"Captain America: The Winter Soldier"

 

            The following is a review of the graphic novel “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” as presented in Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection format. It IS NOT a review of the film “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.”

            Nazi supervillain Johann Schmidt/Red Skull and Soviet General and CEO of Kronas Corporation Aleksander Lukin were at a race for a device called the Cosmic Cube, a device that grants the wishes it’s holder, a race that the Red Skull had won. The Skull had plans to cause great destruction with the Cube when it was fully charged, and use it to take down his greatest enemy, Steven Rogers/Captain America, Super Soldier, and Living Legend of World War II.

            Captain America had been working with S.H.I.E.L.D., the U.N. Peacekeeping Taskforce on missions pertaining to the United States. Director Nicholas Fury had assigned Sharon Carter/Agent 13 as his liaison, which caused awkwardness as the two used to be romantically involved.

            Just when the Red Skull was about to enact his plan, he was taken out of the picture by a mysterious assassin working for General Lukin, and the Cosmic Cube was stolen.

            Steve started having dreams, memories, and flashbacks about his time in WWII with his sidekick James “Bucky” Barnes, but the details were not completely accurate. Steve was unsure both what had been causing them and why he was remembering them wrong. He then got the phone call about the Red Skull’s demise and was called in by S.H.I.E.L.D. as the secret to the Skull’s longevity came from the fact that he lived inside a clone body of Captain America’s. Cap especially did not believe that his long-time enemy could really be gone. He and Sharon were sent in to stop the Red Skull’s agents Advance Ideas in Destruction (A.I.D.) from conducting the Skull’s planned attack in Manhattan but lead henchman Brock Rumlow/Crossbones managed to escape. This mission started to rekindle something between Steve and Sharon.

            Back in the 1950s, when Steve Rogers had been frozen in ice after WWII and Bucky Barnes had died, there had been a replacement team as the United States government felt there had to be a Captain America and Bucky. The replacement Bucky was a man named Jack Monroe, who also teamed up with Steve Rogers over the years and had been both the hero Nomad and the villain Scourge. Monroe had been given an attempted recreation of the Super Soldier Serum that gave Steve Rogers his powers as Captain America, and it caused problems in his immune system that was killing him at a slow rate. This had led to him taking up the mantle of Nomad again, to do some good in the world before he died. This ending came quicker because the same assassin who took out the Red Skull also put down Monroe and implicated him in the Skull’s assassination. He then abducted Sharon. S.H.I.E.L.D. was able to identify the assassin as the Winter Soldier, and when Steve came to her rescue, Sharon told Steve she thought his identity was Bucky Barnes, right before the Winter Soldier bombed Philadelphia. Steve had a face-to-face encounter with the Winter Soldier before the assassin was able to escape in the chaos he created. Back aboard the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, Nick Fury confirmed Sharon’s suspicions with photographic evidence, another piece of news Steve refused to accept. Fury also got the tip that the Winter Soldier was working for Lukin and authorized an unsanctioned operation to apprehend Lukin, but the mission went south when Cap burst in on Lukin in the middle of a meeting with dignitaries.

            Crossbones infiltrated an American government re-education facility to bust out Synthia Schmidt, the daughter of the Red Skull, who was being brainwashed.

            Steve was delivered files that explained Bucky’s history as the Winter Solder. He was revived from death by Soviets towards the end of WWII, with no memory of his previous life. After it was discovered that he was not a Super Soldier like his partner Captain America, he was placed into stasis. He was reprogrammed into a Soviet assassin during the Cold War, but he started to prove not to be the total blank slate he was initially believed to be. He was kept in stasis between missions in the hope this would prevent him from becoming rebellious, but after several problems, he was eventually put away for what was forever, but he was eventually discovered by Lukin.

            Steve teamed up with Sam Wilson/Falcon and Tony Stark/Iron Man to infiltrate an A.I.D. facility to learn the location of the Cosmic Cube, and Steve and Sam flew to West Virginia for a confrontation with the Winter Soldier for the possession of the Cosmic Cube.

            Crossbones managed to undo the reprogramming done to Synthia/Sin and the two launched into a terrorism spree, taking over an Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.) laboratory. Steve and Sharon came to the rescue, but Crossbones and Sin got away. In the process, Steve and Sharon’s romance reignited.

            During WWII, Steve, Bucky, Nick Fury, and the Howling Commandos had gone on a mission and battled a giant robot, something that decades later would still prove of interest to Aleksander Lukin.

            Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch used her powers to rewrite reality into a world where mutants are the dominant species and run the culture and rule over all existing countries, religions, and politics, while humans are the oppressed minority. In this new reality, Captain America was never frozen towards the end of WWII, and in 1945 he captured Adolf Hitler himself and ended the Great War. In 1946, he married Peggy Carter. Because of his friendship with Namor the Sub-Mariner and the anti-mutant hysteria in 1951, he stepped down as Captain America. In 1955 he became the first man to walk on the moon. His marriage fell apart in 1957. He went on to grow old and live his life in the House of M.

            Okay, so that’s what the book is about, now I’m going to talk about how I felt about the book. First off, I have to say, I really enjoyed this graphic novel. I thought it was great. I found it to be very well written. I thought the plot was excellent. I found the artwork to be enjoyable. The Captain America 65^th Anniversary Special was not visually pleasing to me, however. Overall, though, I really don’t have any complaints. Now, I know some of you are saying “hey, Tim, is the book better than the movie?” That is something that is difficult to answer because they are just vastly different. There are almost no recognizable similarities between the two, so comparison is hard to make. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to tell you that they are both good in their own way and should be enjoyed as two separate mediums.

            Next, I’m going to discuss accessibility. If you’re new to a Tim Cubbin review, you might not know what I mean when I use this word. By accessibility, I mean how easy it is to just pick up and read if you know little to nothing about Captain America or Marvel Comics. So, let’s say that by some odd way you’ve never heard the name “Captain America” but decided to read this review anyway out of say curiosity to the name “Captain America” or you’re just reading this post out of loyalty to me because you personally know me, or you just love reading my blog. You’ve now read this far into my review and are saying “hey, this Captain America dude sounds cool, I might want to read this book now. Will it be a problem that I don’t know Captain America?” I will tell you that it could be a bit of a problem, but not a mountain of one. I think it’s self-explanatory, I don’t think you need to know all the background information to fully understand it. The House of M issue is the problem because it’s part of an event, but it doesn’t cross over into the main story arc of the event, it doesn’t rely on you knowing the full story, so I don’t think it will ruin your enjoyment too badly. That’s the big problem with Epic Collections is that they don’t contain any issues of actual events, they just contain the issues of specific characters or teams from around that period and compile them, so often if you don’t know the event, reading an Epic Collection can be difficult. That said, I don’t feel that this will be the case in this Epic Collection in particular. Now, I will say if you’ve seen the movie “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” and decide you want to read this book, that would be a huge help as you would understand the characters a little better and have a better appreciation for them, but the story is vastly different, so don’t think you’ll be reading the same thing as the movie. If you’ve ever read Captain America comic books at any point, this book will be no problem for you to just pick up and read as it’s self-explanatory to Cap canon, just beware of House of M, that’s the only hiccup. And for those of you looking to start reading Marvel Comic Books and not knowing a good place to start, this is a good first read, it’s the start of a new series, this is listed as Vol. 1 and it isn’t a direct continuation of any other storylines (except House of M, and if you honestly needed to, you could try to get your hands on a copy of “House of M” for context, but I honestly don’t feel that’s necessary in this instance).

            Okay, at this point, you’re bored of me going on and on like this, you want to know just how good I thought this book was. So yes, for those who don’t know, I give every review a numeric score on a scale of one to ten. One means this is a piece of stinky garbage that should stop being published right away, ten means this is perfection and should be given awards just for existing and a copy should be in every comic book fan’s bookshelf. Now I’m not usually one who gives out a lot of tens, so if it gets a ten, then it’s spectacular. This book is not a ten, I will start with that. But I will also say it’s not a nine. I’m settling on giving this book an eight, simply because of the couple of issues with the art I was not a fan of. If the artwork in those two issues I took offense with were to my liking, then this book would have been a nine, but there is just no way I could give it a ten. So, to reiterate, this book is an eight.

            Next up, I have to say if I recommend this book or not. I think it’s obvious that I do. I would recommend this book to any fan of Captain America comics; I feel it is a work that truly stands out and is worth the read. If you are a fan of the film “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” and want to read comics, I totally recommend this book to you. If you’re a fan of espionage stories, I recommend this book to you.

            Okay, now I’m sure you’re tired of me by this point, so if you’re still reading here right now, you are THE BEST! Thanks for sticking with me this long, I honestly do appreciate it! I have written dozens of book reviews already; you can expect to see another one posted in about a week. I also write short stories, poetry, articles, essays, and editorials, I write tons of content for this website. I know right now I’ve just been focusing on reviews, but I will totally get back to other content soon, you can expect to see plenty more from me. So, I guess I will say that this is all for now, and until next time, Tim Cubbin… out!

"Iron Man: World's Most Wanted"

 

            The following is a review of the graphic novel “Iron Man: World’s Most Wanted” as presented in Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection format.

            Anthony Stark is a billionaire playboy technology philanthropist genius. He ran the company Stark Industries, where he created weapons for the United States military. While in captivity, he was gravely injured and invented a suit of armor that saved his life. He quit the weapons business and secretly became the armored superhero Iron Man. He was a founding member of the superhero team the Avengers. He eventually bonded with Extremis, a technologic substance that interfaced him with his armor. Following the superhero Civil War, where every superhuman must register with the peacekeeping agency S.H.I.E.L.D. or face imprisonment, Tony was appointed Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and in charge of the database of all registered superhumans. Maria Hill, former Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., was demoted to Deputy Director, a position Hill was not particularly happy with. During the Civil War, Tony also went public with his dual identity as Iron Man.

            Tony is made aware of terrorist bombings involving technology like Tony’s own Iron Man technology. The perpetrators of these crimes are Advanced Genocide Mechanics. The technological mastermind behind all this is Ezekiel Stane, son of Obadiah Stane, former business rival and Tony’s nemesis the Iron Monger. Stane has upgraded himself with biotechnology, effectively becoming a living weapon, enough to rival Iron Man himself.

            At the Starkdynamics Gala, a bombing occurs, leaving Tony’s former secretary and love interest Pepper Potts gravely injured. Tony gives Pepper the same treatment that saved his life.

            Stane plans to take down Stark Industries and Tony Stark himself by bombing key Stark Industries locations in the hope Tony will be present at one at the time of an attack. Tony and Stane meet for a decisive battle, and Tony must take drastic action to ensure his technology is not used to cause more harm in the world.

            In the aftermath, Front Line Newspaper Managing Editor calls in photographer Peter Parker for assistance with a story. Peter is secretly the unregistered superhero Spider-Man and used to work for Tony Stark. Spider-Man swings into action, but Tony is reluctant to team-up due to him being Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Spider-Man being an unregistered superhuman, and this causes Tony to doubt in his abilities as Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.

            This doesn’t last long. The shape-shifting aliens known as the Skrulls launched a Secret Invasion on Earth. During the Invasion, the Skrulls unleashed a virus in Stark technology, causing catastrophic worldwide failure of all Stark tech, including Tony’s Extremis armor. Tony was stripped of his role as leader of the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D. was made defunct. Norman Osborn, formerly the supervillain the Green Goblin, then Director of the government-sponsored supervillain rehabilitation team the Thunderbolts, was the hero against the Skrulls, and was promoted to Director of the new peacekeeping agency H.A.M.M.E.R., S.H.I.E.L.D.’s replacement. Maria Hill was also fired from her position as Deputy Director. Osborn hoped to gain access to the superhuman registration database, but Tony unleashed a virus wiping it out of H.A.M.M.E.R.’s computers, but there is an existing copy… implanted in Tony’s head. Tony decides he can’t let Osborn get access to this database, and out of fear of getting captured and having it forced out of his head, and not wanting termination, he feels the only way to prevent Osborn from gaining what he desires is to wipe his memory and start his life over. Maria and Pepper object, but Tony tricks Hill into initiating the process that will destroy Tony’s memories. Osborn, unaware of this turn of events, issues an order for the arrests of Tony Stark and Maria Hill, making them the world’s most wanted fugitives. Tony asks Maria to infiltrate a Stark Subsidiary facility in Texas called Futurepharm to obtain a hard drive, which Hill finds out has been taken over by the supervillain the Controller. Meanwhile, Pepper has been left in charge of Stark Industries in Tony’s place. She discovers an armor Tony left behind for her and dons it to become Rescue. At the same time, Osborn has been making deals with supervillains such as Namor, the Hood, and Madame Masque to put a bounty on Tony Stark. Tony makes a deal with Russian superhero the Crimson Dynamo to try to get access to a Stark workshop. The Iron Man technology he has been left with after the Secret Invasion is substandard, and the Crimson Dynamo armor is a bit more advanced. Pepper locates Tony, whose memory is direly failing him. Hill, desperate to uncover the content of the drive, attempts to find Captain America, and turns to Natasha Romanova/Black Widow, superspy and former S.H.I.E.L.D. ally. Black Widow and Hill are captured and brought to Avengers Tower, Norman Osborn’s base of operations. Pepper and Madame Maque have a face-off… literally. Pepper steals Masque’s mask and infiltrates Avengers Tower to rescue Hill and Black Widow. Tony heads back to Iraq, the birthplace of Iron Man, to lure Osborn/Iron Patriot into a fight that will defame Osborn publicly and may also be the end of Iron Man.

            Okay, so let’s discuss how I felt about this book. Honestly, I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I wasn’t expecting it to be all that good, but I found that I highly enjoyed it. I thought it was very well written. I will say, however, that I wasn’t all that fond of the Extremis concept. A long time ago, I reviewed to prose novelization of “Iron Man: Extremis.” I never really understood how Extremis worked, so the fact that Matt Fraction, the writer of this book, so heavily used Extremis in the plot did get a little confusing for me. There were times past when the whole Extremis storyline seemed to have been forgotten, so Extremis being relied on in this book detracted from my enjoyment slightly. That said, I found the concept of Pepper becoming the superheroine Rescue to be highly enjoyable. Ezekiel Stane was also an interesting villain because he was more powerful than Iron Man, so the conflict resolution of their decisive battle was highly anticipated as I had no idea how Tony could possibly win. Also, Norman Osborn as the villain in the “World’s Most Wanted” storyline but not as the Green Goblin was refreshing. His masterminding the scheme of bringing down Tony and Maria Hill in an extensively long story arc was something I enjoyed as it continued and expanded. I also found that the story didn’t feel like it went on too long, either. It was a twelve-part story, and it felt right to me. Sometimes those seem too excessive, but this worked. It’s just like a movie that is three hours long and there’s thirty minutes of expository content that’s not needed. Were there moments that felt like they could have been done without? Yes. A comic is a certain length, it must be filled, so in twelve parts, there are going to be moments that feel like they don’t need to be there, but those moments for me were not particularly common. And I have to say, Salvador Larroca is an artist I have been a fan of for over twenty years, and his artwork in this book did not disappoint me. However, I must fault the colorists. Some of the characters’ skin tones looked all wrong and the colors seemed a little dull, faded and toned down in my opinion. I also must complain about the use of the acronym H.A.M.M.E.R. Fraction never explains why it’s written as an acronym, what it means, or if it even means anything at all. And why would it change from S.H.I.E.L.D. to H.A.M.M.E.R.? There is literally no similarity there. And there was a moment with Tony and Maria that I felt was highly unnecessary, but it’s kind of inappropriate, so we’re not going to go there in this review, we’re keeping this G-Rated. But honestly, I can’t complain too much about anything else.

            Okay, now we’re going to talk about accessibility. If you’ve read my work before, you know what I’m talking about. I’ve literally written dozens of reviews before, but if you haven’t read one and don’t know what I mean, I guess I’ll have to explain it to you. I mean how if you’re a person who, for some unbelievable coincidence, has never heard of Iron Man would be able to understand this book if you were to just pick this book up and try to read it. In this case, I would have to give a resounding don’t. This book really is for experienced Marvel fans. At the start of the book, we’re in a period where Tony Stark was Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Superhuman Registration Act was still in effect. Then we get to a point that spins out of Secret Invasion. If you know nothing about Secret Invasion, this book will get confusing. This also requires knowledge about Norman Osborn as Director of H.A.M.M.E.R. and that knowledge is not contained in this book. Honestly, if you don’t know about the aftermath of Secret Invasion, you’d be scratching your head trying to understand this book. This book is not for Marvel beginners. I don’t care if you’ve seen all the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies and shows but have never read the comics and are reading this now and are saying “Oh, Iron Man, I want to read this!” It’s not the right book for you. It has absolutely no similarity to the MCU at all. There are no common threads to pick up on, the MCU did not adapt any of these storylines, so you won’t be able to just be an MCU fan and try suddenly to be a comic fan, I’m sorry to say. Now, on the other hand, this is all just MY opinion, take it or leave it, if you want to try this book, you’re welcome to it. I mean, I understand it because I’ve been reading Marvel Comic Books on and off for twenty-three years now, and these issues were originally published in 2008-2009, which was even a lapsed period for me, but I’ve read comics published since then and know about the time, so that’s all just me. I’m just giving you the caution that I don’t think this is an entry level Marvel book. This is even listed as Vol. 3. Granted the comics in this book are “Invincible Iron Man” #1-19, that still doesn’t make it a jump on point. I believe more background knowledge is required if you are to get optimal enjoyment out of this book. But again, I also invite you to try if that is what you so desire, as I found reading this book to be an enjoyable experience. I’m not going to totally warn you away for that. I leave that to your capable hands to decide.

            Okay, I’ve blathered on for quite a while. I think you’re at the breaking point where you want me to stop typing and wasting your time and just give you my numeric score. That is, of course, if you know what to expect from one of my reviews. If not, you still probably want me to stop typing and get to a point where you can just stop reading and go back to doing whatever you were doing on the internet before you started reading this. So, let me just explain my scoring system to any of you who may be newbies. I score on a scale between one to ten. One means this book was absolute trash and not worth reading at all, ten means that anyone who reads this review should read this book regardless of that I warned you off. You can guess that this book does not fit on either of the extremes in my opinion and falls somewhere in between, and you would be right. So, I do have to take everything into account as I score this. As I’ve been writing this, I’ve been thinking about the score the whole time, just how exactly I’m going to score it. It’s been an extremely hard thought, but I’m going to give it a final settle on an eight. I’m a hard scorer and I don’t just go giving out tens, even nines can be difficult for a book to obtain, and although this book exceeded my expectations, it was not perfect enough to get a nine either. The unexplained use of Extremis was a huge detraction from my score. The colors are also wonky, I feel like it could have benefited if they were a little brighter. But overall, I felt like it was an enjoyable book and I give it exceedingly high praise.

            Finally, I must tell you if I recommend this book to you or not. I think I explained it well in the accessibility section, but I feel like it’s imperative to reiterate it here. I don’t recommend it to non-fans. But I’m not saying I’m not recommending it, either. In other words, I don’t recommend it to EVERYONE, BUT I DO recommend it. I hope that’s clear enough.

            Well, I honestly do feel like I’ve gone on for long enough at this point, I feel like I should set you off to go back to doing whatever else you may want to do, and I’ve been sitting here typing for over three hours, I think it’s time I moved on to something else, too. So, I’m just going to tell you that this blog has plenty of other enjoyable content on it. I’ve written short stories, poetry, articles, essays, editorials, and dozens of other reviews. You can expect another review in the next couple of weeks as there is another book about to be released that I intend to buy, so be on the lookout for that. I’m also toying with the idea for a short story, I’ve been saying it for months now, I just keep getting sidetracked and doing other things instead and never actually gotten around to just sitting down and typing it, but you can expect it in the next couple of months too. Well, I think I’ve said all I need to say now, so let’s all just move on after I say Tim Cubbin… out!