includes: Captain America # 611-615 & 615.1
the premise: Bucky has been arrested for his crimes as the Winter Soldier. Steve Rogers tries to bolster his friend's defense, even as Sin/ the new Red Skull puts a deadly plan in motion.
the lowdown: One of the hallmarks of Ed Brubaker's run on Captain America, now amazingly entering its eighth year, has been the title's visual consistency. The art chores have shifted from Steve Epting to Mike Perkins to Luke Ross and beyond, but even with some of the stylistic changes of Butch Guice's issues, the series has maintained a certain visual consistency. The coloring is a big part of that - it's been criticized, not unjustly, for being overly dark or murky at times, but it's the same, issue after issue, and it's helped the series establish and maintain a visual identity.
.. that is, until this arc, which is all over the place art-wise. Daniel Acuna steps in to draw several of these issues, but he's replaced periodically by Guice and Mitch Britweiser. Acuna is IMO a wonderful artist, but he doesn't fit this book's established style at all, and his insertion onto the series gets even more jarring when Guice returns. I have all ideas that encroaching deadlines played a big role in the art mash-up, and that's of course an understandable concern, but it feels like something that anchored the book has been lost.
The story itself is a mix of legal drama with the book's more traditional action/ adventure bent. I love the fact that Brubaker didn't forget all of Bucky's Winter Soldier doings - for quite awhile it felt like that had just been swept under the rug. It's back with a vengeance here, though, as Bucky stands trial for being an assassin. Brubaker nods to old Cap continuity by bringing Bernie Rosenthal back into the cast as Buck's lawyer, and we play out the somewhat unorthodox twist of the defense offering Doctor Faustus as an expert witness in the field of mind control. This is pretty clever and plays out in a way that, while not entirely authentic, is closer than a lot of superhero trials. Most of them end of being Trial of the Incredible Hulk or that time they tried to put the Ghostbusters on trial - and I love those things but clearly that's not the tone Bru shoots for with this series.
Mixed into all of this is the return of Sin, who now looks like an even grosser version of the Red Skull. She's up to shenigans, and Rogers is vacillating between helping with Buck's defense and trying to stop her. Not much is really resolved on this front, as it appears Sin is being positioned here for a role in the Fear Itself event, but there are some pretty well-done action sequences.
We close with the point one issue, which is ably illustrated by Britweiser but doesn't do much to either introduce the characters or advance the plot. That it's placed at the end, rather than the beginning, of an arc tells you about all you need to know as to whether it is an effective jumping-on point.
the verdict: A solid installment in this series, but it's hurt somewhat by the patched-together art. Not a good place to jump on board, but if you're already invested in this series, you'll want to catch the next chapter.
1 comments:
I wonder how long Bru is shooting for. Ten years on Cap? Twelve? He seems like he's nowhere near finished on his epic - dare I say definitive? - run.
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