Comic Review: Captain America #6

Following up writer Ed Brubaker’s eight-year run on Captain America couldn’t have been easy for incoming scribe Rick Remender, but the approach he took was sound. Taking a cue from Jack Kirby’s return to the title in the 1970s, Remender and artist John Romita Jr. broke from Brubaker’s espionage action, thrusting Cap into a hostile dimension ruled by his World War II nemesis Arnim Zola. Adopting Zola’s genetically-engineered “son” as his own and naming him Ian after his own grandfather, Cap’s current status quo has been one of sci-fi horror and survival, battling subhuman mutations in a story that has currently seen over a decade pass (!) in comic-book time. The resulting flavour, something of a cross between Kirby’s way-out 1970s Cap tales and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, was a refreshing change of pace at first, but now, six issues in, it’s starting to feel as though a decade really has passed.

Last issue brought Cap and Ian into conflict with Jet Black, Zola’s adopted daughter and chief enforcer. Their battle ended with Ian captured, Cap presumed dead, and Jet Black doubting the truth of what her “father” told her about their enemy. Issue #6 sees Cap storming Zola’s fortress, determined to free Ian and somehow escape back to Earth with him, while Zola bombards Ian with images of the young proteges Cap has trained and let die in the past (Bucky, Nomad) in an attempt to sway the child back to his side. Meanwhile, Jet Black struggles with her own feelings about her red-white-and-blue nemesis, finding herself infatuated with her strangely merciful enemy.

Remender’s Captain America is closest in tone to his creator-owned Fear Agent series–it’s less a superhero adventure and more a dystopian epic. The writer wisely chose to downplay the hero’s WW II involvement, flashing back instead to Steve Rogers’ Depression-era childhood. These interludes showed us that Cap’s inner strength came from his abused mother, whose nurturing in the face of adversity forms the Star-Spangled Avenger’s own approach with his adopted son. This was an interesting idea, and it broke nicely from the tradition of heroes getting their strength from a male figure–father, uncle, whoever. But six issues in, one issue is starting to become indistinguishable from another, as each instalment seems to consist of Cap endlessly battling twisted mutants in a grim warzone, while Zola performs gruesome experiments in his fortress. John Romita Jr. (assisted by a veritable army of inkers–this issue features the work of Tom Palmer, Klaus Janson, and Scott Hanna) is a fine artistic choice to capture the alien weirdness of the landscape, and Dean White‘s colours give the visuals a strangely painted look. But as with the story, the unrelentingly grim art is beginning to feel repetitive. As it stands, the book doesn’t feel one bit like a Captain America title anymore, but rather another book entirely that the character has simply been dropped into. A change of pace is always welcome, but Remender’s Captain America needs to keep moving forward–right now, it’s spinning its wheels a bit.

Related posts: