Post by Jeff Melton on Jul 10, 2010 9:45:33 GMT -5
Yes, the Patriot mini-series starting in September will follow Jeff Mace's career, both as Patriot during the war and as Captain America after.
That sounds interesting. It could be good if done right. I think I did hear something about that. I wonder how big a role Golden Girl will play in the mini-series? One of the problems with something like this is that you really can't cover that much territory in four issues (or is it longer?). One interesting thing about Golden Girl is that her name was originally Betty Ross. When Simon and Kirby created her, they called her Betty. Then, years later, Stan Lee called her Betsy (probably by mistake) in an issue. Steranko, on his History of Comics treatise, also called her Betsy, and that seems to be what Marvel has adopted now. I always wondered her relation to General Ross, and to Betty Ross. I figured that Betty (Ross' daughter) may have been named after her. She may have been an aunt or something.
The death of Jack Monroe is the one thing that keeps me from declaring Brubaker's run the greatest thing ever. I loved that final issue, the last year of Nomad's life, but I'd hoped the bad guys had kept Jack in a recuperation pod like Steve 2.0 and the body in Philly had been surgically altered. Red Skull had come back from such a clear death, why not Nomad?
I agree. I really thought the death was rushed and pointless. It was clear that the intention was to kill Nomad, giving him an incurable illness and all that. I prefer your idea, which would also explain the illness he never had before. If it was a clone or something that was degenerating, that would explain that.
Also, I want the lowdown from Namor or Hammond on their last contacts with Nomad.
I think there are actually a lot of untold 50's stories that we could get into as well. 50's Cap and Bucky (Nomad) met Namor and Torch, and fought with them. It also logically follows that they would have had some interaction with the 1950's Avengers (and this was covered in a well-written fan fiction series at the old Marvel Volume One site by Bob Gansler). How did Torch and Namor take the new Cap? How long did it take them to catch on that he wasn't the original (after all, he looked just like him)? And what impression were they left with of Cap and Nomad? I think we saw Nomad develop into a good character, at least initially, after he was cured. I didn't agree with some of the stuff that they did later, and really couldn't see that as being consistent with the character, but it showed that once he was cured of the illness, he could be a viable hero in his own right.
One thing I wonder about 50's Cap, is it ever actually seen why he was frozen? Or was it like Bucky's death where we just saw POV flashbacks and hearsay? Had he been too extreme, or just attacked an actual closet communist with too many connections and too little hard evidence?
That was covered in his flashback origin story, which was told in Captain America #155. That story incorporated some of the original artwork (by a young John Romita), as well as new scenes by Sal Buscema to fill in the "gaps", because in the original stories, there was no second Captain America. This was just the original returning. Basically, what Englehart did was that he showed 50's Cap being an un-named man, who idealized Cap, and who literally underwent plastic surgery to look just like him. Then, he found Bucky when he was teaching at the Lee School (which is also where Steve taught in the post WWII stories). They both took the serum together, and became Cap and Bucky.
What followed was flashbacks (drawn by Sal Buscema), showing him fighting some villains (like the 50's Electro), then getting increasingly unstable and hostile. Eventually, the government captured them and put them on ice. They were put into a chamber and kept in suspended animation until some un-named government worker, disgusted with how the government was going at the time, freed them. I think the distinction with Bucky (Barnes) is that the Soviets kept un-freezing him to do dirty deeds, whereas that doesn't seem to be the case with 50's Cap and Bucky in that story.
Also, how long had he been awake in-between appearances, maybe a few months at the most? It seems that a good case could be made that he suffers from PTSD. Once Monroe was in custody and properly treated, he seemed fine until others intervened. '50s Cap has never had that chance.
I agree with that, and he could have PTSD. We know that there was a chemical reaction to the serum he took, and I'm sure the un-freezing and the Faustus stuff (both originally, when he was brought back as the Grand Director and more recently) hasn't helped. I can't imagine why the government didn't give him the secondary serum they gave Nomad, which cured him. Of course, I tend to agree that 50's Cap would probably need more intensive counseling.
Another thing that Brubaker did was that he actually named 50's Cap. He had no other name than "Steve" (which we knew wasn't his). We didn't know anything about his past, but Brubaker gave him a name and a back-story. I had always figured that he had probably long forgotten his real name, due in large part to the periods of freezing and un-freezing, his mental state from reaction to the serum, and the brainwashing by Faustus. I was surprised that Brubaker had him remember as much as he did.
One other area that I thought Brubaker kind of missed the boat is that there would be some common ground between Bucky and 50's Cap. They wouldn't disagree on everything. Bucky grew up in the 30's and early 40's, and would have some problems with the way society has developed. In fact, he and 50's Cap would be roughly the same age (born at about the same time). I know there are limitations to how much you can put into a story like that, but it would have been interesting to see more interaction from them that way, as opposed to just visceral hatred.
I was glad to see 50's Cap brought back. I'd like to see him return at some point, and hopefully some of these things addressed with the character.
One more disappointment for me was in the way Peggy was handled. In the 70's, she and Gabe Jones were an item for a little while. Now, she's an extremely old woman, who has dementia. It's a shame she didn't get the infinity formula treatment like Gabe and the others did. They never even really explained what happened to break them up as a couple. They were together, then it was seemingly forgotten.