Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews

Captain America Reborn #1

Captain America Reborn #1 of 5
Marvel Comics
Brubaker, Hitch & Guice

The return of Steve Rogers is upon us. This comic has one major thing going for it that makes jump from an average comic to a very good comic. The idea behind how Steve Rogers will be saved is different and unexpected and definitely a refreshing look at returning from the dead. The story content of the comic is very typical for an opening issue of a mini series overall. There is some task that’s executed to get all the main players introduced and set up the gravity of the situation. It’s a good comic but it is not a true indication of how well the whole series will actually be. We’ll have to see how the return from the dead actually plays out.

Comic heroes seem to return from the dead by reuniting their soul with their bodies, like Green Arrow or Green Lantern. Or the hero wasn’t really dead to begin with, they were just in a deep stasis, like Superman or Captain America in the 1940s. When Rogers was launched into the ocean after he died a couple of years ago I assumed he would just get frozen and then found and revived at some point. This is not the case. Instead, Steve Rogers appears to have been body switched and sent to another time and place.

I understand there is some level of uproar because this was apparently done in the TV show Lost. However, I don’t watch Lost and can claim to find this idea unique to the super hero world. I simply didn’t expect this type of execution when dealing with the return of Steve Rogers. If it was lifted from Lost then it lucky out with me because I wouldn’t have been the wiser.

However, it isn’t just that Rogers was never really killed, just kidnapped, but that the Red Skull had further plans for him. We still don’t know the full extent of what the Red Skull had in mind for Steve Rogers but its clear his plot involvement is far from over. When you can run a villain’s involvement for some fifty issues in a comic series you clearly understand how to write a great comic book story, which is the case here.

The comic itself really just has Bucky and some of the other members of the supporting cast searching for pieces of the Red Skull gadgets that were used on Sharon when she was captured and tortured by the Red Skull. It pits Bucky and company against the Dark Avengers and adds a new obstacle to knock over: Norman Osborn. The story really is fairly basic and serves to introduce everyone.

The artwork is good but you could make a case that it seems unpolished and that this is a result of rushed work. Its impossible to say whether or not the comic was racing to meet a deadline and that the art suffered but I can say that the art holds much of the dark feel that we’ve seen in virtually the entire run of this series. I personally like the art style but it is not the usual super hero fluff and that might not sit well for the event seekers out there.

The story definitely steps up an interesting return, if indeed it is as straight forward as it seems in this issue. The intriguing thing about the set up isn’t just that Bucky has two layers of villains to fight through, but also that Steve Rogers may be in a space and time that he doesn’t want to leave. Maybe he has no interest in returning to a world where he battles Tony Stark or one where HAMMER is run by Osborn. We’ll see as the series unfolds more and more.

4 out of 5 geek goggles