captain america: truth

by Robert Morales & Kyle Baker

collects Truth # 1-7

the premise:  This is the story of the truth (hence the title) behind the Super-Soldier program - the illegal human experimentation, the racism, the cover-ups... and the black Captain America.

the lowdown:  This series was published originally during the Bill Jemas era at Marvel, when the publisher was uncharacteristically open to trying some really radical things.  That shows up not only in the high concept here, but in the choice of artist.  Seeing Kyle Baker on a mainstream superhero project takes some getting used to.  He's a terrific artist, of course, but is far more "cartoonist" than you'd normally expect on a Marvel book.

The strength of the book lies in the high concept.  The weakness lies in the somewhat uneven execution.  Mostly it's that Morales makes some really strange pacing choices here.  The hook here is that there was a black Captain America.  That's a tremendous concept rife with potential, but this really isn't the story of Isiah Bradley.  He's given only cursory character development, and though his story arc is pretty good, it's not really seven issues worth of good.  

Morales brings the modern-day Cap (Rogers) into the story near the end, casting the first five issues as a framing device.  But there's no modern-day story that goes anywhere - we don't see Cap really deal with the knowledge of what the government did.  I vaguely recall that being addressed in a really dull arc in his own title, but there's really nothing of it here.  So what IS this story?  Well, it's the revelation that the US government acted like a bunch of racist bastards during WWII - which is fine but not really the sort of thing that carries seven issues.  It's not bad, really, just... strange.

the verdict:  Despite some reservations I enjoyed this.  I can definitely say it's not like any other Captain America story you've read, and despite some strange pacing it's built on an excellent high concept.