Isn’t some of Cap’s Cool down to the idea of a guy who can fight gods and monsters with nothing but an impossible shield and his sheer toughness? To me, armoring Cap up makes him seem less amazing and increasingly obviates the need for that shield. It seems less to me like an audacious fantasy than the direct opposite of that — a misguided notion of what he’d “really” need to wade into combat. Ditto Batman’s belt pouches; it’s less impressive to me to see him with a big ol’ toolbelt than was the 1970s notion that Bruce Wayne’s money and Batman’s gadgets were so sleek and micro that he’d gotten around the need for oceans of storage space. Isn’t Batman more a stealth character than anything? A smaller, sleeker belt and the idea of stuff like little gas vials and collapsible boomerangs or microelectronics seems cooler to me.

the reason I prefer Ultimate Mjolnir to the original hammer,

Ad as when we’ve discussed this before, I find it especially annoying. It works if you buy into “bigger = better,” but the mythological Mjolnir was supposed to have an unusually short handle for a war-hammer. It’s why, prior to Ultimate Thor, pretty much any depiction of any Thor adaptation or universe-insertion anywhere has a short-handled hammer; the idea isn’t that the hammer is a Big Freakin’ Gun for the Bronze Age warrior, but that Thor’s so damn powerful and so damn tough that Loki’s sabotage of the hammer’s forging doesn’t matter. Dude’s a god, and the hammer’s a magical weapon — all giving it a shorter handle does is inspire him to chuck the thing at your head instead of bringing it down like a sledge.

It’s also about Thor not needing the safe distance a long-handled warhammer gives you in a battle; he just wades in and stands right there, either soaking up or not caring about getting hurt in melees, being a berserker in battle. The whole notion of Thor using the classic Mjolnier — “classic” here not merely meaning “Silver Age” — is that much is revealed about his insane bravery or battle-madness. He’s scary or tough or impressive because he’s using a weapon that looks suboptimal at first glance. Then he calls down lightnign with it and caves in your skull anyway.

Maybe the next event should be “Marvel Fiveheads”.

My defense of it is more on the Rule of Cool than the inherent practicality– the thin, faint fish scales of the older Cap designs may have been more practical, but they didn’t add much to the visual look. It’s already impractical for Cap to be wearing bright red, white, and blue into battle; since we’re going with the paradigm that he’s already audacious, why not play it up and make it look like he’s wearing armor instead of tights?

See also; the reason I prefer Ultimate Mjolnir to the original hammer, why I like Batman having the bulky Frank-Miller pockets on his utility belt over the thin cylinders of old, and why I loathe when Iron Man is drawn in shiny tights instead of more pronounced plate mail. They’re already fantastical, so they could at least be visually impressive when doing so.

I’m generally of the opposite opinion — Cassaday’s scale-mail always made less visual sense to me, since it seemed like it should be restricting Cap’s movements tremendously. Not to mention that you’d think people would be shredding their hands trying to punch him.

Quesada’s cover is the most appropriate, because it looks like Steve’s getting up from a really bad fall, mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. My only complaint is that Quesada draws Cap’s shirt as very fine fish scale mesh, instead of the more pronounced segments he’s had since Cassaday drew him. The pronounced chain mail made Cap’s costume go from generic superhero to awesome super-soldier, so I don’t like it when it’s removed.

Picture #2: Captain America leaves his shield inside the Intrinsic Field experiment, with unpredictable results.

Picture #3: Captain America really needs to stop eating at Taco Bell.

BELIEVE ME, that is not how you pass a kidney stone.

“…except Cap is knealing here…”

IT’S ‘KNEELING’, but he isn’t kneeling, he’s squatting.

“…I thought Cap was taking a knee from a Ball shot.’

NO, HE obviously isn’t on either knee.

“…giving him a full Dibny.”

OH, SO wrong, yet, oh, so funny.