Captain America: Holocaust For Hire
[Also a repost of a book review from my Patreon.]
Next up in my reviews of 1970s Marvel Comics prose novels, we have Captain America: Holocaust for Hire. This is #4 in the series (Iron Man was #6) and once again comes to us all the way from 1979. It's credited to Joseph Silva, apparently a pseudonym for an author named Ron Goulart. I have never heard of him, but he seems to have had a long career writing a large number tie-in novels under various pseudonyms.
Trigger warnings: Also, before I start, you may want to know that this book contains animal harm; specifically, a young woman breaking out of Hydra's captivity basically clubs a German Shepherd to death as she runs away. I, uh, wasn't really expecting that part.
Anyway! On the off-chance that you actually care what happens in the plot of this book, it's a thriller/action-adventure sort of story in which Captain America faces off against (of course) the Red Skull, in case you missed the part where the Red Skull's face is splashed all over the cover. The holocaust in the title is really more metaphorical, although at one point Steve is stuck in an incinerator, so, uh, that's a thing that happens. Hydra -- yes, of course, there are lot of Hydra machinations and people secretly working with Hydra and so on -- has kidnapped a scientist who has made a "seismic gun" that creates earthquakes and is forcing him to work for them out of threat of harm to his daughter. Naturally, Steve has to stop them.
But he's not alone in this quest! There's also a whole lot of Nick Fury and SHIELD action in this book, as Fury backs him up, and at one point Steve actually ends up rescuing Fury from Hydra. This isn't reflected in the back cover copy or anything, so I was a little surprised to find that Fury and SHIELD played such a big role, but as Steve on SHIELD missions is generally a big part of this era of Cap comics, it was nice to find that reflected here. Also, we get to see SHIELD's ESP machine. They have some weird technology.
(Also, in a... let's just call it a difference from how Marvel Comics likes to portray them today, Hydra is explicitly Nazi-aligned. Like, they repeatedly say that their goal is to bring about the Fourth Reich. This is sure not what Marvel is currently doing with Hydra, as far as I can tell from the last time I read Secret Empire.)
As for POV, this story is spread across a whole bunch of narrators, but for the most part it's Steve, Fury, a pair of (original-character) journalists independently investigating the weird seismic phenomena, and the daughter of the kidnapped scientist. Also we occasionally get the POV of random mobsters and Hydra goons who are getting their faces kicked in by Captain America, presumably because that way it's easier to see how stunning Steve is in action from the POV of the people he's beating up. The POV is actually pretty consistent here -- unlike the Iron Man book, which went for third person omniscient, this is a more familiar third limited, with the narrator changing every chapter. (They're very short chapters.)
I would have to say that the strength of the book is actually in the action scenes; technically, it's pretty well-written, and it manages to make the action (and there is a lot of it) fairly tense and exciting. I think this is where we really get the bulk of Steve's characterization, in the way he fights and his banter and so on. So it has that going for it. If you want some 70s comic action with Steve and Nick Fury teaming up to take down the Red Skull, this is the book for you. (Naturally, the Red Skull is ambiguously "dead" by the end, but, conveniently, no one ever sees the body.)
And now, the downsides! I have only read two of these novels so far but it's pretty obvious that the series is being written to some stringent editorial standards, because both of these books have been exceedingly formulaic in very particular ways. For example, there are a lot of what I can only assume are editorially-mandated flashbacks of origin stories. Toward the beginning of the book, Fury spends a lot of time reminiscing about the war and how Steve joined Project Rebirth -- oddly, the lead scientist here is named Jonah Erskine -- and became Captain America. Then slightly later, we get the Red Skull's origin story. And then, even later than that, we get Steve having a flashback about how it is the Red Skull managed to survive the war in some kind of suspended animation when everyone thought he was dead. Weirdly, what we don't get in any of these flashbacks is an explanation of how Steve -- or even Fury, but especially Steve -- ended up in the present day still in fighting condition. There's no mention of Steve getting frozen or being found by the Avengers. It seems like a really odd omission given how much the book clearly wants you to know that Steve is from World War II. If I had picked up this book knowing nothing about Captain America, I think I would be confused about that.
(During the origin flashback we learn that the serum has been tested "only on lab animals with gratifying results." Where are my super-mice, Marvel?)
The other weird thing is that there are multiple points in this book when people don't recognize Captain America. Now, I will grant that Steve is terrible at undercover work -- but this was Steve running around in his uniform and people had no idea who he was. And the first one, sure, okay, I will admit is probably there as a clumsy way to do infodumping; the Mafia guy whose POV we're in in Chapter 1 gets to yell "hey, who's that?" as Steve bursts in, swinging his shield, so someone else can explain that that is in fact Captain America. I see what they were doing. But there's also a bit where Steve is talking to a doctor and the doctor basically asks him if he's wearing that getup for a costume party and... it's Earth-616, dude. You'd think people would just know.
None of the narration is very close inside anyone's head, which is kind of disappointing to me, as I would have liked to know more about how Steve felt about the things that happen to him in this book. Even more distancing is the fact that I'm pretty sure the only time he's referred to as "Steve" (or "Steven") is in the origin-story flashback and the rest of the time he's "Captain America" or "Cap" even from his own POV. Which is a little weird. I guess I'm just really used to the way fanfiction wants to make you have all the feelings and this wanted to... really just tell a story.
There also aren't really any great characterization moments for Steve; I was hoping for, say, one of those big rallying Captain America speeches, the kind he occasionally does in the comics. The Iron Man book pretty much opened with that kind of speech from Tony and it was lovely and character-defining and I was sad not to get any of that here. I think I got more about Fury than I did about Steve. I think it's technically a better book than the Iron Man book in terms of the prose and plotting, but the Iron Man book had a lot more overall nice characterization moments.
So overall, I feel like the action scenes were very good and if you're here for Steve and Nick Fury fighting Hydra, that's what you're going to get, with this one. I was just hoping to feel more feelings than it made me feel. But it was fun! Read this entry on Dreamwidth ||
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Next up in my reviews of 1970s Marvel Comics prose novels, we have Captain America: Holocaust for Hire. This is #4 in the series (Iron Man was #6) and once again comes to us all the way from 1979. It's credited to Joseph Silva, apparently a pseudonym for an author named Ron Goulart. I have never heard of him, but he seems to have had a long career writing a large number tie-in novels under various pseudonyms.
Trigger warnings: Also, before I start, you may want to know that this book contains animal harm; specifically, a young woman breaking out of Hydra's captivity basically clubs a German Shepherd to death as she runs away. I, uh, wasn't really expecting that part.
Anyway! On the off-chance that you actually care what happens in the plot of this book, it's a thriller/action-adventure sort of story in which Captain America faces off against (of course) the Red Skull, in case you missed the part where the Red Skull's face is splashed all over the cover. The holocaust in the title is really more metaphorical, although at one point Steve is stuck in an incinerator, so, uh, that's a thing that happens. Hydra -- yes, of course, there are lot of Hydra machinations and people secretly working with Hydra and so on -- has kidnapped a scientist who has made a "seismic gun" that creates earthquakes and is forcing him to work for them out of threat of harm to his daughter. Naturally, Steve has to stop them.
But he's not alone in this quest! There's also a whole lot of Nick Fury and SHIELD action in this book, as Fury backs him up, and at one point Steve actually ends up rescuing Fury from Hydra. This isn't reflected in the back cover copy or anything, so I was a little surprised to find that Fury and SHIELD played such a big role, but as Steve on SHIELD missions is generally a big part of this era of Cap comics, it was nice to find that reflected here. Also, we get to see SHIELD's ESP machine. They have some weird technology.
(Also, in a... let's just call it a difference from how Marvel Comics likes to portray them today, Hydra is explicitly Nazi-aligned. Like, they repeatedly say that their goal is to bring about the Fourth Reich. This is sure not what Marvel is currently doing with Hydra, as far as I can tell from the last time I read Secret Empire.)
As for POV, this story is spread across a whole bunch of narrators, but for the most part it's Steve, Fury, a pair of (original-character) journalists independently investigating the weird seismic phenomena, and the daughter of the kidnapped scientist. Also we occasionally get the POV of random mobsters and Hydra goons who are getting their faces kicked in by Captain America, presumably because that way it's easier to see how stunning Steve is in action from the POV of the people he's beating up. The POV is actually pretty consistent here -- unlike the Iron Man book, which went for third person omniscient, this is a more familiar third limited, with the narrator changing every chapter. (They're very short chapters.)
I would have to say that the strength of the book is actually in the action scenes; technically, it's pretty well-written, and it manages to make the action (and there is a lot of it) fairly tense and exciting. I think this is where we really get the bulk of Steve's characterization, in the way he fights and his banter and so on. So it has that going for it. If you want some 70s comic action with Steve and Nick Fury teaming up to take down the Red Skull, this is the book for you. (Naturally, the Red Skull is ambiguously "dead" by the end, but, conveniently, no one ever sees the body.)
And now, the downsides! I have only read two of these novels so far but it's pretty obvious that the series is being written to some stringent editorial standards, because both of these books have been exceedingly formulaic in very particular ways. For example, there are a lot of what I can only assume are editorially-mandated flashbacks of origin stories. Toward the beginning of the book, Fury spends a lot of time reminiscing about the war and how Steve joined Project Rebirth -- oddly, the lead scientist here is named Jonah Erskine -- and became Captain America. Then slightly later, we get the Red Skull's origin story. And then, even later than that, we get Steve having a flashback about how it is the Red Skull managed to survive the war in some kind of suspended animation when everyone thought he was dead. Weirdly, what we don't get in any of these flashbacks is an explanation of how Steve -- or even Fury, but especially Steve -- ended up in the present day still in fighting condition. There's no mention of Steve getting frozen or being found by the Avengers. It seems like a really odd omission given how much the book clearly wants you to know that Steve is from World War II. If I had picked up this book knowing nothing about Captain America, I think I would be confused about that.
(During the origin flashback we learn that the serum has been tested "only on lab animals with gratifying results." Where are my super-mice, Marvel?)
The other weird thing is that there are multiple points in this book when people don't recognize Captain America. Now, I will grant that Steve is terrible at undercover work -- but this was Steve running around in his uniform and people had no idea who he was. And the first one, sure, okay, I will admit is probably there as a clumsy way to do infodumping; the Mafia guy whose POV we're in in Chapter 1 gets to yell "hey, who's that?" as Steve bursts in, swinging his shield, so someone else can explain that that is in fact Captain America. I see what they were doing. But there's also a bit where Steve is talking to a doctor and the doctor basically asks him if he's wearing that getup for a costume party and... it's Earth-616, dude. You'd think people would just know.
None of the narration is very close inside anyone's head, which is kind of disappointing to me, as I would have liked to know more about how Steve felt about the things that happen to him in this book. Even more distancing is the fact that I'm pretty sure the only time he's referred to as "Steve" (or "Steven") is in the origin-story flashback and the rest of the time he's "Captain America" or "Cap" even from his own POV. Which is a little weird. I guess I'm just really used to the way fanfiction wants to make you have all the feelings and this wanted to... really just tell a story.
There also aren't really any great characterization moments for Steve; I was hoping for, say, one of those big rallying Captain America speeches, the kind he occasionally does in the comics. The Iron Man book pretty much opened with that kind of speech from Tony and it was lovely and character-defining and I was sad not to get any of that here. I think I got more about Fury than I did about Steve. I think it's technically a better book than the Iron Man book in terms of the prose and plotting, but the Iron Man book had a lot more overall nice characterization moments.
So overall, I feel like the action scenes were very good and if you're here for Steve and Nick Fury fighting Hydra, that's what you're going to get, with this one. I was just hoping to feel more feelings than it made me feel. But it was fun! Read this entry on Dreamwidth ||
comments