Captain America: Reborn (Marvel)
Written by Ed Brubaker, drawn by Bryan Hitch
Collects Captain America: Reborn #1-6

Man, remember how long it took Captain America: Reborn to come out? It seemed excruciating at the time because I was heavily into Ed Brubaker’s Captain America epic and was dying to see how he would bring Steve Rogers back from the dead. At the time the book came out the whole “becoming unstuck in time, but coming back thanks to a constant” thing was very Lost. It’s funny how similar the idea seemed then, but only vaguely so now. Bru’s had some really funky timing with things like this on Cap, he brought Bucky back right around the time that Jason Todd returned in Batman, he created new MODOKs that were an awful lot like the then-new OMACs were plaguing the DCU and…damn there was another one that I just can’t remember right now.

Anyway, reading Reborn all together several years after the fact was interesting. I was thrust right back into the “how are they going to bring him back” aspect of the story even though I remembered some of the deets. I also liked how the story really felt like a big piece of the Marvel Universe what with H.A.M.M.E.R.’s involvement, Avengers Dark, Mighty, New and whatever else making appearances and Reed Richards helping out. I like how Hitch can marry very real world events like World War II and the street-level feel of Bucky Cap’s adventures with much bigger sci-fi concepts like the aforementioned time becoming unstuck and whatnot.

My biggest problem with this series is that it wasn’t drawn by Steve Epting or one of the other Captain America regulars. I don’t have a problem with Hitch — though it does seem like he was sloppily inked or colored in many of the pages that make them look muddy instead of dark, possibly a result of the book being late — but I’m such a big fan of the ongoing series, that it would have been cool if this landmark story had been drawn by one of the guys who had been killing it up to this point along with Bru. It’s not the kind of thing that makes me want to ditch this book and never read it again, but it was something I kept thinking while reading: why couldn’t this have just been done by the regular team in the regular book? (And yeah, I know the answer is, “money, money, money.”)

Captain America: Two Americas (Marvel)
Written by Ed Brubaker, drawn by Luke Ross with Butch Guice
Collects Captain America #602-605, Captain America: Who Will Wield The Shield?

After Steve Rogers came back, he didn’t become Captain America again right away. While he was off heading up the newly reinstate S.H.I.E.D. and leading the Secret Avengers, Bucky stuck around as Cap and some people thought the book began spinning its wheels a bit. I can see where they’re coming from in this arc that finds Bucky infiltrating a supremacist group run by one of the guys who was Cap while the real one was frozen.

The story itself is interesting and well told. I really like the Bucky/Falcon dynamic which takes center stage here without all the dark notes thanks to Steve’s death that loomed over the series earlier. The problem is that this felt sort of like a rehash of some of Bru’s earlier stories. Steve had his own encounters with replacement Caps and they were pretty intense and sad and really well told. So, when it happens again but with a different Cap on both sides of the conflict, it’s not super interesting.

The best part of this collection which feels a little sleight, especially for a hardcover (which I got for half off at a comic shop nearby), is the Who Will Wield The Shield one-shot in the beginning that features Steve trying to figure out what he wants to do moving forward with his superhero career. That issue felt very much in the same vein as Bru’s earlier Cap stories without feeling like its treading familiar territory.

So, while neither of these trades really wowed me, I still really like how Bru handled Captain America in the macro sense. At some point, when he exits the series, it will be interesting to sit down and read all of it to see how well it works as a huge story. As much as I like this ongoing series, I look forward to that day, like I do for most of these things. The hope is that there will be a nice, big ending that’s part of the writer’s plan instead of editorially mandated stuff or, even worse, cancellation.