Captain America Epic Collection, Vol. 12: Society of Serpents

Captain America Epic Collection

by Mike Carlin, Mark Gruenwald, Frank Miller (Penciler)

Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes? Prepare for an ophidian infestation as the sinister Sidewinder assembles a slithering squadron of super villains for sale, under the sensational sobriquet of the Serpent Society! But the Sentinel of Liberty must face this new threat alone, after his partner Nomad's very sense of self is questioned in a life-changing encounter with the maniacal Madcap! The identity crisis continues when Hawkeye wields Cap's shield, the Beyonder takes his face, and Steve Rogers dons the red, white and blue of...Captain Britain?!?

COLLECTING: Captain America (1968) 302-317, material from Marvel Fanfare (1982) 18 (Captain America Epic Collection Vol . 12)

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, Comic Book, Collections

432 pages, Paperback

First published September 2, 2014

About the author

Michael "Mike" Carlin is a comic book writer and editor. He has worked principally for Marvel Comics and DC Comics since the 1970s.

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun set of Captain America stories that starts a great run by Mark Gruenwald. The Batroc Brigade stuff was fun I. The beginning, but the Nomad story dragged a bit. It didn’t really pick up until we got to the Serpent Society stuff and then the series seemed to have found it’s footing. We also get some fun stories with the first appearances of Madcap, Armadillo, and FlagSmasher. I also enjoyed the troubled love life of Steve Rogers stuff as well. Looking forward to see where they go with him and Diamondback. Overall a fun book and would recommend it for the beginning of Gruenwald’s historic run on the book.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading ancient Cap comics to catch up on deep references Disney’s using in Falcon & Winnter Soldier? Sure why the hell not? My misadventures in scone to comics for WandaVision was pretty fun, how bad could earnest 80s Cap comics really get?

Whoof

Of course the Boy Scout nickname came from somewhere.

Best I can say about the first issue is I immediately head canon’d Machete as Danny Trejo, complete with Latin vibe and the moustache.

Bizarre to see Steve sitting at the drafting table, sweating a deadline for a commercial art gig! Sad to think Cap was an early gig economy drone...

Issue 305, Cap has a sudden hallucination of a British-themed costume. He’s curious, so of course his first move is to drop his deadlines (more commercial art for an ad agency - what a sellout you are Steve!) and hop on a plane to England? Isn’t there anyone you could call, Steve? Even long-distance rates in the 80s aren’t as steep as plane fare - and might just keep you from being shitcanned for your lax attitude towards the corporate grind!

Mark Gruenwald takes over writing duties (trading editing with his buddy Mike Carlin) not long after, and it starts with a nice jolt: Joker-ripoff Madcap springs into play, acting the devil-may-care chaos agent. Serpent Squad slithers in, then Nomad takes a bow (thank god, that’s one whiny sidekick), then Serpent Squad sheds its skin to become a pension-bearing, dues-paying collective called the Serpent Society?

At this point I’m not sure if Gruenwald thinks this is more of his Dad jokes-level sense of humour, or he thought this would be a most ominous plot?!?

I’ll tell you, Mark’s convinced of one thing in particular - the info-dump of thought bubbles explaining every last detail of a fight or a backstory! It’s amazing to see a page covered in one person’s internal monologue. It’s painful and feels pedantic and pointless.

Almost as pointless as Flagsmasher’s debut - while he makes the only rational argument in the whole scene, he sure drops like a hat at the first solid punch from Cap. Black belt at fifteen, my ass. And that’s the last we see of him? That’s it? His big debut, treated the same as a walk-on by Paste Pot Pete?

At least I have a little more to look forward to from him in the next collection. Which I’m darned tempted to skip straight to, now that my Falcon & Winter Soldier research here is done.

The one character I’m really worried about is Bernie, Cap’s fiancée. I am worried for her because Cap ain’t married 15 years later, when I started reading him again, and that doesn’t bode well for her lifespan or predilection for violence.

Couple of final comments I have to share:

One, the round-up of lame-o opponents (I won’t even crown them as villains) makes the final few issues pretty tedious. Serpent Squad even - they’re only scary due to their numbers, but Armadillo whining about wanting to lash out because his wife has been sleeping around?

Two, Cap seems to have a fetish for protecting property, moreso than human lives. Good thing this isn’t Cap today - he’d be cancelled hard by the antifa crowd.

[Jdetrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a golden age for the Captain America title for me, although I'll freely admit it could be because it's when I started reading it. Mark Gruenwald comes on as writer during these issues, and he seemed to have a clear vision for the character and the book that it had been lacking for years. He does a good job of writing decent stand alone stories, while working ongoing subplots into the background. It also introduces my two favorite concept of his....Scourge, and his best idea, the Serpent Society. These issues have their flaws (sometimes his Cap is a little too speechy, and his handling of Bernie Rosenthal isn't great....he obviously wanted to write her out of the book), but overall I really enjoy these issues.

[Cat Bee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do not think I will write a proper review for this, I will just say if you love and adore 80's Captain America please read this (as well as the other Captain America Epic Collections that collect issues from around the 80's) because it will make you smile.
Steve is endearing and adorable in this run. This is who Captain America really is, and I think the writers at Marvel have forgotten that over the years. For its time it is also pretty diverse. So I say give it a go!!

[Christopher Rush · Rating 2 out of 5]

THRILL! as Villains you've never heard of discuss Health Plans and Retirement Benefits!

STAND IN AWE! as Villains think to themselves about their own origin stories!

TRIP IN WONDER! as Gruenwald enables characters to think about the very actions they are simultaneously performing ... in REAL TIME!

BE ASTOUNDED! as Captain America fights villains and then changes his mind about it and nothing comes of any single battle!

CONSTERNATE! as Gruenwald destroys every romance ever created for no good reason!

You get the idea. Listen, I've enjoyed Captain America for decades, but we should be honest about how mediocre most of these issues are. I understand the transition between one creative team and the next often brings drastic changes, and I understand, too, that Mark Gruenwald is just starting out here, but come on ... having Steve Rogers illustrate Captain America comics for Marvel? Having villains think to themselves about how they became villains? Having characters narrate their actions that we clearly can see happening in the panels? I thought that went out with His Excelsiorness. The Serpent Society (not Society of Serpents! way to drop the ball, 21st-century design team) spends more time talking about severance packages and vacation days than actual meaningful crime. The only good thing to come out of this is Diamondback.

But I don't want to give you the impression the Serpent Society is actually in this a lot! Oh no. They show up about a 1/3 of the time, maybe 3/7, but there's a whole lot of other stuff that, as often happens (I know that), goes nowhere. You start out with a fairly intriguing story about Batroc and some other guys (painfully typical '80s international stereotypes, of course) wanting Cap's shield, but that gets resolved quickly and disappears. Then Nomad goes through some metaphysical crises exacerbated by a Bubble Gun filled with LSD or something and some clown called Madcap who can't feel pain because his church buddies blew up on a field trip (apparently if you can't feel pain broken bones don't happen). The Serpent Society does a few things here and there, and we have some crossovers with Secret Wars II and Squadron Supreme, just to remind you a few interesting things were going on in the '80s in other places, but the title of this collection is mainly a marketing gimmick. Be warned.

It's fine if you are trying to complete your Captain America experience, but please be prepared for a lot of storylines that just give up on themselves, at least as far as this collection goes.

[Kaleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

The start of Gruenwald's run, and the writing and concepts elevate as Gruenwald establishes himself. Basically, Gruenwald explores tensions between Steve Rogers and how he is Captain America. In support of this are various villians and situations which have their own philosophical import, and Cap/Steve is both contrasted and part of these situations. Flagsmasher. Scourge. Helping Armadillo.

I'm giving this 4 stars for this important turn in Cap's representation. For me, this is when the morality that Steve Rogers comes to wield in the MCU is lifted from, from when Gruenwald fleshed out and defined Rogers in exploratory fashion. This is the start!

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gruenwald starts out by dismantling DeMatteis’s status quo and building a few pieces of his own. The eponymous Serpent Society is probably the greatest addition here. And I suppose this is important if you want to see how some components of DeMatt’s time ended, though they felt more forced than natural. But overall, Gruenwald is not immediately enticing. But that is okay, there are about 120 issues left for him to get rolling.

Oh and Captain America became the ongoing artist for the Captain America comic book that the Marvel Comics Company prints...

[Barry Bridges · Rating 3 out of 5]

Classic Paul Neary pencils give the book a strong feel. Sometimes the language is a bit dated and there’s still no depth to the stories. It is 30 years old !

[Kerri · Rating 1 out of 5]

Captain Britain appears in #305-#307. 2 stars

[Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mark Gruenwald was one of the best Cap writers of all time, and this collection includes his first few issues. It’s hard to overstate how much the book improves as soon as he takes it over.

[Martin Maenza · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun run, matching Cap against a number of new villains - not the same-old ones we typically had been getting. Neary’s art improved as well (might have been better inkers).

[Devero · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gruenwald inizia la sua lunga run su Capitan America con queste storie.
Storie all'apparenza semplici, per lo più disegnate da Paul Neary, dove viene mostrata molto l'interazione tra Cap e i suoi pari nella Marvel, tra tutti Occhio di Falco e Capitan Bretagna. Si nota come, rispetto al precedente ciclo di De Matteis, Steve Rogers passi in secondo piano e Capitan America ritorni in piena luce. Appaiono personaggi e concept nuovi come Armadillo e la Società dei Serpenti come avversari, ma non mancano momenti di puro humor, come quando Steve Rogers riesce a farsi assumere come disegnatore dalla Marvel, indovinate per quale testata.
Nel complesso una buona lettura, ma si capisce che Gru sta prendendo le misure, specie nelle prime tra queste storie.

In più c'è la storia di Cap uscita su Marvel Fanfare 18 scritta e disegnata da Frank Miller. Una storia che, all'epoca, mi fece pensare parecchio a quanto sarebbe stato interessante avere quel Miller sulla serie regolare di Capita America.

[Brian Rogers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another piece of classic mid 80's Marvel, but not as strong as I'd hoped. This is a bridging sequence between DeMattais' run on the character and Grunwald's, and it's frustrating that a years worth of issues are spent unwinding everything DeMattais set in place to Grunwald can do his own take. Yes, that they spent time to do that and have it make some sense speaks well enough of the editorial team - better this than a 'crisis' that 'reset' everything but it would have been better to see things build rather than wave back down to a new setting.

Still, some of the ideas in this book - the proto internet Captain American hotline, the super-villain union of the Serpent Society, the utter glorious inanity of the Flag Smasher (but before the best acronym in comics ever, ULTIMATIUM) all work to make this a fun book to read. I wish the next volume were available, but alas no. And who knows when it will come out.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had always assumed that's the serpent society was kind of a joke group but they actually seemed to have it together much better than other evil team up organizations. The Batroc story right in the beginning was exactly what I needed to read to finally appreciate him as a character and I also loved watching Nomad try his hand against Madcap who had a pretty cool origin story. I've only seen Madcap in a recent Deadpool run but he seemed like a fun villain to me. Not to mention poor Modok got it handed to him in this volume. Overall I really like Gruenwald's portrayal of Cap and I'm glad his run has such a large run out in epic format. Justice is Served here I come!

[Randy Lander · Rating 3 out of 5]

A throwback from my teen years, this starts Gruenwald's long tenure on the book. He's still clearing the decks of old subplots and dealing with the occasional crossover, but he's Los laying groundwork for Cap's hotline, the Serpent Society and Scourge, all great stories from'80s Cap. The art by Neary is solid if unspectacular, and while some might find the plotting and dialogue a little dated or even cheesy, I still love these stories and look forward to the next Epic collection of Gruenwald's run.

[Frederick Tan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compilation of Captain America issues from 1985 to 1986. It is like a nostalgic walk down memory lane for me seeing some of the old issues. This is a not to miss collectible issue.