CAPTAIN AMERICA #1 (Best of the Week!)
"Enemy, Chapter One: Dust"
Highly Recommended (10/10)
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Marvel Comics/Marvel Knights imprint
Writer: John Ney Rieber
Artist: John Cassaday
Colors: Dave Stewart
Letters: Comicraft
Editor: Stuart Moore
Price: $3.99 US/$6.50 CAN |
We've really seen enough of Sept. 11 stories in comics, haven't we? Isn't placing Captain America in the middle of the wreckage of the World Trade Center a bit... over the top? Insensitive? Disrespectful? Cheesy, perhaps?
No. Not at all.
Sure, it could have been a mistake, but the writer and artist handle the material with such care that one cannot help but be... well, impressed isn't strong enough a term... overwhelmed and awestruck.
Cassaday just gets better and better with every new title he takes on. His detailed, realistic art is awe-inspiring, but the detail and realism is never gratuitous. There are panels with no imagery, or sometimes just a haze, and that's because Cassaday (and likely Rieber) realizes that sometimes, less is more. Cassaday isn't trying to amaze the reader with his skill; he's simply delivering the best visuals he can to tell the story and elicit the right moods.
Cassaday is aided in his efforts by the textured and subtle coloring job by Dave Stewart. He makes the blues of the title character's eyes seem grey in the dusty haze of Ground Zero. The muted add to the protagonist's sense of isolation.
Perhaps what is most impressive about this story is how the writer is saying something about the title character, not the terrorist attacks on the United States. Rieber explores how Sept. 11 essentially causes Cap to forget who he is. He struggles to find a livfe to save where there is none. He wants to be a hero, but he's not a hero. He's a soldier. If this story is about anything, it's about the difference in those two ideas.
It's been a while since I enjoyed Rieber's clever and mature writing on DC's The Books of Magic, and it's a pleasure to see him return to mainstream comics. He grabs the reader with the very first page, with just a couple of seemingly simple sentences that boast remarkable power: "It doesn't matter where you thought you were going today. You're part of the bomb now."
There's incredible power, sadness and despair in those sentences, just as there is throughout this first issue.
Note: Some of the comments in this review are reproduced from a previous feature on the website.
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