Thanks to Rick Remender’s penchant for “classic” Cap and his status as an American icon, “Captain America” #13 is just about everything a “Captain America” comic should be, even if it treads a lot of familiar ground.
Written by Rick Remender
Illustrated by Nic Klein• The main event! Captain America vs Nuke with the lives of thousand, and a nation’s future, on the line.
• The Iron Nail rises again! The first appearance of Captain America’s newest arch-nemesis is not to be missed!
Remember when Captain America was curled up into a sobbing ball during “Age of Ultron”? Remember how we were all supposed to think, “Boy, things must be pretty darn dire if Captain America is crying instead of coming up with a plan”? Well, you’ll probably also remember that there was pretty much no context or entry point into seeing Cap like this, which kind of made it more of a joke than a really startling turn of events for one of our staunchest heroes. We all understood that the “Age of Ultron” was really awful, but didn’t really experience much of it – instead, we got almost entirely fallout. Changes in character without effectively presented context tend to make for a hollow, unconvincing characterizations, if you’re not careful.
The point is that Rick Remender has been taking the opportunity to use long form storytelling to break Captain America down right before our very eyes, instead of behind a curtain. When we first see him in this issue, he’s curled up on a cot – not yet ready to face the world after the events of the previous ‘Dimension Z’ arc. It strikes as the very “wow” moment that “Age of Ultron” was reaching for, because we’ve seen what he’s gone through and we can imagine how he got to this dark place. How does a man who has lost so much in such a short span of time reconcile that with the idea that his country looks to him to be a symbol of unending strength?
Remender spends a good amount of this issue contrasting Captain America as a symbol against the villain du jour, Nuke, and the anti-American actions he carries out with the American flag painted on his face. It’s hard not to feel like we’ve seen this before – most recently in Jason Aaron’s “Ultimate Captain America.” That story dealt with all of these same themes, but it’s not bad ground to tread with this character. Captain America, historically, represents the proud wartime patriotism of almost a century ago – but while patriotism is always going to be a vital aspect of the character, Steve Rogers is considerably more compelling when he has doubts about his country and his role. To use a very emotional state of being to drive those feels is a very interesting angle for Remender to take.
Nic Klein’s art graces the pages in absence of the recent regular artist, Carlos Pacheco, and I can’t say that he’s not totally welcome in this world. He captures the same tone that Pacheco and Remender were establishing in earlier issues, while adding a brutal impact to the action-heavy sequences. Klein gets to return to the Winter Soldier in a series of early flashback sequences – which will be a treat for fans of the “Winter Soldier” series where he really cut his teeth with Marvel. Klein’s heavy-lines work best in the shadows of the espionage sequences set in the past. His darker approach art really makes that era come alive.
Opening his run on Cap with John Romita Jr. in Dimension Z set a precedent for Kirby-esque weirdness over the espionage bent of the Ed Brubaker years. Like the journey of the character himself, Pacheco’s approach brought Cap back into the widescreen sensibilities of modern action comics. Nic Klein falls somewhere comfortably in-between the two, as Remender mixes the weird and sinister with the dark, spy stories of the Winter Soldier and S.H.I.E.L.D. properties. When the main event of Cap vs. Nuke hits the page, Klein’s art rises even further to the occasion to make for a memorable and impactful boss fight.
No matter the era, no matter the dimension, and no matter the tone or genre, Rick Remender and his artistic partnerships can’t seem to do much wrong with “Captain America” at this point. The cyclical nature of comics means that we’re seeing some recycling of the common themes of Captain America, but they’re approached from emotional angles that are new to the character. Remender is taking Cap through one hell of a trying journey, and while the setting and the feel of the book might be all over the place, it’s hard to argue that this sort of bobbing and darting style of storytelling isn’t keeping one of Marvel’s oldest characters as relevant and as fresh as ever.
Final Verdict: 8.2 – Buy
