age stories, Marvel or DC—one day, I’m going to have to check them out.

As for me, I had the indredible luck of being born into a family of Silver Age comic book collectors (my Dad was buying them off the rack in the early 60’s), and by the time I could read, I had access to every Silver Age Marvel story ever written (besides the model ones ). So, the first comic books I ever read was the Silver Age run of the FF, then Spidey, then Avengers, and so on and so forth. My love for these stories cannot be conveyed enough. When I was 11, I read the entire run of Spider-Man (all his titles over the years) straight on through from Amazing Fantasy #15 to the most current issue at the time, and then repeated this a few times. The Ditko/Lee Spider-Man stories truly are masterpieces and by far some of the best written material in the comic book artform.

I repeated this with Thor, Avengers, but became burnt out when I tried to do it on Daredevil, Cap and Iron Man, since our runs weren’t complete then, we were missing issues from the 70’s (we’ve since completed them this past year, but I just can’t find the time to read an entire run right now).

It sounds like you really know you’re stuff, too! Besides Legion (and almost Flash and JLA), I’ve never really gone through a whole run in the DCU.

And Tales of Suspsense issues for $2-3… , I can only imagine…

The problem with buying dozens of issues of a run and reading them all at once is it's just TOO MUCH material in a short space of time. You wind up "having" to plow thru a STACK, instead of reading and enjoying and letting every detail really SINK IN at a natural rate. It's probably okay to re-read a stack once you've already experienced the stories before-- but going thru too many at once lessens the emotional impact & connection of all of them.

It's like when my best friend Jim told me he watched 10 episodes of STAR TREK back-to-back in one day (he was home sick at the time). After awhile, even HE had trouble remembering what took place in which story.

That's what happened to me with CAP #100-154 (or so). I've been reading THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR since it started, and many old stories they've gone into great detail about, I barely have any memory of. But that magazine, possibly more than anything else, has really made me wanna go back and appreciate this stuff like I never did before. And being able to read "the whole Marvel universe"-- all the stories in sequence together-- I'm really getting a better feeling about how so many things inter-relate. Stan Lee got so much into the habit of having characters from THIS book appear in THAT book, you really miss a lot of the connections if you DON'T read everything together, and in the right sequence. (Unfortunately, this behavior has gotten out of control and become TOO MUCH the "norm" over the last few decades. These days I much more enjoy "complete" stories with "The End" at the end that stand on their own and don't require any crossovers whatsoever.)

Then again, I'm also noticing places where inter-book continuity got a bit screwed. The first year of THE AVENGERS is practically one big "company-wide crossover" involving all their big guns, and there's at least one spot where Stan slipped up in the script stage. One issue starts with the team having a meeting; Cap is trying out the modifications to his shield, Iron Man is wearing his brand-new armor. Yet Stan's narration says the scene has the group stopping in Chicago on their way back to NYC from their run-in with the Hulk in the prevous issue. NO FREAKIN' WAY!!! NOTHING in the story itself suggests this, nothing makes it important. It's clear Stan just automatically tied the opening in to the previous issue, instead of letting there be a natural "break" between stories. The inter-book continuity between AVENGERS, THOR, IRON MAN, CAPTAIN AMERICA and ANT-MAN got really tricky for awhile-- which may explain why after 15 issues, everybody left but Cap! (It had been easier to fit in appearances by Hulk & Sub-Mariner, since neither had their own series at the time.) What SURPRISED me when I caught up with it was how the AVENGERS-HULK-FANTASTIC FOUR 2-parter (FF #24-25) takes place IMMEDIATELY after Cap's return from the dead in AVENGERS #4. At the end, Rick Jones thinks, "What'll he do when he finds out I've got a new partner?" I read that story in the late 60's. It was around 20 years later before I found out the Hulk learned the truth only 4 weeks later (newsstand-time!).

Similarly (well, only sort of), I first read the "Kree-Skrull War" issues of THE AVENGERS over 20 years ago. LAST WEEK I finally read the 3 issues with Captain Marvel that led into it-- which had never been reprinted before ESSENTIAL AVENGERS Vol.4.

S
-
P
-
O
-
I
L
-
E

-
R
-
S
P
-
A
-
C
-
E
----

So when was Cap revived, currently???

A little snippet of dialogue from Cap at the gravesides of his replacements got me wondering.

"I wish I'd been there to see it... the Civil Rights movement, the race to the moon."

I've come to accept stuff like this, like updating Iron Man's origins from the Korean conflict to Vietnam to some nondescript, non-anachronizing timeframe... but I just never thought about Cap that way. He's THE "man out of time". But it makes sense, if they've updated Iron Man's origins, and the Avengers'... Cap wasn't revived in '64 any longer. So when WAS he revived, and what's it mean for the character?

I don't think it means all that much to Cap. What I think it does mean is that there had to be a few more filler Cap's to keep people from knowing he was "dead".

No need for any more Caps after the '50s one, really. The cover-up was complete by that point.

As for when he was revived, I'm not sure they've given a date. Could just be a generic "10 to 12 years ago".

Another thing... If I'm reading #4 correctly, William Naslund (Spirit of '76) was Cap from '45 until... when was JFK's "first Senate campaign", anyway? Mid- to late 50's? So his career as Captain America was at LEAST as long as Steve Rogers' accumulative time in uniform.

Oog. Continuity hurts my head.

The story in which Naslund was killed was meant by writer Roy Thomas to be the "missing" adventure of the All-Winners Squad. The Squad had appeared only in ALL-WINNERS #19 and #21. There was no #20 for some reason. So that's where Thomas slotted his story.

Since #19 (which would feature the Nasland Cap) is cover dated Fall 1946, and #21 (which would feature the Jeff Mace Cap) has a cover date of Winter 1946-47, I'm guessing Nasland was Cap for a little over a year.

Okay, that jives with actual facts; my fault for not knowing my history. JFK was first elected to the Senate in 1947, putting his run for that post squarely in 1946. He served three consecutive terms thru '53, when he decided not to run. After an unsuccessful bid for the VP spot on the '55 Democratic ticket, he again ran for the Senate in '58, winning an holding that position until he was elected President.

So long story short, issue 4 had the Cap-facts for that era straight.

Speaking of Cap-facts, I'm wondering if and to what they'll be retconning Cap's '45 disappearance.

Should be more clues in #5... out today!

I love this title, but the delays are really killing my buzz. Hopefully this'll be in my subs shipment due either Friday or Monday... the wait since last issue's been long enough.

Caught up on Cap, and here's a few random thoughts:

1. Possibly Marvel's best comic, or *will be* Marvel's best comic if Brubaker keeps up this pace. Only four issues, and already I'm thinking it's the best Cap in years. Love the pacing, the art, the dialogue--a very smart read.

2. It better not be Bucky. The Winter Soldier that is. That's all I'm saying . Well, actually, I have more to say: I don't think Brubaker would be that obvious, that corny or that dissapointing. Jason Todd back in Batman is so...'hack writing' in my mind.

I am curious, though, to who else it could be. Zemo, maybe? It really wouldn't jive with his earlier appearances to be all assassin-like.

3. Crossbones! It was cool to see him. He's probably Cap's best villain since the late 80's/90's IMO. Cap has a plethora of great bad guys to use, so I hope we see them too.

-----------------
A few general comments on Cap's history, since I recently completed the entire Cap collection with my pops.

Did we ever find out who exactly Scourge was? I mean, we had killings, the issue of Cap where he kills like 20 guys, then that Scourge is killed by another person in the same exact Scourge manner. I seem to remember later Scourge/Cap stories at the end of the Gruenwald era. I'm not talking about Nomad in Thunderbolts though--I'm pretty much caught up on that.

By completing the Cap run, we were filling in the missing Cap/Falcon issues. Those covers spell pure Marvel 70's to me, and that is very much a good thing.