Captain America and the Mighty Avengers #1: "We Take Care of Our Own"

[superboyprime]

"I think it's good for Captain America, the concept, too -- much as I love Steve Rogers, the idea of Cap has to be bigger than just one person. If Captain America is the representative of the American Dream, there have to be different people in that uniform. Otherwise what's the point?" - Al Ewing

Comments

[qalchemist]

...so is FalCap evil now?

[violetclm.livejournal.com]

I think it's that Inversion thing that is acknowledged in maybe half the comics at random. Extremely poorly timed.

[drtechnobabel]

You're assuming that they didn't plan this so that they could make Captain America evil without Steve Rogers' name being sullied.

Though in all honesty it's probably just a combination of poor timing and lack of communication between the people who came up with the Inversion and the people who decided to make Sam the new Captain America.

[flint_marko]

They already sullied Steve with AVX.

[mrstatham]

Who are the same people. Remender writes Cap and wrote Sam becoming Cap in his run. He's now writing the new book. Remender wrote the Inversion stuff. This is taking place during the Inversion. There's no poor timing about it.

[flint_marko]

The writer here is Al Ewing, it's just a reboot of his mighty avengers title with the hopes that adding cap's name will help give the series a boost.

[mrstatham]

Except drtechnobabel was suggesting that Sam becoming Cap and the Inversion stuff was accidentally timed so they happened at once. I'm saying that's not the case because Cap's main book and AXIS were written by Remender. I'm pretty aware this is a blatant attention-grab to get the book some more readers. Ewing probably had zero control over Sam becoming Cap.

[thehood]

Except Ewing has said he enjoys Sam as Cap. Plus he'll be un-Inverted in this week's Cap & The Mighty Avengers.

[mrstatham]

That Ewing likes the concept doesn't mean he had any control over it - not that I was implying he had a problem with it to begin with (and I'm not sure how you got that impression). All I was responding to was the insinuation of poor timing in terms of changing Cap and the Inversion in that, no, they're done by the same guy writing different books.

[sagrada]

Is...do we have a worthy successor to Nextwave? Do I dare dream? Is this the glorious vision of the future of comics? Because I sure hope so!

Also the shadows here are just bazonkers. Lighting is just all over the place.

[drtechnobabel]

It does seem like a surprising number of writers have been using the inversion as a chance to go balls to the wall crazy with their characters/storylines. The sad thing is that those comics usually end up being better than the ones that actually try to take it seriously.

[thehood]

You should read more Mighty Avengers then.

[q99]

Aw, Terry, no!

Also that Spidey-apology is so awkward and so Peter.

[captainbellman]

Riiight? I think this is the first time we've seen a writer come even close to capturing the real Peter in years, let alone one with the guts to write him cleaning up Octavius' mess.

[q99]

He's horribly awkward *and* actually being responsible!

[nate_abril96]

What does Ayn Rand have to do with Spidey's apology?

[jetpack_monkey]

In the earlier Mighty Avengers run, Luke Cage's explanation for SpOck's obnoxious behavior was literally, "Ayn Rand is a hell of a drug."

[rainspirit]

It's also kind of a hilarious shout-out to Steve Ditko and Stan Lee's... political differences... in the course of them creating and writing Spider-Man.

(There was a panel in the old days that had Spidey yelling at protesters to get a job, but Lee changed the speech bubble afterwards to have him be supportive of the movement. :D)

[halloweenjack]

Not to mention Peter Bagge's take on Peter Parker.

[q99]

Events (and Ayn references)
Here (4th page) and here (6th page)

[chrisdv]

Was there this big "You have to be the new Captain America, Sam" moment where Steve passed the torch, or did Sam just randomly just become Captain America with no explanation beyond why Steve can't be anymore?

[alschroeder3]

Steve has reverted back to being physically his actual age...i.e., in his nineties...so Sam took over with Steve's coaching, initially. No, it won't last, but what DOES in comics?

[thehood]

In the last issue of the previous Cap run, yeah. Steve gave a big speech as to why he picked Sam, how he's a great man worthy of the mantle, etc.

It was very touching.

[beoweasel]

So, basically, Inverted-Sam is a fascist?

[grumman]

This was good. Then Captain Falcon showed up. Then it sucked.

[mrstatham]

He's at least meant to be a dick. And it'll get righted by the next arc.

[icon_uk]

"Hey look, we're going to have a black Captain America... and in his first arc we're going to have a telepathic Nazi turn him into an evil bastard without much in the way of explanation or mitigation in the narrative, unless you're reading the crossover event named for the Nazi forces in World War II"

Honestly, it was frankly unbelievably crappy timing, genuinely awful planning from someone...

[althechi]

That's exactly what I was thinking. People picking this #1 up years in the future are going to be absolutely boondoggled sans publishing context.

[thehood]

Except the first arc of All-New Captain America doesn't have inverted Sam and it isn't part of Axis.

A more accurate critique would be saying how the first event he's involved in had become inverted.

[skjam]

I would have liked to have kept this Plunderer. He's the kind of villain Marvel needs more of.

[indyreloadx]

Me too. I actually like what I read uptill SamCap ruined the fun :(

[halloweenjack]

I'm so glad that I saw the Ninjettes scans before this, so that this would be a sort of palate cleanser. "When your brother is a lord of the jungle, you learn to lean into these things." Beautiful.

[skemono]

I regret to point out that four pages of this issue were already published months ago.

Mod Note!

[icon_uk]

It's a 32 page comic, and issue 2 is out, so the 1/3 rule applies, leaving us 6 and a bit pages as being postable... I think this scrapes in (There are a good few partial pages here), but your diligence is genuinely appreciated.

[starwolf_oakley]

"I think it's good for Captain America, the concept, too -- much as I love Steve Rogers, the idea of Cap has to be bigger than just one person. If Captain America is the representative of the American Dream, there have to be different people in that uniform. Otherwise what's the point?" - Al Ewing


That's a nice idea, but too often when it is someone else as Captain America it just doesn't work ON PURPOSE.
Jeff Mace and William Naslund did all right for themselves, but that's because they fought alongside Steve Rogers.
William Burnside was a failure, but that was partly because the Super Soldier Serum drove him crazy (along with Dr. Faustus brainwashing him a few times).
That Roscoe guy was killed so Steve would become Captain America again.
And John Walker... That was confusing. Were we not supposed to like him, or were we? Let's take Marc Gruenwald's own words:

Basically, I just wanted to do the opposite of Steve Rogers. Okay, Steve Rogers is a poor northern urban boy. So I'll make a guy from rural middle class south. Cap is now old, so this guy'll be a real young up-and-comer. Cap has lofty ideals, so I'll make Super-Patriot be more realistic and more pragmatic. So, I put together his background and character traits by playing the opposite game.

[cyberghostface]

I enjoyed Superior but the one real issue I had is that there's no reason why Spider-Man couldn't have done a huge press conference telling everyone about Otto given all the research Carlie did and the paper trail that lead Spider-Island back to Ock's bank account.

It wouldn't convince *everyone* but I imagine most of his peers would accept it.

[silverhammerman]

I know it'll never happen now, but I'm still kind of annoyed that we never got to see Spidey get mad at anyone for not noticing that he'd been mindswapped with a supervillain for several months, when they've all dealt with that kinda stuff in the past and Spider-Ock really wasn't subtle about it.

[thehood]

Why would he? This is Peter we're talking about. He's not going to blame his friends for what Otto did.

Besides, it's not the first time a hero acted like back jerk to his friends. Going "He's acting like a jerk, someone must have switched his brain" seems like a bit of a leap.

[philippos42]

This is a terrible first issue. Why would you do a relaunch and introduction of Sam as Captain America with him acting like a total dick, because he's already and arbitrarily "inverted" in some miniseries? This is going to color new readers' perception of him.

When I saw it on the stands, I just left it there.

[junipepper]

You're right. Launching a book with the lead character completely OOC, without even taking the trouble to explain it in-book, is an appalling idea. And yet, bad as the idea is, somehow they've made the execution of it even worse. I wasn't thinking about Inversion (because, you know, new book) and my reaction was: "Criminal scum have no rights! ... "Not in MY country!" Great, that's just what I want to hear from Captain America, and even worse -- given the disparate treatment and outcomes for minorities in the US justice system -- from Black Captain America. Wtf?

[silverhammerman]

Given that the first issue opens with a sequence of pages about how good and significant it is to have Falcon as Captain America, only to lead into a storyline where he's basically a fascist, I get the feeling that the writer himself wasn't pleased about how he was being made to open the series.

[thehood]

Again, this isn't his book. In Sam's book, All-New Captain America, he isn't inverted, evil, or ooc.

In the Cap book, which is about him taking the mantle, he's dealing with the new Hydra, lead by Zemo. It also doesn't tie in to Axis at all.

And Mighty Avengers did explain that Sam's inverted. It was an Axis tie in.

[thehood]

Because this isn't his book. In Sam's book he's his regular self and not inverted.

Mighty Avengers ties in to Axis, so he a Cage had to be Inverted.

[silverhammerman]

I love the writing on this series, but it seems like it's hamstrung by being in a really bad position editorially. If Marvel gave just a little more or a little less of a shit about this book then it could do it's own thing, but as it is Mighty Avengers has been tossed into crossover after crossover (Counting the last volume there have been 15 issues, in that time there have been 3 event tie-ins, all longer than a single issue) in a weak attempt to goose the sales that only winds up derailing the plot and lowering the quality of the book.

Between the crossovers and Marvel seemingly not letting Ewing do anything with Jessica Jones (which at this point I'm sure is a bizarre editorial attempt to make sure Bendis' character is reserved for him alone) it seems like the company just doesn't have a lot of confidence in Ewing. Which is idiotic, because he's one of their best new writers and with Image being such an attractive option these days Marvel needs to hold onto what talent it can.

[thehood]

What do you mean? Mighty Avengers was able to use each cross over to masterfully advance it's own story. Specifically the Deathwalkers and Cortex plots.

Hell, the Axis tie in is moving the Cortex plot further.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

1) That suit makes Luke Cage look like Uncle Phil. I think that's +50% to his "nothin' to mess with" stat.

2) So... are they cool with Spidey now?

[lieut_kettch]

Now way Jen's just a beta-level threat. She's a freakin' Hulk!

[thehood]

But she's not as cosmically powerful as Monica and Blue Marvel. They would rank higher.

Besides, she's ranked with Kaluu, so she's clearly considered a threat.