Finished reading this phonebook-sized collection of 1970s Captain America stories late last night. Took me quite a while to finish it. As usual, it's another Essential volume of black-and-white reprints that total up to about 600 pages! Cap was in a transitory stage when these stories were written - we were moving from the short run by Jim Steranko (collected in Vol. 2) back to Stan Lee again and then some truly great stories by Gary Friedrich, some not-so-great work by the young Gerry Conway before Steve Englehart came on board as one of the truly great Cap-scribes. The beginning of the Englehart run is collected here but the true gems of his run (i.e. the "
Secret Empire" and "
Nomad" arcs) can only be savoured in Volume 4.
Despite the change in scribing duties throughout this volume, the whole thing actually connects in a seamless manner throughout. The writers set up three sets of supporting characters for Cap to interact with: 1) S.H.I.E.L.D. (featuring on the love/hate relationship between Cap and Nick Fury, and the soapy/mushy romance stuff with Sharon Carter - with Contessa Val thrown in to mess up the kitchen), 2) the Falcon and the Harlem area (with Leila thrown in as mouthpiece for the racial tensions in '70s America) and 3) the police force (where Steve Rogers had his day-job as a beat cop). As for villains, the Red Skull appears again and again and again in this volume. It's like, whenever a new writer comes on board, he has to do his own *definitive* Red Skull story. So we get the Red Skull messing up with Cap's relationships in S.H.I.E.L.D., the Red Skull messing up the Kingpin's relationships in Hydra and the Red Skull masterminding the black-racist activist group that involved Falcon and Leila.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, we even get a cosmic baddie Jakar (the Stranger?) kidnapping kids in Harlem by hiring Batroc and his Brigade. We always knew those stinkin' French guys with the corny moustaches were up to no good, don't we? Of course, Batroc later teamed up with Cap and the Falcon to defeat the cosmic baddie and freed the kids. Scorpion and Mister Hyde also put in a memorable appearance to both tie up a story began in the pages of
Amazing Spider-Man and
Iron Man as well as to showcase Cap and Falcon at their grittiest best when the villains kidnapped Sharon Carter. After that, Cap and Sharon Carter helped Nick Fury and Contessa Val get over their mutual jealousies before taking a vacation in the Bahamas! What amused me to no end was how Cap actually faked his SICK LEAVE with the police because he wanted to take his girlfriend for a holiday - all that in the middle of a huge police scandal wherein Cap's boss, Sgt. Muldoon, was accused of police misdemeanour!
That afore-mentioned vacation was cut short with the appearance of the 1950s Captain America and Bucky. Steve Englehart was roped in to tie up one of the most buggin' continuity glitches in Silver Age Marvel. You see, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby did Cap in the 1940s. Cap was so popular that he was published throughout the 1950s as well. Problem was, Stan Lee told the world (in
Avengers #4) that Cap and Bucky disappeared in the 1940s - sometime before Hiroshima! Who then were the 1950s Cap and Bucky as seen in comics such as
Young Men #24 (December 1953)? Englehart came up with a creepy tale about a fan of Cap who had plastic surgery to look like Steve Rogers - even using cut-and-paste John Romita panels from
Young Men #24 to explain how all that happened. See? Englehart was using this technique long before Bendis employed it in "
Alias"! :)
The artwork throughout were by Gene Colan, Gil Kane, John Romita and Sal Buscema. All of them were Silver Age greats who did very reliable and clear action-packed storytelling. Nothing really cutting-edge like what Jim Steranko did before them but they served their purposes as storytellers first, innovators second. Overall, this is a very enjoyable volume and should definitely be read by today's fans who think that Ed Brubaker is the best writer on Cap! Truth is, many of these old tales were far more appealing than anything that Brubaker has ever written.
Note:
Young Men #24 (the Cap and Bucky tale) is reprinted in the
John Romita Sr. Visionaries hardcover.
