1351 ( )

My politics are about as opposite to those of Tea Party adherents as you can get, and I'm really quite glad to be from a non-aligned country, so it's saying something that I winced throughout this. The storyline centres around a "Mad Cap" from the 1950s, yet another failed experiment in recreating the process which transformed Steve Rogers. (At this point, is there anyone who was around in the 40s/50s who wasn't subjected to this kind of experimentation?) I was really uneasy with that, about this easy narrative about how a white guy would have to be "insane" to want to carry out the kind of plan. Right-wing supremacy is framed here as something only crazy people would adhere to (though Brubaker is also careful, in some anvillicious dialogue, to provide a sop to Middle-Class White Folks with Legitimate Grievances), which is reductive, not particularly enlightened about mental health issues, and completely glosses over the whole concept of white privilege. Sam Wilson was my favourite part of this book, and he had comparatively little to do.

I also thought the character design in the first issue of this, the 'Who Will Wield the Shield?' part was pretty awful. I know I'm always a little thrown when the comic characters don't resemble Chris Evans or Sebastian Stan, because the MCU is where I first encountered them, but the Steve and Bucky here looked like they'd been transferred straight from a print ad selling the 1960s equivalent of Just For Men. ( )