Marvel Comics have announced “Captain America” will be relaunched in September, with writer J. Michael Straczynski and artist Jesús Saiz (the newly concluded “Punisher” series) at the helm, and Steve Rogers front-and-center. The run will begin with “powerful and insidious forces” seeking to ensure Steve never changes the world as he did at the onset of World War II. “Past, present and future [will] collide as the man out of time reckons with an existential threat, determined to set the world on a darker path at any cost…”
In an interview with io9, Straczynski says the book will explore the period between the deaths of Steve’s parents, and when he became Captain America, when he was “a sickly, skinny 17 year old kid, trying to survive on his own for because he’s stubborn and independent, on the street for several years, hustling for any gig he can get.” Steve will come into conflict with the German American Bund (the Nazi Party’s stateside counterpart), which Straczynski describes as a “transformational event” akin to the murder of Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben, as well as a strong, real-world contrast to the book’s supernatural present day narrative.
The comic marks Straczynski’s first series at Marvel since the conclusion of “The Twelve” in 2012. He said he was approached to relaunch the title after writing a script involving Steve for another, soon-to-be announced project, which “was pretty much the best thing ever, because I’ve always had a strong affinity for Cap; [it’s] why I would sneak him into just about everything I wrote for Spider-Man and Thor.”
Indeed, one of Steve’s most iconic moments came in Straczynski’s “Amazing Spider-Man” #537, a tie-in to the ‘Civil War’ crossover in 2006, where the character gave his legendary “No, you move” speech. The scene was eventually adapted into the MCU film Captain America: Civil War, which Straczynski comments was “just fun. There have been lots of those little legacy moments from both my Spidey and Thor runs, and as someone who’s worked in movies as well as comics, it’s a blast for me to see them on the big screen.”
Artist Jesús Saiz previously worked with Straczynski on 2010’s DC title “Team-ups of the Brave and the Bold.” The writer says, “He was on my short list from day one, because so much of my work lives or dies by whether or not you can read emotion in the faces of the characters, and Jesús excels at that. He gets to explore the contemporary story with a lot of action, much of it of a supernatural origin, then go into a period look for the book as we follow Steve in New York in the late 1930s, so he gets to play with all the fun toys and show what he can do. So yeah… it’s a really great looking book.”
The new “Captain America” #1 will be released on September 20. In the meantime, Collin Kelly, Jackson Lanzing and Carmen Carnero’s “Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty” will conclude after the ‘Cold War’ crossover (itself ending June 14) with the oversized “Captain America” #750 on July 5, and “Captain America Finale” on August 16. The fate of Sam Wilson’s current ongoing, “Captain America: Symbol of Truth,” is unconfirmed at the time of writing; the last solicited issue was #14, due out June 28.
