Marvel Comics 2017
Written by Nick Spencer
Illustrated by Daniel Acuna
Prologue Art by Rod Reis
Recap Art by Andrea Sorrentino
Lettered by VC’s Travis Lanham
Captain America’s reality has been secretly rewritten by Kobik, a sentient cosmic cube acting under the influence of the Red Skull. In Rogers’ new history, A Hydra Agent recruited Steve to the villainous organisation as a child, and he was raised to believe in their ideology: the strong ruling the weak, for the good of all. He’ll stop at nothing to bring Hydra into power. After taking over from Maria Hill as Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. he’s finally ready to make his move….
The good, the bad, and the ugly of it all is that this is yet another of those damned company wide crossover events. Let’s face it the last decade plus hasn’t been kind to Marvel’s massive events they’ve been late, took up to many individual issues that no one wanted to buy and left us with a New “New’” universe status quo. So i’m not gonna follow this because I refuse to buy all the different series that are connected to this event, I mean seriously who can afford that?
So the thing of it is is that this whole rewrite of Cap’s history has been fascinating for me. I loved the twist and now that it’s being revealed it’s kinda freaking exciting. Nick crafted one hell of an issue here that encompasses the entirety of what we need to know until now and moving forward. We forget because of his long and storied career that Steve Rogers is one of the most accomplished tacticians the world has ever seen, including on par with that of Batman. Nick’s depiction of that here is marvelously done. I kind of got goosebumps reading this as you know what’s going to happen only we don’t know when so it’s got this tension and oomph to it that just devours the reader.
Daniel’s interiors here are among his finest. He’s been pretty prolific in his depiction of the Marvel Universe for some time now but he’s pulling out all the stops and holding nothing back here. This could be his crowning achievement to date and that is saying something. The way this book flows thanks to the page layouts and their angles, perspective and even use of backgrounds is incredibly well done. I appreciate that we get so much emotion and feeling from the work we see here it makes it all the more enjoyable.
While I understand why Marvel does it I’d really like to see a major event handled outside their individual series. A solid seven issue run that has no tie-ins would be a welcome sight and something many more fans would get behind. Still it’s been over a year in the making but now that it’s here I have mixed emotions. This has been one of the better plot twists in Marvel’s history and while we knew it wasn’t going to last and the controversy it caused was huge it’s still a bittersweet event for me.