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Captain America (2023)
Captain America, Vol. 3: Broxton Rising
Collects Captain America (2023) #12-16.
Visionary writer J. Michael Straczynski concludes his blockbuster run! As the Krakoan age ends, mutants need allies more than ever - and Captain America is determined to get his group of mutant change agents to the Front Door Cabaret alive. As Death pulls out all the stops to destroy them, Captain America has a protect the change agents or safeguard his own future. But one of the rescued mutants has their own ideas and intends to make the decision for him! Then, Straczynski closes out his saga by uniting his three signature Marvel characters as a legendary new Warriors Three! Steve Rogers needs friends now more than ever, and he finds them in Thor and Spider-Man! But as this trio is drawn to Broxton, Oklahoma - site of the Thunder God's greatest shame - can Cap and Spidey help free Thor of his past, or is Broxton's history doomed to repeat itself forever?
Visionary writer J. Michael Straczynski concludes his blockbuster run! As the Krakoan age ends, mutants need allies more than ever - and Captain America is determined to get his group of mutant change agents to the Front Door Cabaret alive. As Death pulls out all the stops to destroy them, Captain America has a protect the change agents or safeguard his own future. But one of the rescued mutants has their own ideas and intends to make the decision for him! Then, Straczynski closes out his saga by uniting his three signature Marvel characters as a legendary new Warriors Three! Steve Rogers needs friends now more than ever, and he finds them in Thor and Spider-Man! But as this trio is drawn to Broxton, Oklahoma - site of the Thunder God's greatest shame - can Cap and Spidey help free Thor of his past, or is Broxton's history doomed to repeat itself forever?
112 pages, Paperback
Published May 20, 2025
6 people are currently reading
19 people want to read
About the author
J. Michael Straczynski
1,372 books1,280 followersJoseph Michael Straczynski is an American filmmaker and comic book writer. He is the founder of Synthetic Worlds Ltd. and Studio JMS and is best known as the creator of the science fiction television series Babylon 5 (1993–1998) and its spinoff Crusade (1999), as well as the series Jeremiah (2002–2004) and Sense8 (2015–2018). He is the executor of the estate of Harlan Ellison.
Straczynski wrote the psychological drama film Changeling (2008) and was co-writer on the martial arts thriller Ninja Assassin (2009), was one of the key writers for (and had a cameo in) Marvel's Thor (2011), as well as the horror film Underworld: Awakening (2012), and the apocalyptic horror film World War Z (2013). From 2001 to 2007, Straczynski wrote Marvel Comics' The Amazing Spider-Man, followed by runs on Thor and Fantastic Four. He is the author of the Superman: Earth One trilogy of graphic novels, and he has written Superman, Wonder Woman, and Before Watchmen for DC Comics. Straczynski is the creator and writer of several original comic book series such as Rising Stars, Midnight Nation, Dream Police, and Ten Grand through Joe's Comics.
A prolific writer across a variety of media and former journalist, Straczynski is the author of the autobiography Becoming Superman (2019) for HarperVoyager, the novel Together We Will Go (2021) for Simon & Schuster, and Becoming a Writer, Staying a Writer (2021) for Benbella Books. In 2020 he was named Head of the Creative Council for the comics publishing company Artists, Writers and Artisans.
Straczynski is a long-time participant in Usenet and other early computer networks, interacting with fans through various online forums (including GEnie, CompuServe, and America Online) since 1984. He is credited as being the first TV producer to directly engage with fans on the Internet and to allow viewer viewpoints to influence the look and feel of his show. Two prominent areas where he had a presence were GEnie and the newsgroup rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated.
Straczynski wrote the psychological drama film Changeling (2008) and was co-writer on the martial arts thriller Ninja Assassin (2009), was one of the key writers for (and had a cameo in) Marvel's Thor (2011), as well as the horror film Underworld: Awakening (2012), and the apocalyptic horror film World War Z (2013). From 2001 to 2007, Straczynski wrote Marvel Comics' The Amazing Spider-Man, followed by runs on Thor and Fantastic Four. He is the author of the Superman: Earth One trilogy of graphic novels, and he has written Superman, Wonder Woman, and Before Watchmen for DC Comics. Straczynski is the creator and writer of several original comic book series such as Rising Stars, Midnight Nation, Dream Police, and Ten Grand through Joe's Comics.
A prolific writer across a variety of media and former journalist, Straczynski is the author of the autobiography Becoming Superman (2019) for HarperVoyager, the novel Together We Will Go (2021) for Simon & Schuster, and Becoming a Writer, Staying a Writer (2021) for Benbella Books. In 2020 he was named Head of the Creative Council for the comics publishing company Artists, Writers and Artisans.
Straczynski is a long-time participant in Usenet and other early computer networks, interacting with fans through various online forums (including GEnie, CompuServe, and America Online) since 1984. He is credited as being the first TV producer to directly engage with fans on the Internet and to allow viewer viewpoints to influence the look and feel of his show. Two prominent areas where he had a presence were GEnie and the newsgroup rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
October 12, 2025
This book was a book of two arcs. The ending of the agents of change arc left me unsatisfied. The Broxton rising arc was better, and the artwork of both was awesome.
Captain America has gathered the Agents of Change and plans to get them to the Front Door beyond Death's reach. When you are going against Death itself, can this be anything but a suicide mission? This just finished too abruptly, and I felt just weird and unfulfilled.
When the Asgardians followed Thor to Earth to live among the mortals, the God of Hammers destroyed their town of Broxton to punish Thor. This worked, Thor has been feeling guilty ever since, constantly trying to find a way to restore the town. Now, with a flicker of hope, Captain America and Spider-man (Peter Parker) by his side, he is willing to do whatever it takes to restore Broxton and its/his people.
This story was good and the artwork superb, but why do they always have to treat Spider-man/Peter Parker as the annoying kid brother? Miles gets respect, not Peter. Why!!!! This was the book under the current team. Let's see what happens next. Every chapter starts with a regular and varient cover.
Captain America has gathered the Agents of Change and plans to get them to the Front Door beyond Death's reach. When you are going against Death itself, can this be anything but a suicide mission? This just finished too abruptly, and I felt just weird and unfulfilled.
When the Asgardians followed Thor to Earth to live among the mortals, the God of Hammers destroyed their town of Broxton to punish Thor. This worked, Thor has been feeling guilty ever since, constantly trying to find a way to restore the town. Now, with a flicker of hope, Captain America and Spider-man (Peter Parker) by his side, he is willing to do whatever it takes to restore Broxton and its/his people.
This story was good and the artwork superb, but why do they always have to treat Spider-man/Peter Parker as the annoying kid brother? Miles gets respect, not Peter. Why!!!! This was the book under the current team. Let's see what happens next. Every chapter starts with a regular and varient cover.
September 29, 2025
Wraps up the whole "Life vs. Death" deal with a total whimper. So the Cabaret just...disappears? Did any of it mean...anything?
Then Cap teams up with Spidey and Thor to restore Broxton, which I guess was obliterated in Thor's series some time ago. Was anyone desperate for this storyline? The plot gets weird, like all of Straczynski's stuff in this run. There's a cosmic restore point ("like a video game!") and a parallel ghost universe and...whatever. I guess it's wholesome, which is good for Captain America. Super boring, though.
Then Cap teams up with Spidey and Thor to restore Broxton, which I guess was obliterated in Thor's series some time ago. Was anyone desperate for this storyline? The plot gets weird, like all of Straczynski's stuff in this run. There's a cosmic restore point ("like a video game!") and a parallel ghost universe and...whatever. I guess it's wholesome, which is good for Captain America. Super boring, though.
October 21, 2025
You get two stories here. In one, Cap punches Death while his friends go to a cabaret club. This would probably have made more sense if I'd read the prior issues; as it is, it comes across as a very weird Captain America story, like he's wandered into a Vertigo comic by mistake.
The second story isn't really a Captain America story at all. Instead it's JMS revisiting his Thor run -- and to a lesser extent, his earlier Spider-Man run -- and Cap is just sort of in it sometimes when JMS remembers he's there. As such it's a bit indulgent but quite fun, and it's good to see the three heroes adventuring together. I'll even forgive the "power of love" ending, as it's cheesy but genuine.
The second story isn't really a Captain America story at all. Instead it's JMS revisiting his Thor run -- and to a lesser extent, his earlier Spider-Man run -- and Cap is just sort of in it sometimes when JMS remembers he's there. As such it's a bit indulgent but quite fun, and it's good to see the three heroes adventuring together. I'll even forgive the "power of love" ending, as it's cheesy but genuine.
March 31, 2025
JMS’s Cap run is… odd. It doesn’t have the feel of a Cap book. It feels disjointed, almost like Cap is some White Lantern (to borrow from a certain competitor) with no real mentioned nor implied goal. A very strange run of 16 issues overall.
December 29, 2025
For such an amazing start (5 star first volume), this series ended on a really sour note. 2 stories where I wondered if they were originally meant to star another character entirely. 2 stories that had small aspects of what made the first volume special drowned out by writing that was repetitive and a few jokes that didn’t land.
We finish the Front Door Cabaret story with an ending that felt like the entire thing was pointless. It’s abrupt, we are left with slightly less questions than Lost fans and ended the series with, and I remained confused as to why this was a Cap story. He literally battles death. Were Carol, Thor and literally any well established Avenger too busy to pick up the phone?
We’re told in this volume that the cabaret performers reminded Steve of what it was like to have friends to spend time with. The book then goes on to make Steve out to be this friendless man as if he literally didn’t spend time with Sam in the last volume. Sam’s not even mentioned here and he is one of Steve’s longest friends. That whole spiel about it being difficult to have true friends because of the job makes no sense considering Sam is a close friend inside and outside the suit. We also get him calling Spider-Man to hang out which is fine but… why pretend Sam suddenly didn’t exist? Hell, Thor was Steve’s friend. Clint, Natasha, Tony, there are so many people Steve considered close friends - this was a weird thing to set up to … what? Explain why he called Peter?
Anyway, the Broxton story is a Thor story. I can understand why he’d call Steve, though the magic is not in Steve’s wheelhouse. I don’t get why Peter was involved but whatever - 3 big Marvel legends in one story that begins and ends in like 3 forgettable issues.
It’s not often I rate the first volume in a series 5 stars and the last ones 2 and 1 star but here we are. This started as one of my favorite Steve arcs in recent years and ended with a confusing whimper.
We finish the Front Door Cabaret story with an ending that felt like the entire thing was pointless. It’s abrupt, we are left with slightly less questions than Lost fans and ended the series with, and I remained confused as to why this was a Cap story. He literally battles death. Were Carol, Thor and literally any well established Avenger too busy to pick up the phone?
We’re told in this volume that the cabaret performers reminded Steve of what it was like to have friends to spend time with. The book then goes on to make Steve out to be this friendless man as if he literally didn’t spend time with Sam in the last volume. Sam’s not even mentioned here and he is one of Steve’s longest friends. That whole spiel about it being difficult to have true friends because of the job makes no sense considering Sam is a close friend inside and outside the suit. We also get him calling Spider-Man to hang out which is fine but… why pretend Sam suddenly didn’t exist? Hell, Thor was Steve’s friend. Clint, Natasha, Tony, there are so many people Steve considered close friends - this was a weird thing to set up to … what? Explain why he called Peter?
Anyway, the Broxton story is a Thor story. I can understand why he’d call Steve, though the magic is not in Steve’s wheelhouse. I don’t get why Peter was involved but whatever - 3 big Marvel legends in one story that begins and ends in like 3 forgettable issues.
It’s not often I rate the first volume in a series 5 stars and the last ones 2 and 1 star but here we are. This started as one of my favorite Steve arcs in recent years and ended with a confusing whimper.
November 10, 2025
Straczynski's run on Cap ends here. The Volume is divided into two stories: 1) The continuation of the battle with mutants against Death, which when it is over, I was slightly confused about what happened and how or if it will impact anything. 2) Thor's guilt over losing Broxton (see the recent run of Thor) gets both Cap and Spidey involved. Magic and battle brings the town back, as if nothing ever happened.
Overall, a somewhat lackluster ending, but not horrible.
Judge this one for yourself.
Overall, a somewhat lackluster ending, but not horrible.
Judge this one for yourself.
October 6, 2025
2.5 stars
August 21, 2025
Some nice moments but the scale seems to big for a Cap story and the final 3 issues felt more like an addendum to JMS’s Thor series.
Read
November 6, 2025JMS finishing up his own run on a mainstream superhero? We weren't exactly short of indicators that these are the last days, but this may be the most outlandish of them all. Yet somehow he still manages to make it feel rushed and truncated, possibly because the whole notion of an epochal change in humanity to which it was building is exactly the sort of thing you can never deliver in an ongoing shared universe. Still, he gets to drop in a few thoughts on the core of Cap along the way; they didn't all convince me, but Steve punching Death in the face because that's what the mission requires? Legit. That Death, incidentally, looking nothing like Phil Coulson, or even the classic Thanos crush model, part of the deal this time clearly being that Straczynski gets to do hís thing unbothered by wider continuity. But evidently he is still bothered, because in the back half of the book he pulls in Thor and Spidey, stars of his previous abandoned Marvel outings, simply to undo something that's been done to one of his toys while he was away. Specifically, the razing of Broxton, Oklahoma. "Its destruction by the God of Hammers served no purpose. It was random and petty, destroyed only to bring grief to me", says Thor, and I'm often unimpressed when people read writers' sentiments in their characters' words, but I think in this case we can be forgiven; it's not even the most blatant fourth wall break in the story. What's more, I agree; the whole Donny Cates run during which the incident took place was spiteful, adolescent, and the more of it gets unpicked, the better. This reset is still not a brilliant story, mind, and if I can forgive Thor not really aligning with recent events in his own comic, the goofy, overawed Spider-Man feels weirdly old-fashioned, especially coming from the guy who made him a teacher.
May 19, 2025
JMS's Cap run ends with a bit of a whimper, honestly.
The Life and Death stuff ends in the first two issues of the volume, kind of inconclusively. This stuff has never really sat well with me given that it doesn't really work with the way Death has been shown in the Marvel Universe before, and it mostly just ends on a 'we'll never know what happened' note, which makes the last 13 issues feel a bit pointless overall.
Then we get a three part story that teams Cap, Thor, and Spider-Man together to resurrect Broxton, the town Asgard lived near during JMS's Thor run that was destroyed during Donny Cates'. This is very much JMS wanting to fix something another writer broke, but it's not so much a Cap story as a Thor story with Cap along for the ride. JMS's Spider-Man reads very much like his old Spider-Man, which wouldn't be a problem if Peter wasn't quite as useless as he was at that time. He comes across really annoying, which he never has before.
The art's still great, Jesus Saiz draws two issues while Carlo Magno takes the other three, but good art doesn't save this from being flat as an ending. A shame.
The Life and Death stuff ends in the first two issues of the volume, kind of inconclusively. This stuff has never really sat well with me given that it doesn't really work with the way Death has been shown in the Marvel Universe before, and it mostly just ends on a 'we'll never know what happened' note, which makes the last 13 issues feel a bit pointless overall.
Then we get a three part story that teams Cap, Thor, and Spider-Man together to resurrect Broxton, the town Asgard lived near during JMS's Thor run that was destroyed during Donny Cates'. This is very much JMS wanting to fix something another writer broke, but it's not so much a Cap story as a Thor story with Cap along for the ride. JMS's Spider-Man reads very much like his old Spider-Man, which wouldn't be a problem if Peter wasn't quite as useless as he was at that time. He comes across really annoying, which he never has before.
The art's still great, Jesus Saiz draws two issues while Carlo Magno takes the other three, but good art doesn't save this from being flat as an ending. A shame.
April 26, 2025
70/100.
A mí este arco me ha gustado. Straczynski, viendo que le iban a cortar la colección por no haber funcionado especialmente (aunque a mí no me ha parecido tan aburrida), recupera a sus dos de los personajes que había escrito anteriormente (Spiderman y Thor) para incluirlos en esta historia que, aunque con el corazón del Capitán América (a mí me parece que entiende bien al personaje), es más bien una historia de recuperación de su etapa con Thor. Hace una reparación de una trama que le destrozaron cuando abandonó la editorial.
No creo que sea una etapa que quede en el recuerdo. A mí me pareció el primer arco excelso, el segundo un poco extraño (aunque me gustó) y este tercero excesivamente corto. Quizás lo que menos me ha gustado es el baile de dibujantes...
Me da pena que Marvel no dé importancia a uno de sus buques estrellas, como es el Capitán América.
A mí este arco me ha gustado. Straczynski, viendo que le iban a cortar la colección por no haber funcionado especialmente (aunque a mí no me ha parecido tan aburrida), recupera a sus dos de los personajes que había escrito anteriormente (Spiderman y Thor) para incluirlos en esta historia que, aunque con el corazón del Capitán América (a mí me parece que entiende bien al personaje), es más bien una historia de recuperación de su etapa con Thor. Hace una reparación de una trama que le destrozaron cuando abandonó la editorial.
No creo que sea una etapa que quede en el recuerdo. A mí me pareció el primer arco excelso, el segundo un poco extraño (aunque me gustó) y este tercero excesivamente corto. Quizás lo que menos me ha gustado es el baile de dibujantes...
Me da pena que Marvel no dé importancia a uno de sus buques estrellas, como es el Capitán América.
May 31, 2025
You know, I was all excited about Straczynski returning to Marvel when this was first announced. I guess you need to be careful what you wish for. This is not very good. Straczynski wraps up this whole life and death thing he's been doing without really giving us any kind of resolution. It all just kinds of floats away. Then he must have been really upset that Donny Cates destroyed Broxton, OK during his Thor run because this turns into a Thor story for the last 3 issues with Captain America and Spider-Man in tow where he works his best to wish the God of Hammers story away completely.
September 5, 2025
lackluster, to say the least...
We get the end of the 'Front Door' metaphysical Life/Death storyline and BOY was it just swept under the rug. Everybody just....vanishes? There's also the 'God of Hammers' retcon or whitewashing. Broxton was destroyed, but through some Asgardian magicky bits, it's possible that the teaming up of Spider-Man, Thor, and Cap can bring it back.
...yea. You won't miss much if you pass on this one.
We get the end of the 'Front Door' metaphysical Life/Death storyline and BOY was it just swept under the rug. Everybody just....vanishes? There's also the 'God of Hammers' retcon or whitewashing. Broxton was destroyed, but through some Asgardian magicky bits, it's possible that the teaming up of Spider-Man, Thor, and Cap can bring it back.
...yea. You won't miss much if you pass on this one.
July 30, 2025
Wait... that's it? That's the end of JMS's time on Cap? That was barely an opening act! None of that weird mystical shit got resolved, and the final arc was an epilogue to a Thor story from almost 20 years ago!
Not that it wasn't good, but, come on--where's the rest of it?
Not that it wasn't good, but, come on--where's the rest of it?
September 25, 2025
Cap's magical mystery tour with the life force Lyra ends abruptly, seemingly so JMS can sneak a Thor retcon into the end of the run. As much as I disliked the God of Hammers storyline, this felt very forced, and dragging Spider-Man along for the ride doesn't help.
May 1, 2025
Read as individual comics, ratings below:
#13= 2.5 stars
#14= 2 stars
#15= 2.5 stars
#16= 3.5 stars
Overall rating of 2.5 stars
#13= 2.5 stars
#14= 2 stars
#15= 2.5 stars
#16= 3.5 stars
Overall rating of 2.5 stars
June 12, 2025
2.5/5
June 19, 2025
3,5 - 2024/2025
October 11, 2025
he writes a great Thor and Peter, Steve not so much. i appreciate he could go back to broxton and touch ob the human/asgarduan romance he established.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews