(This review contains spoilers for Captain America #1)
Out of any superhero on the Marvel side of things, who better to encapsulate ‘America’ as an idea than Captain America himself? From the cover of the first ever Captain America comic (by Simon and Kirby), where he punches Hitler to now, he’s been a character that writers have used to embody ‘America’, specifically the “American dream” – usually described as “that every person has the freedom and opportunity to succeed and attain a better life.”
But even within that conversation, throughout history and especially in the context of today, a man wearing the flag of an imperial nation ascribing his mission to “freedom” doesn’t quite fly. To me, as much as I enjoy Captain America comics despite the liberal nature of it all (because let’s be real, superheroes are uniquely American concepts and them being fascistic is 100% part of the deal, and that’s why we love them) I do find it harder and harder to buy into what they’re selling.
Yet, here I am, reading Chip Zdarsky, Valerio Schiti, Frank Martin and Joe Caramagna’s Captain America #1, because ultimately, I love these creators and I am interested in what they have to say about Captain America.
Artistically, it looks as gorgeous as I expect a Schiti and Martin book to look. The very cool tones are emblematic of the book’s tone itself, which is a beautiful touch, and Schiti draws a very attractive Steve Rogers (and Reed Richards!). Caramagna’s lettering is great as usual, but the standout is the lettering for the diary entries, which break sentences and keep the flow going really well.
This issue opens and ends on pages that not only perfectly frame what’s going on, but also double as a showcase of, interestingly, what the modern superhero looks like. It’s not hard to realize the fact that there was definitely a shift in how superheroes were portrayed pre-and-post 9/11, especially with books like Millar and Hitch’s Ultimates fundamentally changing how we view the modern superhero and how they operate. Regardless of how you feel about that book, the interesting superhero books that followed engaged with the concept of superheroes being a paramilitary strike team and played with it (Hickman, et. al’s Avengers is the most obvious example of this). John Ney Reiber and John Cassday’s Captain America also deals with a Captain America book post 9/11 in a very direct way, but this does it differently.
With Marvel’s sliding timescale, everything occurs in ‘relative time’, which leads to concepts like characters who were enlisted in the Vietnam war being enlisted for the Iraq invasion. Everything shifts, which leads to a book like this essentially showing that Cap was still frozen in the ice when 9/11 happened. Anyway, back to the book’s framing.
The issue opens up from the perspective of David Colton, a new character, witnessing 9/11 as a teenager, which also acts as his wake up call to join the army and “do what needs to be done”, and it ends on a splash page with the camera behind him, holding a Captain America shield, watching on as Saddam Hussein’s statue is pulled down, reminiscent of the exact imagery when this happened in the real world.
The story within it is one where Captain America is fresh out of the ice, getting used to a world that has moved on without him, interspersed with flashbacks of David Colton trying to join the army. David Colton here is similar to Steve Rogers, a scrawny kid who wants to join the war to make some change, but the difference is in how it’s presented. Where Steve is a man out of time trying to catch up to where he belongs, Colton is joining a racist war (obvious to us but made explicit in the text when Colton is talking to his mom). Colton gets bullied and beaten up, but his resilience ultimately gets him pumped with what appears to be a Super Soldier serum (or some variation of it).
To me, none of this is subtle – the idea presented here is that, compared to the past, America’s current “heroes” are driven by hate, by the act of revenge. America has changed.
Steve recognizes this during the opening of the issue, where he gives chase to a shooter. As he asks a police officer where he should go, she tells him he’s heading towards the U.N. building, to which he responds with confusion due to not knowing what the U.N. even is. The shooter, as it turns out, has a bomb strapped to his chest ready to blow up the U.N. building, and when Cap talks to him and points out that he is military, he ends up surprised and finally puts the gun down. He reveals that he did two tours in the Gulf. The Gulf War is also referenced in Colton’s conversation with his mom, where we find out Colton’s brother served in Kuwait and died (and Colton calls him a hero). Similarly, in a conversation with Iron Man, Cap says that, as a man out of time, the only place he belongs to, that he can return to, is the U.S. Army.
And his first mission? U.S. military intervention in Latveria to save American diplomats.
Within all of this framework (and my interview with Chip), it is very clear that the team has something to say about Captain America (as a character and the mythos) operating in a modern world. None of this is subtle. Avengers: Twilight, even if set in the United States of America, was more about “the world” even as it explored what America has become. I do wonder how much the Disney corporation owned Marvel Comics is going to allow the team of Chip, Valerio and co. to explore these threads, but if Ultimates is any indicator, maybe we might have something interesting on our hands.
