Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Captain America #600 - Marvel

As expected, this was a fantastic issue. We start out with 2 great covers . . Alex Ross on the right, and Steve Epting on the left. From there . . it really just got better. We open the book with Alex Ross' 2 page origin of Captain America. It was originally published in Red, White & Blue . . but it was good enough that they showed it again here. Thanks for that. I missed it the first time. We then have a One Year Later story by Ed Brubaker and a plethora of artists . . Butch Guice, Howard Chaykin, Rafael Albuquerque, David Aja and Mitch Breitweiser. It was a fantastic story showing us how other people were dealing with Cap's death, a year later. To me the most important one was Sharon Carter. She's starting to regain some of her memories so she now knows that Dr Faustus had hypnotized her, or something, and she was actually the one who shot Steve. But then she gave the gun to someone else. She's just remembered this incident and has decided to go after the gun and retrieve it. I'm not sure of the repercussions, but . . somehow having this gun back has lead her to believe that they may be able to bring Steve back. All we really know is, "When I hold it in my hands again, I know I was right . . because, this is not a normal gun." We then catch up with the 'Evil' Cap. Also, Rikki Barnes, the girl that was Bucky in the other reality, sneaks up on Eli, Patriot. She wants him to introduce her to the new Captain America. I think she's feeling lost without her mission to guide her. Obviously she'll be showing up in Young Avengers. For some reason, we also catch up with Cross-bones and Sin. We then find the Avengers in a bit of a dilemma. The Avengers want to go to the Rally they're holding in Steve's memory, but they know that doing so will make them an open target for Norman Osborn and HAMMER. James is especially perplexed because he feels that he's missed out on so many other things, having to hide, that he'd hate to let Steve down like this. We also see that there's something strange going on with the Red Skull and MODOK. But we only get some hints at it here. And finally we catch up with Sam who's also arrived at the Rally. He eventually finds the Avengers and talks a little shop. Their fears are allayed when Norman decides instead of pursuing his opponents, that he's going to use this opportunity as a way to negate the negative publicity he's gotten from opposing this rally. He gets on stage to talk about Steve, and ends up leading a 'Captain America' chant. Finally Sam finds Sharon and they catch back up with each other. The story ends with her telling Sam, and the rest of the Avengers about her good news . . "I'm fine, Sam. I'm better than fine. It's Steve . . I think we can still save him." Needless to say, this story will lead directly into the Reborn mini-series. There's also a story by Roger Stern and Kalman Andrasofszky in which we catch up with Bernie and she remembers some of her fondest memories with Steve. Of course, she also remembers where she was and how she felt on that final day. We then get a fantastic story by Mark Waid and Dale Eaglesham. It's not about Steve directly but rather the effects his image and character had on the rest of the world. In it, Joseph Paglino is the owner of the world's largest collection of Captain America memorabilia. And he's decided to put it all up for auction. Everyone is speculating on why he's doing it and what he's trying to gain, but it turns out that there's a comic book company that's trying to pounce on all the media attention Steve's getting right now, and they want to relaunch the Captain America comic book. The problem is, they see him as a man who committed treasonous acts . . a traitor. It ends up this Paglino guy sold all of this stuff so that he would have the money to buy the comic company and publish the book the way it should be published. However, during the course of this story, we see how important some of these items were to the people that were connected to them. I think it was the best story in the book, but . . that's just me. To finish off the book, we get a little diatribe from Joe Simon and a reprint of an old story . . Captain America Comics #16, July 1942. They reached way back for that one. And, of course, a cover gallery showing, literally, almost 700 covers. It was amazing! All in all I thought it was one of the best 'anniversary' issues that I've ever read. Whether you follow the character or not, it had everything that you could've wanted. And . . all of this leads into 'the comic book event of the summer' . . Reborn, by Ed Brubaker, Bryan Hitch and Butch Guice.

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