One of the problems with modern comic book storytelling is the grandiose titles the story arcs get. Usually they’re sensational and bland, totally interchangeable between comic books and characters, all so someday there’s a collection at Barnes and Noble called Captain America: The Winter Soldier. When Ed Brubaker moved to Marvel and they announced him for Captain America, I was thrilled. Love the Brubaker. Fourteen issues later, Brubaker’s best issues are the two outside the regular storyline. It isn’t even until the third or fourth issue of The Winter Soldier that Brubaker even finds the stride, but when he does, it works.
I thought the beginning of The Winter Soldier had too much talking. Everyone kept asking Captain America if he was all right. Brubaker had this annoying flashback technique going for the first two issues. For example, they’re all talking and someone says, “Yeah, like yesterday,” and boom, flashback to yesterday. It’s not a fractured narrative or something, where the scenes in and of themselves are so important they can be related at any point in the reader’s experience of the story, they’re flashbacks and they’re for effect. Doing something for effect is bad and lazy and I actually couldn’t believe Brubaker was doing it (multiple times in fact).
The story--and Brubaker’s work on the character and title in general--begins to cohere, like I said, at the fourth issue. Brubaker brings in guest stars and Captain America talks to them and they talk to Captain America and there’s a real chemistry between them. I don’t feel the writer anymore, I feel the two friends who care about each other. To some degree, the problem might be that Brubaker is grafting his excellent Catwoman/Batman relationship from his old Catwoman comic books on to Captain America and his potential love interest. It’s not an precise match-up, but it feels more like one than not. In the fourth issue (I don’t have a scanner handy), there’s an action sequence that had me glad I was reading Captain America, just by the feel of it.
Brubaker’s Captain America avoids reality, a change from the last incarnation of the series (beautifully written by Robert Morales), and it’s become a good escapism. While the series was never bad, it was less than fantastic and I despise less than fantastic work from Brubaker. I put the man on a big tall pedestal and if he even slouches, I throw rotten tomatoes at him. Happily, I don’t need any tomatoes for The Winter Soldier.
