"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!