Where should I start with Captain America?
November 3, 2013 1:52 AM Subscribe
I've been following the MeFi threads that discuss Captain America religiously, and love what I read. Assembled Cap fans of MeFi, where should I start on the actual comics?
A little about my tastes:
I think Steve Rogers' American Captain is one of the best comics I've ever read. I used to read a ton of X-Men, as well as Sandman, Maus and Persepolis. I LOVED the Avengers movie, and loved the Captain America movie when I went back to watch it, post-Avengers. Possibly related: I'm American by birth, but am in the process of emigrating to the UK, and would be entirely happy never living in the US ever again. Given all this, where would you suggest I start in the Cap mythos? I don't have a ton of extra cash right now, but could easily spring for a few TPB's if you know of any good collected stories.
A little about my tastes:
I think Steve Rogers' American Captain is one of the best comics I've ever read. I used to read a ton of X-Men, as well as Sandman, Maus and Persepolis. I LOVED the Avengers movie, and loved the Captain America movie when I went back to watch it, post-Avengers. Possibly related: I'm American by birth, but am in the process of emigrating to the UK, and would be entirely happy never living in the US ever again. Given all this, where would you suggest I start in the Cap mythos? I don't have a ton of extra cash right now, but could easily spring for a few TPB's if you know of any good collected stories.
Best answer: Ed Brubaker's run on Captain America is generally well received and forms the backbone of the movie coming out next summer, so, obviously, spoilers if you choose to look into it. The main problem it had was that it was forced down a few creative roads due to the Civil War event that Marvel ran around it so it gets a bit odd in the middle, though I think he coped with it pretty well overall. The late Mark Gruenwald's run is also well thought of. Collected omnibus runs are available at the usual outlets.
posted by peteyjlawson at 4:33 AM on November 3, 2013
posted by peteyjlawson at 4:33 AM on November 3, 2013
Best answer: It's not Cap centered at all, but he does appear in a subplot throughout in Daredevil: Born Again, which is a damn fine graphic novel.
It was one of my first experiences with Cap that made me get his iconic status and think "Whoa, this could be a great character!"
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:58 AM on November 3, 2013 [2 favorites]
It was one of my first experiences with Cap that made me get his iconic status and think "Whoa, this could be a great character!"
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:58 AM on November 3, 2013 [2 favorites]
Nthing Brubaker's run. I picked it up never having read more Cap than a random issue of Avengers here and there, and really liked it.
posted by jameaterblues at 7:30 AM on November 3, 2013
posted by jameaterblues at 7:30 AM on November 3, 2013
Best answer: Cap has always been my favorite. I find converge's response above to be painfully shallow.
That said, digging up the whole run of Cap might not be all that thrilling, given how differently older comics read. If you find Cap stuff you like and want to read more, cool, but I wouldn't recommend it. Also, remember how long the character has been around: there are wonderful highs and awful, embarrassingly bad lows.
War and Remembrance collects some stories circa 1980 by Roger Stern & John Byrne (both as artist and writer). Some of the stories are considerably better than others, but you get a good overall grounding for the character. This trade includes the "Cap for President" story (he doesn't run, but people try desperately to put him up for it) and a pretty definitive telling of his origin story (though it's the last story in the book, rather than the first). The art is nice, as it's all Byrne; it's not spectacular, but at no point is it bad, either. You get a little of his idealism & man-out-of-time feel for it, too, though those are not the primary focus. Also, you get his not-exactly-nemesis Batroc the Leaper, and anyone who doesn't like him is just an enemy of fun.
Captain America: The Captain focuses on a definitive plotline from the '80s wherein the gov't pressures Cap to work for it directly & formally, rather than as a trusted independent... and he tells them to shove it and turns in the uniform & the shield. I don't have this TPB, so I don't know how much of the storyline it collects, but it's part of Mark Gruenwald's awesome run. It's certainly one of the best of all the Cap storylines.
Streets of Poison is another Gruenwald storyline: Cap gets caught in an exploding warehouse full of meth (or something), which reacts badly with the super soldier serum & 'roid-raging Cap ensues. This may be a bit jarring as it involves some supporting characters who are already established in earlier storylines (reformed baddie/love-interest Diamondback, the Red Skull's henchman Crossbones), and it does have some moralizing about drugs, but it also tackles the issue of Cap's drug-induced physicality head-on. Plus you get a couple of moments of Black Widow being straight-up awesome.
Again, the above titles are all kind of "old school" scripting, so the dialogue reads clunkier than modern stuff.
Skipping forward a good ways, Operation Rebirth and the follow-up Man Without a Country are by the very talented Mark Waid. They feature Agent-13/Sharon Carter, Cap's perennial love interest; Sharon's great in that she's probably closer to him than anyone has ever been and is absolutely not gonna melt for him. Also, you get sadface Bill Clinton sending Cap into exile.
As I mentioned in the threads you referred to, The New Deal is a really solid, kind of quiet and somber reaction to 9/11.
I've read pieces of the Brubaker run, but not all. As peteyjlawson says, Brubaker was hamstrung by broader moves going on within Marvel and had to make lemonade out of some pretty shitty lemons. (To be fair, for all I know Brubaker had a lot of input, but it doesn't seem that way to me.) He pulled off an impressive feat by rehabilitating the character of Bucky into something interesting.
In terms of Cap in the broader Marvel U, you can get a good old-school early '80s feel for Cap through the original Secret Wars -- a bunch of teams find themselves stuck on an alien world to fight bad guys (because godlike extradimensional alien wants to watch), and pretty much everyone but Wolverine immediately agrees that Cap should be in charge. There are a lot of great ensemble moments there. On a more modern level, the pre-Civil War "New Avengers" stuff is really, really good, but suffers from Civil War derailing a bunch of promising storylines. I would also echo the plug for Daredevil: Born Again, which is wonderful in its own right but also includes a very short but pitch-perfect bit of Captain America in the end.
I cannot discourage you from reading Civil War strongly enough; it's written from the standpoint of someone who plainly doesn't understand the character (or any of the other characters involved) nor has any interest in trying. Marvel is still trying to pretend like that whole thing was a good idea. Also, the Ultimates stuff is very influential on the current crop of films, but mostly from a standpoint of visuals and small snippets & echoes; the Ultimates line basically re-imagines the Marvel U as if everyone except Spider-Man is an asshole, and that includes a pretty douchey Cap.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:07 AM on November 3, 2013 [2 favorites]
That said, digging up the whole run of Cap might not be all that thrilling, given how differently older comics read. If you find Cap stuff you like and want to read more, cool, but I wouldn't recommend it. Also, remember how long the character has been around: there are wonderful highs and awful, embarrassingly bad lows.
War and Remembrance collects some stories circa 1980 by Roger Stern & John Byrne (both as artist and writer). Some of the stories are considerably better than others, but you get a good overall grounding for the character. This trade includes the "Cap for President" story (he doesn't run, but people try desperately to put him up for it) and a pretty definitive telling of his origin story (though it's the last story in the book, rather than the first). The art is nice, as it's all Byrne; it's not spectacular, but at no point is it bad, either. You get a little of his idealism & man-out-of-time feel for it, too, though those are not the primary focus. Also, you get his not-exactly-nemesis Batroc the Leaper, and anyone who doesn't like him is just an enemy of fun.
Captain America: The Captain focuses on a definitive plotline from the '80s wherein the gov't pressures Cap to work for it directly & formally, rather than as a trusted independent... and he tells them to shove it and turns in the uniform & the shield. I don't have this TPB, so I don't know how much of the storyline it collects, but it's part of Mark Gruenwald's awesome run. It's certainly one of the best of all the Cap storylines.
Streets of Poison is another Gruenwald storyline: Cap gets caught in an exploding warehouse full of meth (or something), which reacts badly with the super soldier serum & 'roid-raging Cap ensues. This may be a bit jarring as it involves some supporting characters who are already established in earlier storylines (reformed baddie/love-interest Diamondback, the Red Skull's henchman Crossbones), and it does have some moralizing about drugs, but it also tackles the issue of Cap's drug-induced physicality head-on. Plus you get a couple of moments of Black Widow being straight-up awesome.
Again, the above titles are all kind of "old school" scripting, so the dialogue reads clunkier than modern stuff.
Skipping forward a good ways, Operation Rebirth and the follow-up Man Without a Country are by the very talented Mark Waid. They feature Agent-13/Sharon Carter, Cap's perennial love interest; Sharon's great in that she's probably closer to him than anyone has ever been and is absolutely not gonna melt for him. Also, you get sadface Bill Clinton sending Cap into exile.
As I mentioned in the threads you referred to, The New Deal is a really solid, kind of quiet and somber reaction to 9/11.
I've read pieces of the Brubaker run, but not all. As peteyjlawson says, Brubaker was hamstrung by broader moves going on within Marvel and had to make lemonade out of some pretty shitty lemons. (To be fair, for all I know Brubaker had a lot of input, but it doesn't seem that way to me.) He pulled off an impressive feat by rehabilitating the character of Bucky into something interesting.
In terms of Cap in the broader Marvel U, you can get a good old-school early '80s feel for Cap through the original Secret Wars -- a bunch of teams find themselves stuck on an alien world to fight bad guys (because godlike extradimensional alien wants to watch), and pretty much everyone but Wolverine immediately agrees that Cap should be in charge. There are a lot of great ensemble moments there. On a more modern level, the pre-Civil War "New Avengers" stuff is really, really good, but suffers from Civil War derailing a bunch of promising storylines. I would also echo the plug for Daredevil: Born Again, which is wonderful in its own right but also includes a very short but pitch-perfect bit of Captain America in the end.
I cannot discourage you from reading Civil War strongly enough; it's written from the standpoint of someone who plainly doesn't understand the character (or any of the other characters involved) nor has any interest in trying. Marvel is still trying to pretend like that whole thing was a good idea. Also, the Ultimates stuff is very influential on the current crop of films, but mostly from a standpoint of visuals and small snippets & echoes; the Ultimates line basically re-imagines the Marvel U as if everyone except Spider-Man is an asshole, and that includes a pretty douchey Cap.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:07 AM on November 3, 2013 [2 favorites]
Also worth considering: that tumblr is indeed very well-written... but it's tackling a just-out-of-the-ice Cap and going for a very obvious angle of alienation for him. Mainstream comics Cap has been out of the ice for many years now and has had time to adjust. The man-out-of-time stuff still stands, but... well, Cap was never really bigoted or sexist to begin with. There are a lot of writers & commentators who want to push Cap into a box of 1940s social viewpoint stereotypes, but the truth is that he has never really been that guy. He may not have the sort of academic vocabulary for it that we use to describe feminism or concepts like white privilege on the internet, but he's just not the unsophisticated jerk that a lot of people (again, Mark Millar of Civil War & Ultimates) would like him to be.
The idea about Cap is to take what's best about America (the lofty ideals we allegedly strive for, not the horrible hypocrisies) and make it all work in the form of Steve Rogers. Yes, that's an unrealistic fantasy, but so are superheroes to begin with.
Thanks for plugging that tumblr, though. As a re-imagining, it's totally legit, very well-written and very entertaining. I expect I'll be sharing it around to friends.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:34 AM on November 3, 2013
The idea about Cap is to take what's best about America (the lofty ideals we allegedly strive for, not the horrible hypocrisies) and make it all work in the form of Steve Rogers. Yes, that's an unrealistic fantasy, but so are superheroes to begin with.
Thanks for plugging that tumblr, though. As a re-imagining, it's totally legit, very well-written and very entertaining. I expect I'll be sharing it around to friends.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:34 AM on November 3, 2013
Response by poster: Thanks guys! I think I'll start with Brubaker's run, War and Remembrance and the Daredevil story as those seem like a good grounding as well as being excellent stories. (And will read more as payday's arrive...) I should note that I have waded through a lot of shitty X-Men stories, so I'm not entirely put off by the, um, unique writing style of early comics -- just hoping to start on some of the better stuff, or things that get, maybe, a bit more philosophical. I think I managed to miss the whole Civil War thing, and I'm happy to leave it that way.
BTW, thank you converge for the timeline rundown!
posted by kalimac at 1:56 PM on November 3, 2013
BTW, thank you converge for the timeline rundown!
posted by kalimac at 1:56 PM on November 3, 2013
Consider a Marvel Unlimited subscription - most of the runs suggested here are available and you can easily branch out into crossovers as needed.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 4:48 PM on November 3, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by robocop is bleeding at 4:48 PM on November 3, 2013 [1 favorite]
If you have an iPad or Android Tablet, ComiXology is selling the digital issues of Waid's run (see ScaryBlackDeath's post) for .99 a pop, it's a good way to get started, cheap:
But the sale ends at midnight EST tonight
posted by Oktober at 6:21 PM on November 3, 2013
But the sale ends at midnight EST tonight
posted by Oktober at 6:21 PM on November 3, 2013
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Here's how it goes:
Captain America punches Hitler. Pulp happens. He dies when super patriots (and there were shitloads of them. There's probably a website and/or Tumblr dedicated to remembering all the defunct super patriots from the 40's.) stop drawing sales.
The fifties try to bring him back a few times. Not so much.
Stan Lee decides the Avengers find him. Avenging happens.
A couple of times writers decide to use Cap politically, but much in the same pollyanna bullshit way that Superman is used politically. No one pays attention. He punches Wolverine a couple of times during the eighties to illustrate the dichotomy of Stan Lee and Chris Claremont. No one wins.
Brian Bendis decides to fuck that and disassembles the Avengers. People pay attention, though nothing is being said.
Ed Brubaker has a nice run that editorially coincides with Bendis. Cap dies. But, whatever.
Brubaker has him return (because, Marvel said). Really, it makes no sense. Not even in a comic way.
Avenging continues.
That tumblr is better written than the vast majority of Captain America comics.
posted by converge at 3:17 AM on November 3, 2013 [1 favorite]