Didn't anyone read CAPTAIN AMERICA #600? The Red Skull said he doesn't just want to kill Cap. He wants to torment Cap and prove he's better than Cap. Can't do that if Cap is dead.

The Joker sometime says his greatest pleasure is tormenting Batman. The Skull has the same attitude toward Cap. In fact, give the Skull a cackle, a squirting flower, and some Red Skull fish and he could be Marvel's Joker.

It seems Brubaker is trying to come up with a new variation on the usual tired "deathlike coma/clone/shapeshifter/alternate version from another time or dimension" explanation. Whether it ends up being anything other than another cliched superhero resurrection remains to be seen.

It's a bit odd that the world's greatest scientists (Stark, Pym, Richards, et al.) couldn't tell the difference between a dead body and a body frozen in time. In one, the blood pools and the flesh decays. In the other, it doesn't. This technology stuff is tricky, I guess. Maybe Reed's Decomposition Detector Doohickey was on the fritz that week.

I'd say CAPTAIN AMERICA #600 is superior to REBORN #1. The latter is decent but nothing special. As usual in today's comics, there are several full-page images wasting space. Get it if you're a Cap fan like me; otherwise skip it.

Sigh, just thinking about Marvel's Osbournes upset me... With all the fuss about the non-existence of Pete and MJ's marriage, no one seems to care that Harry and Liz's marriage has also been wiped away. They're divorced I think. Odd. Wouldn't Mephisto want to leave that one as is? They had a such a twisted little family!

And doesn't Norman Osborn know Peter Parker is Spider-man? At least he did when he was in evil mastermind mode. And apparently he's in that mode all the time now. So why not send government agents into Parker's home and drag him off in the middle of the night?

Sigh. Oh well back to reading Spider-man Annual #16 and ignoring what's on the shelves now.

The Norman Osborn that appears in comics now, behaving exactly like Lex Luthor, has such little resemblance to the basically good businessman who would occasionally have bout of psychosis in the classic Spider-man comics. But he's another example of a major character who was dramatically and undeniably dead, only to be returned with a convoluted explanation. The difference is that Cap's death was a stunt at the end of a stunt where everyone was behaving out of character and at cross-purposes to their own core concepts and Osborn's death was a natural conclusion to a storyline.

I have to say that Brubaker does handle these kind of stunts well, and I can't really say I'm annoyed with Cap's return. Considering that the first major storyline was returning Bucky to life, I wouldn't blink if Brubaker brought back Uncle Ben next. And, yes, it will no doubt be brilliantly written. But it will also undo and cheapen better stories written by others years ago. So, I, for one, would rather he utilize his considerable talents to build on previous stories instead of revising stories that have already been told.

Those being the inevitable strictures on any "death of Cap" storyline, I tend to think Brubaker's doing the best possible job with what he's got, and I'd prefer he be the one to write the resurrection rather than the next guy the editor asks. Frankly, anyone thinking Cap was just going to be headshot and then never seen again outside of flashbacks and dreams was...well, dreaming.

There's also the other problem Bucky-Cap has, which is that he's rather convoluted for an icon character. Steve Rogers can be gotten over as "patriotic super-soldier of WWII revived in the present day to renew the fight." A similar summation of the Bucky/Winter Soldier/Cap would be much harder, I think. Try explaining either to a friend who doesn't read comics and I guarantee their eyes will glaze over a little earlier in with the Bucky-Cap version.

It does make me think of one question, though: how many superhero titles have actually killed off their original ongoing protagonist midstream and then gone with a permanent replacement in the same volume? Relaunches like Batman and Robin or the Wally-Flash are excluded by the "one-volume" rule; guys like David Knight's Starman iteration by the "ongoing protagonist" part.. Temporary replacement stories happen, yes, but generally speaking the volume will end with the character who was the start in issue #1.

The sole exception I can remember off the top of my head is Impact!'s version of the MLJ/Archie hero the Black Hood, which was a serial identity of sorts in the first place.

My own take would be to have the series end with Captain America dying again, but this time with a definitive heroic sacrifice, and one where he gets to give a meaningful monologue to the living heroes about how they should move on instead of hanging onto the need for him to return and save the day. Of course, I'm amongst the part of the readership who much prefers Captain Bucky, and thinks Steve Rogers has much more value dead than alive.

In any event, this issue disappointed me, because while I can appreciate the fact that Brubaker had an exit strategy in mind for Steve's death/trip through time, has anyone asked the heroes that in a world where Norman Osborn is in charge, trying to bring back Steve isn't the best use of time and resources?

great job marvel.

Warm horseshit is “new and fresh” too.

Yes, and it makes excellent fertilizer! A lot can grow from that new and fresh horseshit.

"Jack, I don't know what you're looking for then."

Something exciting? Because this doesn't excite me.

"A character comes up with an especially outre method of achieving their usual goals — kill Captain America so he can’t interfere, ruin America and leave it under a fascist “Third Wing” political party, and then drag Cap back to life so you can make him choke on it."

Except this isn't what happened. He failed.

So, really, that makes the plan "kill Captain America, attempt to ruin America and fail, accidentally lose Steve Rogers in the time stream even though his body is currently at the bottom of the ocean, then wish he were alive so I could kill him."

Steve Rogers being killed? That was exciting and unexpected. His return? Not so unexpected, but it better be exciting. I don't think that's too much to ask.

Anyway, like I said, I'm waiting to see what happens and I hope to be impressed -- because so far I am not.

See, to me, the reductive "just kill him" nonsense is the standard, boring tripe. I can get that in real life; I don't need to pay for a comic that pays for Ed Brubaker to come up with that.

Again, try reading the link I posted earlier from plok's website. It addresses this whole thing so much more thoroughly than I do.

Or hey. let us all know your fresh take on Captain America and how the stuff in Reborn could have been done. Because, really, I'm tired of people demanding "new and fresh" when those words don't mean a goddamn thing by themselves. Warm horseshit is "new and fresh" too.

The basic premise just goes to remind me why I've pretty much quit reading mainstream superhero titles the last year or so.

Shame on Marvel. Shame on Brubaker, for that matter.

The Red Skull's consciousness, at this time, remember, was trapped in the body of Aleksander Lukin, and Zola had a machine prepared which would shift him to a new home. This worked when Zola moved the Skull into a machine body at the end of issue 42 (I think that's the issue #).

It seems likely to me, then, that the Red Skull's plan was probably to use Doom's gun to, as they say in the book, freeze Cap's body in space/time, using Sharon Carter as an anchor, or "constant," kind of like bookmarking him in that moment so that it can be returned to later. He might only seem dead to the rest of the world that's moving on in space/time. Then, Doom's machine was intended to connect back to that bookmarked moment and bring through Cap's body, maybe without Cap's mind, allowing the Skull's consciousness to take his place.

At least, that's how it seems to me. Cap being unstuck in time may have been intended all along by the Skull, or not. It could have been a side-effect of Sharon sabotaging the attempt. We'll have to wait and see.

Or I could be completely wrong.

So I should demand standardized characterization? I should set me expectations to "adeuqate?" This story needs to be fresh, exciting and interesting. Going back to the same reasons for doing something is *not* compelling. It's a retread.

But, as I said, I'm holding out hope that the reason is really, really, really good.

Also: doesn’t anyone else in the world think Cat’s Cradle is the much better book? I surely can’t be the only one who wonders why, year after year, high school teachers assign one over the other.

No, I think Slaughterhouse is worlds better than Cat's Cradle. And the thing about Cat's Cradle: you can't teach it. It's a marvelous novel, yes, but using it in a classroom setting inevitably ends with just paging through it saying "ooo, I liked this bit." It was on the reading list in a class I took, and the professor realized it wasn't really a "teaching book" and we dealt with it in half the allotted time.

Now, Galapagos, I think you could get something out of that.

Anyway, to get back on-topic, I found Reborn #1 to be thoroughly mediocre, and the entire method of Cap's survival being a blatant homage to Slaughterhouse-Five (even with the usage of "Listen..." to start the line), wherein someone who's lived a crazy life gets to flash back to their traumatizing days in WWII... well, it makes the whole thing come off as tired and lazy, really. Perhaps Brubaker can get a good story out of it, but I don't care enough to stick around. I haven't read any of his Cap run to date, and now I don't intend to.

But hey, he got mileage out of bringing Bucky back, and everyone thought that was sacrilege, so who knows?

I don't really have an opinion on it, but pick two of three of those already expressed and consider them seconded.

Are we up to ten yet?

This is the first I'd heard of Hitch's mother's passing, so maybe others hadn't heard it.

Marvel stated that the reason Hitch was off Fantastic Four was because he was needed to work on another project. Therefore, Tom Fitzpatrick may have been under the impression that it was an editorial edict that removed Hitch from FF, not the death of his mother.

Brian, what if the only people who read your reviews are people who don't read the comic? I quit reading it when they punked Cap in issue 25.

I looked through it, tried to make sense of the story (I couldn't), and found I was extremely disappointed with the art. The Hitch/Guice teamup produces a lesser brand of Hitch, which is a bad thing.