Captain America in the 1990s
The prevailing attitude out there is that Captain America in the 1990s — like many Marvel books of the era — are irredeemably bad. I think this is a sweeping generalization made by people who didn’t haven’t really bothered reading. The internet being the internet, people just like to dunk on the issues where Captain America was a werewolf or when he ended up wearing a suit of armor. Then there’s the six months Rob Liefeld worked on the book that everyone loves dunking on. But hey, if there is anything I’ve learned from being on the internet for over 30 years its to never expect anyone to look at something deeper than the surface layer.
Yes, these are silly plot ideas and in a lot of cases they were done during a period of market volatility when books weren’t selling as great. Some of these ideas were out of a desperate need to try and capture lightning in a bottle in a storm of diminishing returns. However, when you pull back from these few missteps and take a look at the decade as a whole, you’ll find that Captain America was actually consistently good during this era and not as bad as it appears.
The early part of the decade saw a continuation of Mark Gruenwald’s extensive run on the book that he started the decade before. Then, after Gruenwald ended his run it was handed over to Mark Waid, another amazing writer with resume of absolute bangers. Yes, the Heroes Reborn relaunch of Cap was the low point of the whole decade but, when Marvel realized their mistake they put Waid back on the book and it recovered from the black mark put upon the title. But I’m getting ahead of myself, as usual, let’s dial it back to the January 1990 and work our way through from there, shall we?
First off, the art: It’s fantastic. Many of these issues featured two stories, the main Captain America tale of the month, and a back-up story that would focus on a member of Cap’s supporting cast. With most of the back-up stories being done by Mark Bagley. Lim was at the height of his game, coming off Silver Surfer and picking things up after Infinity Gauntlet when George Pérez had to step away from the project. Lim’s work here is fantastic, proving that he is just as good doing down-to-Earth stories like Captain America as he can do the cosmic epics during his tenure on Silver Surfer. Bagley came onto the book early in his career and was still refining his signature style that would define early New Warriors and later Amazing Spider-Man stories. His work here is more in line with the typical Marvel style, but it is still good.
Like many other books of the time, Captain America was wrapping up the Acts of Vengeance storyline at the start of the decade. While most creative teams were satisfied with pitting Hero A with unexpected Villain B, Gruenwald’s issues of Captain America decided to do something a little deeper. Particularly when it comes to the inclusion of both the Red Skull and Magneto as part of the Acts of Vengeance prime movers. Although the pair had clashed in the past, the fact that Magneto was a Holocaust survivor and Red Skull was a Nazi was never really pitted against one another. As one would expect from such a pairing, Magneto was not happy working with the Skull because he was a Nazi, and the Skull didn’t like Magneto because he was a mutant, because Nazis are going to Nazi. The B plot of this story features Magneto dumping the Red Skull in an bomb shelter with no way out as punishment for his past crimes. This sub-plot would run from Captain America #366 to 370, well after Acts of Vengeance was over.
Issue #369 is the best part of this story: Trapped in the bunker for days, the Red Skull begins to lose his mind. He is visited by hallucinations of people from his past. Every single one of them tell the Skull to kill himself. That is until he is visited by the specter of Captain America. He tells the Skull to keep fighting as try and find a way out. Despite the fact that the Skull is evil incarnate Cap would never wish him dead as he wants the villain to face judgement. It forces the Red Skull to grudgingly realize that of all the people who wouldn’t want him to give up, it would be his greatest enemy. This is some powerful story telling that gives us a deeper insight into the mind of one the most notorious villain in all of comics.
This is one of Gruenwald’s strengths as a writer. Whereas most were content with just casting the Red Skull as an archetypical villain, Mark work on fleshing him out and making him a more layered character. Up until this point, the Red Skull was reminder that Nazis were evil and had to be stopped, and stopped short of any nuance with the character. The Red Skull is an ever present foe throughout Gruenwald’s run. However, rather than just endless battles against Captain America, the villain spends his time in the book reinventing himself in the present day, and coming up with schemes that don’t involve Captain America at all until the hero stumbles onto them. The Skull pretty much becomes a part of the supporting cast of characters than the villain of the month. Also during this run we see the formation of his own team, the Skeleton Crew, and learn about their origins and motivations as well.
The other plot line that gets a lot of milage in this book is the growing romance between Cap and Diamondback. This is setting up a kind of Batman/Catwoman drama where a hero and villain develop feelings for one another. However, whereas Catwoman doesn’t entirely give up her criminal ways, Diamondback puts in a real effort. Where she and Captain America have their troubles actually stems from are their entirely different ideas on what justice is.
This comes to a head with the character Crossbones who is weaved flawlessly into Diamondback’s past. He was a man who raped Rachel and murdered her brothers. While she seeks vengeance, Captain America seeks justice and this will cause friction between the two of them over the course of their relationship.
One particularly interesting story arc was the 8 part Streets of Poison storyline. This had Captain America trying to stop the flow of a new designer version of meth called Ice. This story was done during the height of the “Just Say No!” anti-drug campaign spearheaded by AIDS denialist and Hollywood GOAT, Nancy Reagan. While this aspect would later to be found a laughingly ineffectual aspect on America’s war on drugs, a lot of companies got into the “Just Say No!” campaign. Marvel Comics was no different and around the same time Streets of Poison was published they also teamed up with the FBI to put out a free anti-drug comic that starred Captain America.
Whereas the free FBI sponsored comic featured a goofy plot about baseball and aliens, Mark Gruenwald’s story took a darker grittier tone. Not in terms of the realism surrounding drugs, but just that trademark late 80s, early 90s, gritty “all drugs come from street punks named Trash and are made in decapitated warehouses” esthetic that most anti-drug propaganda featured at the time. During the course of the issue, Captain America even gets high on Ice after getting caught in a meth lab explosion. This story also took pains to have a sub-plot where Captain America questioned if the Super Soldier Serum was as bad as a street drug. At the end of the story Cap has to get a full blood transfusion that removes the serum from his body and he opts to not have it put back since he wants to prove that it is the man, not the drug, that makes him Captain America.
Frankly, I find any sort of comparison to the process that turned Steve Rogers into Captain America to illegal drugs is incredibly pedantic. Yes, the Super Soldier serum was a drug that Steve did have injected into his body, yes it did enhance his body. However, unlike heroin or steroids, the difference is that Steve’s treatment was a one shot deal. He didn’t have to keep on taking injections, nor did he develop an addiction. In other words, any comparison between the two is only looking at the surface level and conflating two very different things. So yeah, pedantic. However, Gruenwald must have felt the need to comment on it for some reason? Regardless, the idea of a powerless Captain America didn’t really go very far because by issue #384 it was revealed that the Serum was still active in his system and could replicate itself life a virus or something.
Issues #380-382 also saw the wrap to the on going Serpent Society saga, with the snake-based criminals capturing Diamondback and putting her on trail. Followed by a 50th anniversary issue in #383. A lot of these stories were just your standard Captain America fare and are entertaining enough. Issue #384 is a weird one as Gruenwald chose to bring back the golden age hero Jack Frost, raise questions about his past only to have him become lost again. Other than appearing in flashback stories, Jack Frost has not been seen since. Which is just as well as, while he has the distinction of being Stan Lee’s earliest creation for Marvel, he’s also the least interesting.
The next major story arc, the Superia Stratagem was a shakier premise. By this point, Ron Lim left as regular artist and was replaced with Rik Levins. The back-up stories were also given to Larry Alexander. This story introduce Superia a mad woman who wanted to create the Femezonia future reality where Thundra hails from. This involved recruiting an army of female super-villains and protecting them from an impotence bomb that would render the rest of the world sterile. It’s an odd story primarily for a moment where Captain America and Paladin are almost victims of a forced sex change and they end up running around in women’s clothes for a bit. Surprisingly, is isn’t a plot point that punches down on transgendered people that you would have expected from less enlightened times, but it is definitely weird.
More interesting is the back-up stories which features Germany getting their own national hero Hauptman Deutschland. He shows up and captures the Red Skull and drags him back to Germany to face trial for his past crimes. Narratively, this story was written just after the re-unification of East and West Germany and that is used as an explanation for why the Germany government waited until that moment to bring the Red Skull in. I think from a narrative standpoint it would have made for a better story if it was Israeli Nazi hunters that captured the Red Skull and tried him in Israel. Which is not to say Germany still doesn’t persecute former Nazis, they totally do, but I think if you’re going to do a “Red Skull stands trail for his war crimes” type story, having it been Israel would have been more fitting.
That said, it’s also interesting to note that this is the period in which the Red Skull moves beyond his Nazi ideals and becomes a full blown nihilist. Issues #393-397, which focus on the Red Skull’s escape and refocusing his goals, are particularly interesting. It reinforces the idea that the Red Skull is secretly funding a number of organizations in America to destabilize the United States as a country. Groups like the Watchdogs, Power Broker Inc., and the Scourge program are all fronts for the Red Skull’s accelerationist plots to throw the USA into utter chaos and destroy it from within. The fact that there are present day Neo-Nazi groups in the real world whose tactics of indoctrinating people on the Far Right into joining their cause is incredibly chilling. It’s almost as though Mark Gruenwald were predicting the current hellscape we all live in.
After this, we have Cap sandwiched in a number of crossovers: Operation: Galactic Storm, Infinity War and Citizen Kang which happen in rapid succession in issues #398 through 408 and annual #11. For the most part, Gruenwald does the bare minimum with these crossovers. The Operation: Galactic Storm issues push the plot along minimally and the focus is more on the back-up stories which feature Diamondback being held prisoner by Crossbones and delving into their origins and relationship. The Infinity War crossover issue comes at the tail end of the Man and Wolf storyarc, the Cap Wolf storyline that everyone on the internet wants to dunk on.
Man and Wolf is one of the more far out stories that Gruenwald pens and it shoehorns cameos by Wolverine and Cable using the flimsiest plot devices. However, the story is more about Captain America searching for his missing pilot John Jameson and briefly bringing back the Man-Wolf. It is not the greatest Captain America story put to pen for sure, but it’s not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. It’s silly fun before things go down a much darker road.
Issues #411-414 have Cap and the Falcon team back up to rescue Diamondback from the Red Skull, then we dive into a story where Diamondback seeks revenge against his enemy Snapdragon. It takes a particularly dark note when Rachel murders Snapdragon and keeps it secret from Captain America for a while. What’s interesting about these stories is how Cap reacts when Rachel crosses the line. Rather than the usual pontificating about morality and how heroes don’t kill, Captain America realizes that Rachel has been through some rough shit: I near death experience, being held prisoner by the guy who raped her, the murder of her long lost brother (Cutthroat, who takes Crossbones’ old job for a hot minute), and then being experimented upon with the Super Soldier Serum against her will. Rachel goes through a lot of rough shit. Like as rough as it can get in the Comic Code Authority days. Rather than chastise for her decisions, Steve Rogers supports her the best he can because he loves her. He also admits that he cannot understand what she has been through.
For a comic book in the 1990s where male heroes are usually mansplaining morality or judging love interests for objectively bad decisions, Captain America shows a level of empathy that was all too absent in this era of comics. Gruenwald was reaching stagnation in his storytelling at this point and these stories were never the greatest, but the best part of them is the way he writes the relationship between Captain America and Diamondback.
I’d say the worst of the bunch in this collection of stories are Captain America #414-417 which saw Cap and his allies in the Savage Land protecting it from the Saur-Lords, humanoid dinosaurs. They are very uninteresting with dumb names that are shortened versions of the species each dino-man represents. There’s also a whole thing with Antartic Vibranium, AIM, a disciple of the High Evolutionary, and a spare suit of Terminus armor. It’s a lot going on in this story and it is just one big disjointed mess.
Also during this period was a b-plot involving D-Man coming back which had been limping away since issue #400 with no real direction. It was a round about way to have him discover the long lost Night People of Zerostreet and become their champion. The idea here is just as fleeting as Jack Kirby’s solo run on Captain America in the 70s. Gruenwald would come up with an idea and then move on from it so fast you are left wondering what the point of it all was.
In issue #419, Gruenwald also remembers that he had a subplot involving Viper that had been left hanging since issue #395 and quickly wraps it up. There’s a story with the new Blazing Skull in issue #420, and a crossover issue with Nomad in issue #421. Issue #422 introduces Blistik, another one of Gruenwald’s goofy character creations, although this one is more one note than usual. What is notable about these stories and the ones to follow is that Gruenwald’s usual story telling — stories with dense amounts of dialogue and deep cut continuity — suddenly goes away. The stories are more straight forward. The character development and interactions that defined his run up to this point begin to become fleeting. Month long sets up are quickly wrapped up abruptly. It seemed to me that Gruenwald’s usual passion was gone from the final stories he wrote. But I’m getting ahead of myself, we’ll touch on this again in a bit.
Issue #423 is a filler issue by Roy Thomas with art by M.C. Wyman, that takes place during World War II and tells the tale about how Captain America first met with the Sub-Mariner. It’s a absurd story about Namor kidnapping President Roosevelt and then the Nazis kidnapping him from Namor. It’s your usual uninspired “Namor is pissed off at the surface world until he realizes Nazis are the real bad guy” type story that was actually quite common in the Timely era of the character. I’ve commented about how I’m not a fan of Wyman’s art style in my primer on 90’s era Thor, so there’s not really much to say here. The characters are overly muscular in that icky Liefeld style that Wyman started imitating in the mid-90s and its not good.
Gruenwald is back with artist Phil Gosier with issue #424, with a story that sees the return of Sidewinder who is convinced to turn himself in for the sake of his sick daughter.
From here, artist Dave Hoover takes over as regular artist of the title until issue #443. Hoover’s artwork is… fine. It’s not outlandishly 90s as a lot of other artists of the era were churning out. However, there musculature of characters in these stories are excessive. It was the style at the time so you just have to kind of grin and bear it, there is always worse and we’ll see that on this title soon enough.
From issue #425 to 443 we have Mark Gruenwald’s swan-song on Captain America in a 13 part epic called Fighting Chance. In this storyline Steve learns that the Super-Soldier Serum in his body is wearing out and if he continues to exert his body like he does as Captain America, he will become immobilized within a year. Of course, this doesn’t stop Steve from doing what he always does: being the hero. However, as Captain America begins to succumb to his affliction he decides to recruit and mentor the next generation of heroes to take his place. This comes in the form of Free Spirit and Jack Flag, two nearly forgettable character. Free Spirit would go on to appear in not a whole lot else after this, while Jack Flag actually became a regular character in Guardians of the Galaxy in the early late 2000s/early 2010s. He even had a cameo in the recent Guardians video game. Not bad for a character whose only character traits were “boombox, skateboard, spray paint” and not a whole lot else.
This storyline and the follow up in issues #438-443 also see Captain America go through a few overhauls of his costume. There is a really ugly pouched harness that he ends up wearing for a little bit and then is later given a suit of armor created by Tony Stark. Again, these are things that people like to dunk on because — visually — they are god awful to look at. While people are not wrong in that assessment, I think that people seem to only look at the surface layer of these design choices. Yeah, some of it probably had to do with some kind of editorial mandate to make Cap more 90s. This was the era of ill-advised face lifts being done on characters in a soulless effort to boost sales. However, Gruenwald makes the best of a bad situation by giving a purpose for these admittedly bad design choices. With Steve’s growing mobility issues he needed assistance in order to continue being Captain America not matter what.
Issue #443 has Captain America coming to terms with the fact that he now only has 24 hours to live and seemingly dies at the end of the issue. Obviously, that wasn’t the case. I suppose that this was Gruenwald’s way of saying the Captain America he had been writing for a decade was dead and whatever was taking his place would be an entirely different beast. Looking at the tail end of his Captain America run and his work on Quasar, it seems to me that Gruenwald was looking at the state of comics in this era and was becoming increasingly dishearten by what he was seeing. The type of superhero he grew up with and the one he liked to write was quickly being supplanted with flashier and grittier characters who were morally ambiguous and lacking in any real substances. I can totally see how he would think that his version of Captain America would have to die in order for the next one to move forward.
Ironically, Gruenwald’s “death” of Captain America is nearly the same as the situation Captain America was in after J.M. DeMatteis left the book and Gruenwald took over. Namely, Steve Rogers being afflicted with a seemingly incurable illness that will take his life only for another writer to come in and do a complete 360 to put Rogers back into his usual status quo.
However, readers were in luck because Gruenwald was passing the book on to Mark Waid another prolific writer who had already made a name for himself as a great writer having already had decent runs on Marvel’s X-Men books through both the Age of Apocalypse and Onslaught storylines.
Waid didn’t immediately toss out the ending of Gruenwald’s landmark run. In that era of comics, whenever there was a creative team switch a lot of times the new guy will take the first issue to toss out all the shit they didn’t like or want to have to deal with. Not so for Waid’s first issue. But Mark Waid has a lot of respect for his fellows in the industry and he clearly had a lot of respect for the work that the Gru put into it. Since Cap disappeared and was believed to be dead, the entire issue of Captain America #444 doesn’t feature Captain America at all. Its a story about the Avengers answering a hostage situation and learning that the terrorists only want to talk to Captain America. Its used as a framing device for characters to talk about what Captain America meant to them. At one point, Hercules admits that even the gods of Olympus ask themselves what would Captain America do? Its powerful stuff, even if it might be hyperbole on Herc’s part.
This was followed by three more arcs. The first Operation: Rebirth from issues #445-448, issue #449 was part of the First Sign storyline being featured in all the core Avengers titles, and lastly The Man Without a Country ran from issues #450 to 454. He was joined by artist Ron Garney who consistently knocked it out of the part with every issue.
Operation: Rebirth of course undid Captain America’s near fatal illness as there was not really anywhere else that they could have gone with it unless they wanted to put Cap six feet under and find someone else to take over. In this story we find out that Sharon Carter is still alive, having faked her death to go on a deep cover mission for SHIELD. Abandoned and left to fend for herself this is a harsher and colder version of Sharon, very much different from the overly emotional character first introduced back in the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby days. She also returns with the Red Skull who is responsible for saving Cap’s life with a much needed blood and bone marrow transplant. The two need Cap’s help stopping a group called the Kubekult who have stolen an imperfect Cosmic Cube with the mind of Adolf Hitler trapped inside and are trying to jumpstart it so they can alter all of reality into a world where Hitler won World War II. Captain America finds himself having no choice but to work with his arch-nemesis to stop histories greatest villain.
This story raises an interesting subject that had never been really explored before this point in all the years Captain America had been published. It’s kind of wild that it took 50 years for someone to clue in on this. It’s the simple fact that for a guy who was made to fight Hitler (he’s literally socking Adolf in the face in his debut appearance!), Cap never go around to fighting the Nazi leader. Cap went into suspended animation and that distinction was given to the Human Torch who burned him alive in the most awesome scene in comics ever put to paper.
This story does a bait and switch on that concept. It teases the idea that Captain America is going to have to fight Hitler in an all out brawl inside a Cosmic Cube! Then they do a bait and switch. Cap realizes that it’s a trap and a construct of Bucky tells him to stop living in the past. That was one of the reasons why Captain America was growing so stagnant by this point: It frequently kept trying to look to the past to find stories. It constantly kept try to go back or bring back things relating to the war. World War II is very important to the Captain America mythos for sure, however its a distant memory. People who lived it are either incredibly old or dead. While its interesting to re-visit not and again, it can no longer be the bedrock of Captain America’s life anymore. He’s been in the “future” too long. He’s a different man than he was during the war. More importantly, there are new terrors and injustices, new enemies to fight.
Issue #449 was the first part of the First Sign story arc. This was an initiative to bring Cap, Thor, and Iron Man back to the Avengers by created a new Zodiac group to threaten the team. It’s not very good. The story goes nowhere.
This was followed by Man Without a Country in issue #450-454, which poses the question: What would happen if Captain America was charged for treason? Well, he gets stripped of his shield and costume and is exiled from America. This is all part of a wider plot to stop the Machinesmith from arming the rogue European nation Moldavia and pushing it into a war with the United States. Again, surface layer people will dunk on this story because it features Captain America briefly wearing a flag-free costume, but seriously, this is a fucking great story.
I think that the best thing Waid brought to the book was he allowed Captain America to unclench a little. Sure he still sermonized a lot, but he allowed Cap to be sarcastic and make jokes. Bringing back Sharon Carter and making her edgier also gave Cap someone to play off of. The pair would bicker with one another, trade barbed comments, and make sarcastic remarks. There was still an element of will-they-or-won’t-they, but the stoic hero/damsel-in-distress dynamic of the past was long gone and good riddance if you ask me. The dialogue became less winded, making for an enjoyable read.
Waid’s use of multi-part stories that can stand on their own would also pave the way for future writers adopting this method. Stories were still choked full of continuity, references, and easter eggs for long time readers, but they were not dense with it. Like, you could read them without knowing match and still follow along with the story. You got exposition as needed and if you knew your shit you were rewarded, but if you were new, you wouldn’t be entirely lost.
Unfortunately, Waid’s addition to the book came too little, too late, as this was also the point in time when Marvel was suffering as a business and books were selling poorly, particularly ones that didn’t involve the X-Men or Spider-Man. This led to Marvel attempting to reboot their flagging titles — Fantastic Four, Avengers, Captain America, and Iron Man — with the Heroes Reborn initiative. You know the song-and-dance already: The heroes would get divorced from the Marvel Universe proper and live re-imagined lives in a pocket dimension before Marvel undid the whole thing because it quickly became a failure.
In the case of Captain America, the book was relaunched with a new volume with Rob Liefeld doing the story and art with plotting assists from Jeph Loeb. Love him or hate him, Liefeld’s run on Captain America is by far the most polarizing run of the book until more recent times where we have bad actors complaining about Captain America being “too political” (they’re wrong as I have pointed out previously, and I’ll get back to that in a second) Liefeld’s art in this run was wildly inconsistent from page-to-page, he relied heavily on splash pages and skimped out on drawing backgrounds. The artwork was a mess and objectively speaking from the range of Rob’s body of work, it is easily his worst. The plot also moved along at a snails pace because there really wasn’t much of a plot to begin with.
The story follows a re-imagined version of Captain America. Rather being frozen in suspended animation like in the mainstream Marvel Universe, he was brainwashed into thinking he was a normal guy with a family who also somehow didn’t age a day since World War II. When Master Man and the Red Skull pop up, Fury reactivates Captain America. The character development in these stories is incredibly paper thin and Liefeld’s re-interpretation of Captain America’s abilities and what the Super Soldier Serum can do is bizarre. Such as making Cap’s blood green and him being able to give people his powers by having them drink his blood. Also, because this is Liefeld we’re talking about here, there is an inexplicable cameo by Cable that is never fully explained.
However, here is the thing that people usually miss about Jeph Loeb and Rob Liefeld’s Captain America: It’s still really fucking relevant. Certainly there are issues with the art and the story — at least on the surface level — seems kind of flimsy. It seems like just another Captain America/Red Skull fight with nuclear bombs. However, there is another aspect to the plot that predicted the world we live in today. See, Master Man and Red Skull’s whole scheme was to form the New World Party, a grass roots political movement that indoctrinates disenfranchised youths and radicalizes them into believing their fascist and xenophobic ideals. Yeah, Loeb and Liefeld predicted groups like the Three Percenters and the Proud Boys. How fucking crazy is that?
That said, the idea is the only thing about this whole exercise that was any good. The inconsistencies in both storytelling and art kind of drown it all out so I can forgive you, dear reader, for maybe missing it the first time around.
I think part of the problem with this part of the run is that for a story that is supposed to be reinventing the characters in a modern context, the creative team on the book was relying on far too much shorthand. The reinvention of Captain America and his supporting cast is all that’s really explored while the villains remain almost comically one dimensional and one note.
As you probably already know by now, Liefeld’s run on Captain America was cut short due to it and Rob’s rendition of the Avengers doing very poorly. While researching this era, I got my hands on an old issue of Wizard Magazine and it briefly touched on what was next for the book had the creative team hadn’t been abruptly changed. There are… some interesting ideas here. Granted they were a product of the times (especially trying to copy the X-Files for some reason?) but it’s interesting to wonder where the book would have went had this change now happened.
As an interesting post-script to the Captain America fiasco, Liefeld then attempted to get the right to another Joe Simon/Jack Kirby creation, the Fighting American. When that deal fell through he came up with his own “original” character called Agent America. I remember reading the issue of Wizard Magazine that was reporting on this back in the day and basically, Agent America was supposed to be what Rob Liefeld wanted to do with Captain America in Heroes Reborn before he got kicked off the project. Agent America was a blatant copy of Captain America, right down to the shield. Marvel Comics famously took Rob to court and while Liefeld won his argument that Agent America was legally distinct from Captain America, Marvel still made it so Rob’s Agent America wasn’t allowed to throw his shield like Captain America did. This wouldn’t be the last time Rob has dabbled in and totally botched a patriotic themed superhero. For some reason, in 2021, Archie Comics would let him adapt their character The Shield, with the same disastrous results, but I digress.
Marvel then handed over the reigns to James Robertson and penciler Joe Bennett. The pair scrapped whatever it was that Liefeld and Loeb were doing to do a Captain-America-Versus-the-Sons-of-the-Serpent story that was so generic that it made the whole concept of Heroes Reborn seem kind of pointless. They even went so far as to change the emblem on Cap’s forehead from the eagle added by Liefeld to the trademark letter A.
Thankfully, Marvel and fans were both experiencing buyers remorse over the whole Heroes Reborn debacle. If anything, it helped both the company and readers to find new appreciation for these characters and how important they were to the Marvel Universe as a whole. Everyone was brought back and the titles were relaunched again. Marvel also righted a grievous wrong by hiring Mark Waid back on to Captain America to continue where he left off. He is rejoined with Ron Garney to do the artwork on the title.
The first two issues had Captain America trying to return to his old life after his world was disrupted by the Onslaught/Heroes Reborn thing. The first issue tackles the issue of American culture and its impact on Japan, a country that has a love/hate relationship with the United States. Captain America also confronted with how his image and persona had become commercialized and worshiped in his absence, something he is not entirely comfortable with. Captain America is also given his first huge handicap in a long time — he loses his shield in the ocean during a battle with Hydra. It happens in the most Captain America way possible: When given the choice of saving his shield from the ocean floor or saving a life, he sacrificed his weapon. Over the course of the next 20 odd issues, Captain America comes to realize how much he realized on the weapon and struggles with replacements. First a near duplicate created by Tony Stark that doesn’t work just right, then a replica of his original triangular shield, and lastly a photonic force field weapon that can take on the form of his trademark weapon among other defensive and offensive weaponry. Regardless of the various replacements, Cap realizes that there is no replacing his shield. We’ll get back to that in a moment.
Issues #2-7 features a winding tale about the return of Hydra who are being led by the flamboyant Sensational Hydra. This story all culminates with Captain America’s fame being risen to new heights and his increasing discomfort with the idea that people treat him like an infallible living legend. As it turns out, the Sensational Hydra is actually a Skrull who has been intentionally boosting Cap’s profile so he can later pose as the hero and convince the people of the world that one in every 10 people is secretly a Skrull. This plan of course plunges America into chaos as people become increasingly paranoid and attack each other out of fear and prejudice. If you were to look at this story as an allegory, it speaks of people’s ability to be fooled by bad actors in the media who are deal in harmful rhetoric. In a world of mass media where establishments like Fox News and One America News have fanned the flames of xenophobia and bigotry in America today, this story is far more relevant today than it was when was written almost 30 years ago. That these harmful messages are being put out by actual humans and not little green men makes it all the more chilling.
It’s during this arc that Garney leaves the book and there is a rotation of guest artists until Andy Kubert takes over as the regular artist. This was Andy Kubert at his best after doing celebrated runs on X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Ka-Zar, and the Incredible Hulk. His art is no less fantastic here. His visuals, particularly one and two page spreads are wonderful and eye catching.
Issue #8 is part of the Live Kree or Die! story arc which took place across all the Avengers related books of the time.
Issues #9-12 is an odd story. In it, Nightmare — a regular Doctor Strange villain — manages to get control of the American Dream itself and uses it to make people who believe they have achieved their version of it to go berserk in the real world. Captain America goes into the dream world and fights him. As more and more people get sucked into the dream dimension, Captain America channels the power of the American Dream to defeat his foe. It’s an allegory that I am sure is supposed to tug at the heart strings of the most patriotic out there, but since I’m not American this doesn’t particularly resonate with me. It’s kind of a silly idea but the story is decent and the art is phenomenal. Also during this story, Captain America gains a new photonic shield a high tech weapon that he will use throughout the end of the 90s before going back to his traditional weapon. It’s an interesting concept in such a small done and I don’t mind the idea.
Issue #13 has a guest penciler, Dougie Braithwaite taking over for the issue. I remember Dougie best for his work on Universe X and Paradise X, part of Jim Krueger and Alex Ross’ Earth X trilogy. I usually enjoy his work, but here there is something off about it. Perhaps its the inker? I don’t know. At any rate, the story is small stakes, but it does set the seeds for a later story when Captain America’s shield is recovered from the ocean and it shatters, something that is supposed to be impossible.
Kubert is back for the next few issues that sees the return of the Red Skull. This time he is recreated with a Cosmic Cube inside his body. Which is an interesting take to go with since usually these Cosmic Cube stories last about as long as it takes for Captain America to knock them out of his hand. It has the usual tropes for this type of story: The Red Skull getting ultimate power, warping reality to his twisted fantasies, and Captain America standing up against him no matter how bleak things get or what the Skull does to fuck with him. Issue #14 is the big stand out of this arc as it centers entirely of the Red Skull as we see him trapped inside a Cosmic Cube and forced to live out his worst nightmare: A world of diversity where everyone lives in racial harmony. As we have been building up to the moment where the Red Skull returns we see him also partner with a man who appears to be Kang the Conqueror. However, by issue #17 we discover that it wasn’t Kang at all, but Korvac in disguise.
This was an odd an abrupt 360 on the part of the writers and I wonder if it had to be done because the character was going to be used by Kurt Busiek in the Avengers Forever series and didn’t want there to be any conflicts. The use of Korvac was an odd choice as well because the character famously killed himself off during the Korvac saga in the 70s. Then was prevented from being reborn in the Korvac Quest of the 90s. How he manages to cheat death and return, but without his god-like powers is never fully explained in any satisfying way, such supports my suspicion that this was a last minute change of some kind. I could be wrong, but I don’t feel like looking into it. You do it.
Lee Weeks guest pencils the next issue and what banger this one is. Captain America (vol. 3) #18 has Captain America piggy back with Korvac to the 31st Century. There the cyborg uses his power to try and enslave the planet Earth. However, Captain America would form a rebellion and help humanity rise up against him, forcing Korvac to reset the timeline over and over. No matter what Korvac does, Captain America eventually forms a rebellion against him. Eventually Korvac grows frustrated and just gives up and sends Cap back home. It’s a very amusing story. It’s probably also one of those patriotic allegories about the resilience of American freedom.
The end of the decade wraps up with a conclusion to the shield saga, where we find out that a minor imperfection created when Cap repaired his shield in Secret Wars has now caused a Vibranium cancer that threatens to make all the Vibranium on Earth go ka-blewie. It’s fine.
Then we have issue #23 with guest penciler Gregory Wright that is a commentary about the abhorrent treatment of undocumented immigrants in America. For those who swear CoMiCs aRe ToO pOlItIcAl today, read this issue. They were always political. This one is a great example of it. Although it has a rosy ending where the undocumented guy gets freed thanks to Captain America, it’s really depressing that this is still a very huge problem in America today (the ICE camps, not the number of undocumented immigrants).
The decade does end on a down note with issue #24. It’s guest credit city with the issue being written by Tom Deflaco with the art by his long time collaborator Ron Frenz. The story has Captain America go up against Crossbones and the Absorbing Man. It’s your typical retro-throw back story where DeFalco/Frenz try to harken back to the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby era of comics. While that worked for a while with Thor, by this time it had overstayed its welcome and it is not a very good story. Still, there was a lot worse that came out of this decade so I guess I’ll give it that.
That all said, the Captain America of the 1990s was certainly not as bad as people like to paint it and you’re doing yourself a huge disservice by not reading if you’re avoiding it on the low minded opinion of YouTube reviewers who aren’t any deeper than dunking on werewolves. Yes, some of it is absurd, some of it looks ugly, but there are a lot of good stories that have messages that are still relevant to this day.
From here, Captain America will attain new heights as a series that was nearly cancelled becomes one of Marvel’s hottest books. However, there is still a lot of rough territory to get through before we get there including the knee jerk reaction to 9/11, (groan) Chuck Austin, and Avengers: Disassembled! But don’t worry it won’t be long before we’re soaring high like an eagle (GET IT!?!) But that’s a story we’ll get into later.
