Friday, November 5, 2010

Captain America: Man Out of Time #1(of 5)

Overall: This mini-series documents the story of Steve Rogers(Captain America)and how he was frozen in suspended animation during the closing days of WWII, as well as his return at the hands of the Avengers. Cap is woken up by the Avengers and at first fights them, wanting to know where Bucky was and figuring he was in the hands of Nazi super-soldiers. The Avengers try to calm Cap down, and decide to hold a team meeting in order to figure out how to prepare Cap(and the public)as to what had happened to him and where he was. When the Avengers leave him, Cap sneaks away and heads outside, where he is met by a version of New York that is much different than the one he remembered. While wandering around trying to get his bearings, Cap hears a cry for help and rushes into an alley where he finds three goons demanding something from a woman. Cap takes care of the goons and goes to help the woman, who shoots him in the gut and runs away with several bags of narcotics. This issue ends with poor, confused Cap laying in the street in a pool of blood.

Hmm... I don't know what I was expecting from this comic, but I don't think this was it... I mean, I knew it was going to be a retelling of Cap's return to the modern day Marvel U after WWII, but this issue didn't blow me over. I hated the ending, with Cap being shot by the drug carrying woman. It was just such a heavy-handed way to say, “Look at poor, naive Cap, trusting a woman like he would have back in the day and paying for it.” Plus the Avengers simply LEAVING Cap alone while they decide what to do about him was pretty strange... The man just woke up from years of suspended animation, is totally confused and they decide to walk away to hold a team meeting?! AND leave the door unlocked?? That's some weird thinking right there... On the plus side, the first half of this comic was all about Cap and Bucky during WWII as they hung out with other soldiers, all the way up to the experimental airplane explosion that sent Cap into the icy waters and ultimately resulted in Bucky becoming the Winter Soldier. I like Mark Waid's work a lot, so I'm pretty confident this story will pick up, but this issue was a bit under my expectations.

Score: 7 out of 10.Women...
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2 comments:

  1. MarcNovember 5, 2010 at 6:31 PM

    Hmm, this sounds kind of weird...not what I would have expected of this comic either. I also think it's kind of silly to dwell on the "man out time" aspect of the character with the specificity this book does, due to Marvel's sliding timeline. When Cap was first introduced, he was only 20 years "out of time"...now that number is about 70. And while this story makes sense given that context right now, I doubt it will make as much sense 20, 30, or 50 years from now (assuming comics still exist at that point), meaning Marvel will feel the need to redefine the character's origin again and again over the years...a problem we might not have if writers just left this sort of thing alone in the first place.

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  2. x-man75November 6, 2010 at 2:15 AM

    I am SO glad you mentioned the time aspect here, Marc! If you notice, at no time during the review do I mention a time period except for WWII. There's really no indication if Cap woke up in the 60's, today or a random 10-12 years ago. I get the allure of the whole "man out of time" thing, because it does make for an interesting story, but I'm having some major issues with the time thing... I mean I once figured out the ages of like half the characters in the Marvel U based on lots of research, so comics like this tend to give me fits!

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