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Hey everybody, I hope you had a great week but are ready for the weekend just like me! In last week’s edition of Ye Olde School Cafe’, we saw Captain America visit a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility looking for Nick Fury and some answers to his past. He didn’t find Fury, because he was interrogating Baron Strucker elsewhere. Cap and Dum Dum Dugan did get sneak-attacked though a while later by Baron Strucker, who had used a gas grenade to get the upper hand on Fury. The trio of Cap, Fury, and Dugan eventually put Strucker down, but they are amazed to find out he’s really a robot! Once they take the robot back to the lab, they are almost killed when an explosive goes off inside the robot’s body. We then see that the Machinesmith is the villain behind this charade. We see that the next part of his evil plot is to use Dragon Man as his slave to stop Cap dead in his tracks!

As Captain America struggles to breathe from the excruciating pain that he’s in from being crushed by Dragon Man’s superhuman grip, he uses his leather glove like a baseball and hurls it into the beast’s eye. It momentarily stuns the animal, and then the golden sphere that led Dragon Man on this rampage directs him to come back to Machinesmith’s headquarters. Once back at the base of operations, we see Dragon Man try to assault his master, but the golden spheres appear and unleash a few hundred-thousand volts on the creature and knock it unconscious. Meanwhile, Cap makes his way to the base after following Dragon Man to the lair and tries to confront the Machinesmith. Cap soon realizes that he’s another robot, and then must fight robotic copies of Spider-Man, The Thing, and Magneto. Cap eventually takes the robots apart, then sets his sights on the Machinesmith.
He follows him down a corridor, and then hears his tormentor’s voice over the speakers. The Machinesmith then tells Cap about how he fought Dare-Devil in the guise of Mister Fear. In this fight, he fell to his death, but his robots were ordered to revive him no matter what, turning him into a robot, but with his brain patterns inside to think for it. At this point, Cap is attacked by two dozen Machinesmith robots and looks to be outnumbered. Cap, after smashing a few of them, uses his head and runs to the controls and smashes them. This stops the robots, but also unknowingly destroys Machinesmith as well. The Machinesmith’s voice and image are on the view screen and he tells Cap how he lured him there specifically to trick him into killing him. Cap is distraught about taking any life and is dejected by the whole thing. He walks out with his head hanging low from the entire ordeal.
In the next issue, we see some political radicals taking a Congressman and some hotel personnel hostage. Not so lucky for them though, Captain America is right around the corner. He quickly jumps into action and easily thwarts the goons, saving the day. While the police are doing their thing, Cap is approached by the committee chairman, and he thanks Cap for his heroism. The chairman then asks Cap to say a few words to his friends backstage at the convention. Cap agrees, and talks to the men about the war and his revival afterward. The men tell Cap that the country could use a leader like him because of his honesty and integrity. The Chairman agrees, and asks Cap to run as the party’s candidate! Cap half-halfheartedly agrees to think about it and leaves.
We next see Cap relaxing at his apartment, and then helping his friends move a new tenant into the building. Just as everybody is taking a break from the heavy lifting, another neighbor runs into the room to tell them about some big news. On the front page of the newspaper it reads “Cap for President”! Of course, Steve is taken back by this and heads straight for Avengers Mansion. Once at the mansion, Steve runs into Beast who is elated and tells Cap he’ll be his campaign manager. Beast also informs Cap that he can get him the female vote because of all of his “lady friends.” Cap then tries to catch a minute of alone time to gather his thoughts, but the room he enters is being occupied by Iron Man, Vision, and Wasp. They are arguing about the news and both sides of the dilemma. Cap tells his teammates that he understands their questions and concerns, and then lets them know he needs to go think about it and leaves. At this point we get to see some of New York’s residents weigh in on the subject. Some people think it’s a great idea, while others not so much. Even the superhero community is shown thinking it over. We see Nick and Dugan, Dare-Devil, Spidey, and Doc Strange all pondering their friend as President.
As Cap is hopping from one rooftop to another, he spots a building that looks familiar. It’s his school from when he was a boy growing up in New York. He decides to go in for old times’ sake, and then recalls the words of his teacher. She told the class that they needed to come to the aid of their country and to not let her down. Cap responds by saying that he won’t. The next scene shows the crowded convention center and the chairman getting the crowd roused for Cap’s speech. Cap arrives at the convention hall, and once he takes the podium, he tells the people inside about how back in the 1940s, he made a promise to America to uphold the American dream, and he’ll keep doing so as a superhero, not a politician. The book ends with words from a speech by JFK: “The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle…but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. A man does what he must– in spite of personal consequences…in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures…and that is the basis of all human morality.”
Tune in next week for some exciting action as Cap battles not only Batroc the Leaper, but also the deranged Mister Hyde as well! See you next week!
Billy Dunleavy
billy@comicattack.net