Hey, don't give a shit about comics? This post is for you!
I just wrapped up issue #6 of 5 in Marvel's Captain America: Reborn saga. The nonsensical numbering is fitting because it is exactly what it looks like: a shoehorned, piece-of-shit ending to a story which already ended one goddamn comic prior.
"I came."
The shame of it is Reborn was pretty good until that tacked-on blooper of a nigh-retcon-bridge to the next big thang. We had Bucky, the replacement Captain America, struggling in a Greek tragedy over assuming the shield. We had super-scientist Hank Pym, who is Giant Man, or Ant-Man, or whomever the fuck else Marvel needs him to be, trying desperately to redeem himself from becoming a raging, selfish asshole. We had love trysts developing between rescuers, conflicting with he who is being rescued. And, goddamnit, Steve Rogers, the original Cap, was trapped in a temporal hell partly manufactured by his Nazi-communist nemesis (??? Glenn Beck must be a big fan.) where he'd continuously relive war horrors over and over and over again. That's pretty heavy stuff for capes 'n' shit.
This issue shits all over that by giving us subpar art, and a story which mimics every Voltron or Power Rangers episode ever made. I hate to give everything away, but there's so little left I can spoil. Here's what happens in #6: Original Captain America defeats Red Skull in an alternate-future Nazi New York, which is really in his mind. Somehow this makes Red Skull leave Cap's head and reappear in a robot body. One of Cap's rescuers tries to destroy the robot body by firing a goddamn growth ray at the ROBOT containing the mind of the most dangerous Nazi since Hitler. They have a fight. Triangle wins. Page later, robot Nazi's down. FUCK YOU!
#6 screams of upper management clumsily searching for a way to top its previous success with the popular Dark Reign saga by forcing its talent to lead in to the Siege storyline, which is Avengers-lite, and -- you guessed it -- features Captain America. C'mon, Marvel. Forced meme is forced.
"I came."
The shame of it is Reborn was pretty good until that tacked-on blooper of a nigh-retcon-bridge to the next big thang. We had Bucky, the replacement Captain America, struggling in a Greek tragedy over assuming the shield. We had super-scientist Hank Pym, who is Giant Man, or Ant-Man, or whomever the fuck else Marvel needs him to be, trying desperately to redeem himself from becoming a raging, selfish asshole. We had love trysts developing between rescuers, conflicting with he who is being rescued. And, goddamnit, Steve Rogers, the original Cap, was trapped in a temporal hell partly manufactured by his Nazi-communist nemesis (??? Glenn Beck must be a big fan.) where he'd continuously relive war horrors over and over and over again. That's pretty heavy stuff for capes 'n' shit.
This issue shits all over that by giving us subpar art, and a story which mimics every Voltron or Power Rangers episode ever made. I hate to give everything away, but there's so little left I can spoil. Here's what happens in #6: Original Captain America defeats Red Skull in an alternate-future Nazi New York, which is really in his mind. Somehow this makes Red Skull leave Cap's head and reappear in a robot body. One of Cap's rescuers tries to destroy the robot body by firing a goddamn growth ray at the ROBOT containing the mind of the most dangerous Nazi since Hitler. They have a fight. Triangle wins. Page later, robot Nazi's down. FUCK YOU!
#6 screams of upper management clumsily searching for a way to top its previous success with the popular Dark Reign saga by forcing its talent to lead in to the Siege storyline, which is Avengers-lite, and -- you guessed it -- features Captain America. C'mon, Marvel. Forced meme is forced.