As far as my regular comic buying goes, this was a big week for me (and yes I caved to the hype of Before Watchmen and bought 2 copies of Minutemen). Not a single issue here proved disappointing, and I'll review them all before the week is over, but the real highlights from this pile for me were Captain America #12, and Winter Soldier #6, both of which are written by Ed Brubaker.
The characters of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes make it into my top 5 Marvel Characters (alongside Daredevil, Spider-Man, and Wolverine). Whilst I've always been a Cap fan, my continual interest in the character is the quality of Brubaker's run writing the Captain America series (Spider-Man always use to be my number 1, but recently I've gone off of the character due to certain stories, but that's another post for another time) that has made him still interesting, be it whether Steve or Bucky is in the costume.
So with that out the way, let's take a quick look at Captain America #12. To tie in with the recent Captain America movie out last summer (which is fantastic fun), Marvel decided to relaunch their Captain America title, with Steve Rogers back in costume. I wasn't against this, as I enjoy Steve as a character, but I was slightly bitter about not having any more adventures of Bucky taking up the mantle. This new relaunched title was more reminiscent of the classic Captain America stories of old. Whilst I enjoyed the classic Cap tales (in particular Mark Gruenwald's run), the reason Brubaker's initial run on the character was so well received is because of it's gritty espionage flair, something that this relaunched title obviously didn't have. Classic Cap is great and all, but of all the choices Ed could have made for the series, he made the wrong ones (honestly, the Ameridroid and some ballsed up topsy turvy dream world? Pathetic). The second arc faired a little better, but it wasn't until this issue that I started feeling the magic again.
The latest issue features Cap on the trail of a leak within the Witness Protection Program, which has resulted in a new Scourge going on a killing spree of all the super-villains who had been given new identities. The whole Scourge story has been done in Cap before, true, but Brubaker crafts a new tale featuring a new Scourge, with all the espionage flair one can expect from his work. Brubaker also brings back several familiar faces, including particular favourites of mine, such as Diamondback and Dum Dum Dugan. Patrick Zircher's art compliments the story really well in the same way that previous Brubaker collaborators such as Steve Epting were able to. The last page reveal of the new Scourge's identity was a genuine shock, and was a reveal I never saw coming. Some newer readers may scratch their heads, but for long term fans (e.g, myself), this will be a huge payoff. Despite that identity though (a quick visit to Wikipedia should fix any confusion), this arc is probably the ideal place for fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (The Avengers related films), to jump straight in and read. Such a great issue.
Which then moves us on to Winter Soldier #6. With Steve back as Captain America, Brubaker decided he wanted to have his cake and eat it too, returning Bucky Barnes to his identity of the Winter Soldier and giving us a REALLY gritty dark espionage spy thriller, the sort of thing we fans had been clamoring for. The first 5 issues of the series were great fun, and featured gorgeous artwork from Butch Guice, but were also pretty out there, featuring Dr.Doom, Doombots....and talking apes (these issues were published around the same time as the wacky Captain America ones, so it's not beyond reasonable doubt to guess that Ed Brubaker was tripping on some new drug at the time, but I digress). With this issue, Brubaker gives us what we REALLY were after, a full blown espionage thriller grounded in harsh reality. I was sad to hear that Butch Guice wasn't going to be on this arc, but the addition of Michael Lark (a collaborator of Brubaker's on titles such as Daredevil) more than makes up for it. Lark's work here perfectly fits the tone of the story, and has never looked better. I would actually go as far as to say that Lark is even better than Guice here. Whilst the latest Captain America starts to return back towards the more espionage type stories whilst throwing in some classic elements, Winter Soldier goes in the completely opposite and dives head first into the dark and seedy spy thriller genre.
For a while I was worried that Brubaker was off his game, but today I realised I was wrong. I would keep buying Captain America and Winter Soldier regardless (just out of sheer love and loyalty for the characters), but as long as Brubaker is producing work of such a high caliber? I will thoroughly enjoy doing so too.
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