Saturday, June 20, 2009

drive-by readings: Captain America #600


Captain America #600 (Marvel)
"One Year After"
Ed Brubaker/Paul Dini/Roger Stern/Mark Waid/Stan Lee
Alex Ross/Butch Guice/Howard Chaykin
Rafael Albuquerque/David Aja/Mitch Breitweiser
Kalman Andrasofszky/Dale Eaglesham/Al Avison
Frank D'Armata/Edgar Delgado/Matt Hollingsworth
Marte Garcia/Paul Mounts
Todd Klein/Joe Caramagna/Chris Eliopoulos
the landmark 600th issue arrives, with all the hype building up for some time back, with the intent on putting fans and non-fans alike on the edge: how is Marvel bringing back its greatest super-hero? (Spider-Man just looked at the chart of incomes generated by Marvel properties and snickered) the answer to that is coming next month actually. for now, we have a lead-in anniversary issue of sorts, containing previously-published work and new stories examining the support characters in the Captain America mythos - Bucky, Sharon Carter, his Avenger pals, mortal enemy the Red Skull, Tony Stark (via proxy - but is it him really? i thought he was M.I.A.), Crossbones and Sin, the crazy 1950s Cap, Elijah Bradley, even the alternate-Earth "Bucky" Rikki Barnes. but my favorite has to be the return of Bernie Rosenthal, whom Steve squired during my early reading days.

of course, the meat of this comic lies in the fact that Sharon may have found a way to bring Steve back to life (ooooh, do tell), and this seems confirmed by the fact that Sin refers to something about his death that the general public doesn't know. oh yeah, do tell!

2 comments:

Gloria said...

I also enjoyed Bernie's story. My complaint, tho', is that I positively hate what was done to Mike Farrell after the Stern-Byrne tenure... Couldn't they just have left the fireman-college student keep being a fireman & college student? I just hate it when they trash secondary characters with idiotic plots, o yes I do.

And, hum... when Patriot yelled "Man, this school sucks!" I suddenly felt a lot of sympathy towards the high school principal: He may be a hero, but he speaks like a brat.

grifter said...

good point on Patriot. i think that may be the real-life contradiction we see in young heroes - they don't have the sensible maturity that comes from experience yet.