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Captain America #609
Publisher: Marvel
Writer: Ed Brubaker
Artist: Butch Guice
Cover: Marko Djurdjevic

“No Escape pt 4”: It seems as if as long as there is a Captain America there will also be a Baron Zemo to make his life a living hell. This time Zemo has been setting up a series of events painting Cap in a very bad light, as well as exposing the new Cap’s secret identity across the Internet and media outlets, even revealing his time as the Winter Soldier. So just when Black Widow, Falcon, and former Captain America, Steve Rogers, convince James (Bucky) to go underground, he finds a message in his bathroom from Zemo. Knowing that his enemy was in his house just pushes him over the edge, and he sneaks out to what he thinks is the meeting place hinted at in the message. So while his friends are being stalled by fighting Iron Hand Hauptmann, James is playing right into Zemo’s hands.

I was wondering how long it would take for a Cap/Zemo battle to happen, as it seems only natural. We have the son of the original Baron Zemo who took up his father’s mantle, going against the successor to the role of Captain America who has ties to the father as well as the son. Brubaker has Zemo wanting to finish his father’s work by making sure that the new Captain America dies, and so far his (Brubaker) story has been pretty damn good. It’s had a natural progression, and is smart in having Zemo discredit Cap first on national television as well as playing mind games. I am confused as to why he’s portraying James as some non-thinking rookie who just rushes headfirst into a fight and is easily goaded. It does get a bit old seeing him disregard the warnings of Falcon and Black Widow time and time again to only wind up getting his butt handed to him.

You know what else I don’t understand? Why Guice’s artwork hasn’t been as good as it was a few issues ago. Aside from a couple of pages in this issue and a panel that reminded me of an old Cap fight scene during Kirby’s run, it just wasn’t much to look at. The execution of some of the fight choreography was great, along with the visual story presentation, but it just lacked the finer work he displayed earlier in the series that gave it some “umph”!

Brubaker’s story is one that is unfolding nicely, and I like the fact that he has the back up characters, Falcon and Black Widow, playing pretty strong roles in it. Also using Steve sparingly will help readers accept James as Cap, if you ask me. There are a few character issues that seem to contradict some of the information regarding Bucky’s training as the Winter Soldier. On one hand he’s a trained spy, assassin, and tactician, but yet he’s recently been a hit first ask questions later type of guy. Maybe this is just a natural progression of his personality without the brainwashing or the stress of him trying to fill the role of Captain America after Steve held it. Personally, I like the new Captain America and a great part of that is that Brubaker has been doing a fine job establishing the character in his own series. Brubaker does bring a cool factor to Cap, and the spy/espionage feel really does work here, especially with the type of background that our new Cap has.

Now, there is a Nomad back up story by Sean McKeever with art by Filipe Andrade, however, I’m from the school of “if you don’t like it don’t buy it,” and I paid for Captain America so I didn’t read it. I’m not a fan of the character, nor was I interested in any of the other Nomad backup stories in the previous issues, because after I gave the first two a shot they bored me to tears. So there’s no way I can give an accurate critique of the story in this issue. My apologies to the Nomad fans out there.

‘Till next time!

Infinite Speech
infinitespeech@comicattack.net