I’m going to try an experiment - Matt pointed me towards the existence of The Captain trade, reprinting Mark Gruenwald’s lengthy “Captain America No More!” arc from the late 1980s. I only purchased issues of this run sporadically at the time, but the brief glimpses of the story had a massive impact on me as a kid. The very concept of a replacement hero, villains getting their own back-up stories, the occasional acknowledgment of real world issues… Gruenwald’s Captain America just seemed crazy to me at the time. I’m sure now it’s viewed as a fairly inoffensive late Bronze Age Marvel book, but from my perspective, it was something of a revelation.
I briefly considered reviewing the issues on this site, but to be honest, I’m already kind of Marvel heavy and the run has no real connection to the ‘90s. So, I’ll be posting somewhat daily thoughts on the run on my Twitter page. I’ll try not to overload anybody’s feed, and I’m still toying with how to review in the micro format, but hopefully this will be an entertaining experiment. If this works, maybe more micro-reviews will follow. Maybe not. All I know is that President Reagan is about to be transformed into a snake and I can’t let this go without commentary.
Follow me here if you’re interested: https://twitter.com/NBX_Tweets
Likewise, I bought the odd issue from this run (albeit retrospectively) and didn't read the whole story til the trade. But I LOVED it!
ReplyDeleteIt's kinda campy and over-explained and cheesy, but the idea is sound, it's surprisingly dark at times and it's just great fun to read!
Thanks for the plug! I'll be following your tweets. I love this storyline.
ReplyDeleteI was pretty disappointed with the "Ronald Reagan turned in to a snake" element. The cover was the best part of that. It wasn't meant to be any sort of commentary, it was just the villain did it and the hero had to save the day.
ReplyDeleteI did really like the use of Viper in that story though.
The Reagan thing was just so weird it's crazy in retrospect that Marvel went through with it and no one noticed. And I think that Marvel's claims that Gruenwald had no political motivation while writing this material is dubious. I personally hate politics in mainstream comics, because it's always so predictable and dull. Gruenwald wasn't overtly preachy in most issues, but his politics are in there.
ReplyDeleteI loved The Captain - I bought the trade around the time it came out since I've always had my eye on Gruenwald's Cap run - but I've gotta say...not a fan of reviewing it through Twitter. Partially because I'm not really on Twitter, and partially because scrolling through a giant wall of tweets looking for the Cap-related ones isn't 100% my thing.
ReplyDeleteBut still, if this does end up popular enough, keep doing it! Sounds like an efficient way to get reviews done, at any rate.