Brubaker, Ed
AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:
3 out of 5
(1 book)
Captain America Reborn
(Art by Butch Guice, Howard Chaykin, Rafael Albuquerque, David Aja, Mitch Breitweiser and Bryan Hitch)
This book begins by showing us how Steve Rogers' closest friends and most dedicated enemies react to the first anniversary of his assassination. The fugitive Avengers then stumble across the possibility that Steve could be brought back to life but have to contend not only with Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers but with the Red Skull, who wishes to use the reborn Captain America as his puppet.
I will say first off that, on most basic levels, there is nothing wrong with this book. The artwork is solid and the attention given to how Steve's nearest and dearest are coping in a world without him is also really good. I particularly liked the specific characters chosen to be the main protagonists here, all of whom had diverse but really close relationships with Cap; Bucky (the new Captain America), Falcon, Black Widow, Ronin and Sharon Carter.
All that said, there is one really big problem with this book; the completely transparent fact that Brubaker was given the remit of bringing the OG Captain America back by any means necessary. It's become a cliche to point out how cliche it is when superheroes are almost immediately revived from the dead, but this is a particularly egregious example of it. How, you may wonder, does Steve survive? Well (spoilers, by the way), when he was assassinated, he was really frozen in time and then he faded into the time stream but now he's being pulled back to the present time by Sharon Carter's blood. Of course. How silly of me not to have already figured that out, right?.
A well-written book which really shouldn't exist if Marvel simply had the courage to allow the devastating aftermath of Civil War (reviewed here) to stand. Don't get me wrong, I don't want Steve Rogers to be dead any more than anyone else, but the fact that he was is what gave that story genuine emotional punch. This just undoes all of that emotional story development in one fell swoop.
3 out of 5
Collaborations & Anthologies:
Avengers vs X-Men (here)
Batman: Officer Down (here)
Batman: War Games Act One - Outbreak (here)
Batman: War Games Act Three - Endgame (here)
Batman: War Games Act Two - Tides (here)
Civil War: Marvel Universe (here)
Fear Itself (here)
Gotham Central: Book One - In The Line Of Duty (here)
Gotham Central: Book Three - On The Freak Beat (here)
House Of M: World Of M Featuring Wolverine (here)
Iron Fist: The Fury Of Iron Fist/The Last Iron Fist Story (here)
The Immortal Iron Fist: The Complete Collection Vol. 1 (here)
The Winter Soldier: Out Of Time/The Bitter March (here)