Before the release of Captain America: The First Avenger in 2011, Marvel Comics published several Captain America miniseries and one-shots to pack the shelves with enough stories for any reader eager to get to know the character before heading to the theater, or those who wanted more from his world after seeing it. One of those comics, Mark Waid and Jorge Molina’s “Captain America: Man Out of Time,” is especially fascinating to reread after Avengers: Endgame (this review will contain spoilers).
Written by Mark Waid#1 cover by Bryan Hitch
Art by Jorge Molina
Inks by Karl Kesel & Scott Hanna
Coloring by Frank D’Armata
Lettering by Joe SabinoWhen the Avengers pull a frozen soldier from the sea, they bring back the Living Legend of World War II — a man whose memories of life 60 years ago are as fresh as yesterday! How will Steve Rogers adapt to the world of the 21st century?
A modern, five-issue retelling of Cap’s revival in Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s “Avengers” #4, “Man Out of Time” begins with Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes’s ill-fated mission to stop Baron Zemo’s experimental drone plane, which leads to Steve being awakened by Iron Man, Thor, Giant-Man and Wasp in the present day. We get to see how, from Steve’s perspective, the explosion that put him to sleep for decades instantly transported him to a bizarre future populated by “robots,” “Martians,” and “Tinker Bell.”
Its moments — and quips — like these that demonstrate how much joy retellings like these bring, especially from a continuity expert like Waid, whose script recontextualizes classic early “Avengers” stories amidst Steve trying to accept his new life. The two threads come together cleverly by the final issue, when Waid revisits Kang the Conqueror’s first appearance in “Avengers” #8: the time-traveling warlord, after becoming particularly irritated by the Star-Spangled Avenger, sends him back to 1945, where he ironically now has to make his way back to the future.
Another writer may have felt a retelling of Steve’s early modern adventures should culminate with him discovering that his nemesis the Red Skull is still alive, and while that would’ve made for a topical and downbeat conclusion, it’s predictable: Waid wrote something lasting and unique by making Kang, a villain with no specific nemesis, the main antagonist of this solo Cap series, and the one who makes him realize he’s disconnected from the past and present.
person in the past without causing distress
Steve’s main foe in this story is his struggle to come to terms with living in the future: Tony Stark tries to cheer him up by emphasizing the scientific and social progress that was made possible by his help defeating the Nazis, including a meeting with the nation’s first Black President. However, when Steve reunites with General Joe Simon (the only wartime comrade he can track down), it’s pointed out that Stark mentioned Martin Luther King Jr., but neglected to add what happened to him. Steve’s return to the past forces him to confront the more overt racism and sexism there, and to conclude that he would rather live in the lesser of two evils.
After Avengers: Endgame, this series could be retroactively interpreted as criticism of the ending to Steve’s story in that film, where he decides to reunite with his beloved Peggy Carter in the ’40s. Some critics have charged the MCU’s Rogers with dereliction of duty, but as much as you wonder what Waid makes of that take on the character, this book is a beginning bound by what’s come before, not an ending where Steve has established a legacy that will outlive him. Furthermore, Peggy was Steve’s great love in the MCU (his true Bucky so to speak), whereas here she’s simply one of many colleagues he hopes to reconnect with: it’s another reminder of the powerful effect Hayley Atwell’s version of the character has had, on screen and on paper.
Jorge Molina’s art is absolutely wonderful: it’s cartoonish, dynamic and exuberant, conveying that Steve is a genuinely delightful commander to have around, and therefore makes the more somber moments land with more impact. (He’s also fantastic at rendering ’60s costume designs believably without modernizing them.) Frank D’Armata’s coloring is also as beautiful and as vivid as his work on Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting’s “Captain America” run: it is thrilling to see old “Avengers” stories with modern lighting techniques, without recoloring the comics themselves.
Continued belowStrikingly, D’Armata renders everything but Steve monochromatically when he arrives in the present, to give the impression it feels as surreal and dreamlike as an old film: he uses this tactic again when Steve finds himself unmoored, literally and figuratively, in the past. Letterer Joe Sabino also helps convey Steve’s gradual adjustment to the future, first by rendering his narration as being typewritten, and then as more timeless pen-on-paper diary entries.
One of the most arresting moments is when Steve meets President Obama in the Oval Office: D’Armata’s work is so cinematic that you genuinely believe the President’s face is being obscured by the Sun shining on his back. It was presumably done to keep the President’s identity ambiguous, so that the book would continue to feel contemporary. (One of the few issues this comic actually has is that the creative team went slightly further than they should have, to make his skin tone and hair harder to discern.)
You can only imagine how Waid would script that scene today: fortunately, this take on Cap’s arrival in the present will remain the definitive one for a long time, so we don’t have to worry about that — this was an optimistic comic about America moving forward into a slowly improving future, from a recent, hopeful past, and it should be treasured as such.
