Captain America is a wanted man – and he’s not about to go on the run again. Trapped in a prison filled with supervillains and run by one of his deadliest foes, Cap must navigate the ins and outs of prison life so that he can survive long enough for Sharon to assemble a team to rescue him. It’s political intrigue and backroom machinations galore in this second volume of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Captain America run!
Captain America may be a superhero, but he really shines in these kinds of political stories. It’s what Ed Brubaker managed to do with Steve to great effect, and Coates draws on all that and more. He embraces Steve’s complicated past, throwing in characters from Aleksander Lukin to Sin and Crossbones, as well as keeping Sharon Carter front and centre despite her more advanced age thanks to the events of Remender’s run. It’s a hodge podge of continuity, but Coates makes it work almost effortlessly.
Given that Cap’s in prison for most of this arc, and the focus is almost entirely on Sharon and the Daughters Of Liberty (a new team of superhero women who kick major ass, plus the mysterious new Dryad), I’m surprised at how well this held my attention. Prison stories work for a while, and this one never outstays its welcome, ending just as you think it’s going to get stale. Meanwhile the cohesiveness of the Daughters Of Liberty makes them feel as if they’ve existed forever (which they claim to have, working behind the scenes), while the machinations of the Power Elite continue almost unabated, setting up god knows what for further down the line. Plus the Dryad reveal is a complete and total WTF moment that I can’t wait to see explained.
The only real drawback of this run so far has been the art. Adam Kubert pencils all six issues, which is an achievement in itself given his notorious slowness, but it’s not great even so. His panels are sparse, and sometimes you can only tell characters apart by some random identifier. I like that he’s adjusted his style to meet the monthly schedule, but the quality has definitely suffered as a result, and the proceedings sometimes feel thin and watery thanks to very light inking and bland colour palettes, rather than packing the impact that they should have. I get that the prison scenes should feel desperate, but they shouldn’t look boring, surely.
Coates’ Captain America is giving me major Brubaker vibes, and I haven’t felt that since…well, Brubaker. It’s good enough that it’s got me jumping on in single issues rather than waiting for the trades, and given how large my reading pile is usually (and the fact that I’ve never read Captain America monthly), it says something that it’d make me want to add it to the list. Maybe I should give his Black Panther another try…