Today, Patrick and Shelby are discussing Captain America 1-3, originally released November 21th, December 19th, 2012 and January 16th, 2013.

Patrick: Captain America is a character defined by his time. Other characters may be products of the time during which their creators were writing them – Superman, Wolverine, Deadpool, Hal Jordan – all of these guys bear the stamps of the decades they were introduced. But that Captain America concept is frozen in time, locked in place by a character-defining opportunity to kick Nazi-ass. So how does one update the intentionally old-fashioned? It’s not even like you can just drop Steve Rogers into a modern American military conflict and watch the action play out: we’re not exactly storming beaches anymore. So where’s an old soldier supposed to feel at home? Why, a dangerous, barren wasteland that ignores the laws of physics, of course!

The series starts with Cap stopping the Eco-Terrorist, Green Skull, from attacking New York City. All in a day’s work for Steve Rogers, I guess – because he doesn’t even wait to see the cops pull the Green Skull out of the plane wreckage before dashing off to the next mission. This mission is infiltrating a subway line mysteriously in service after 80 years of inactivity. Rogers boards the train which unexpectedly whisks him off to Dimension Z. Dimension Z is FUCKING WEIRD.

I’d like to throw the breaks on the recap here for just a second, because this is precisely where I threw my hands up and said “WHAT.” It appears to be a hard left turn to drop Captain America in an aggressively strange science fiction universe, but that’s only in the light of the pages that have come before. The rest of the series thus far (which I will get to, I promise) is about Steve’s adventures stranded in this world. It’s the classic Hero’s Journey – except the safe, familiar world of Captain America is one where he fights supervillains and is employed by S.H.I.E.L.D. But at the time I was reading it, I just saw a stark shift in the tone AND genre of the book I was reading and gave it up mid-issue.

Like a month later, Shelby asked me if I was reading Captain America, and I gave that grunt of an asshole who hadn’t put in the effort to read an entire issue but decided I didn’t like it anyway. At my good friend’s insistence, I went back to the series and discovered that I had tapped out precisely when the story was starting in earnest. Herewith, the rest of that story:

Rogers is quickly captured and sedated by his alien overlords. He wakes up hours later, strapped to a medical slab (you know, the kind you see in James Bond movies) and sees human child floating in a tube nearby. Clearly, there’s some nefarious shit going on here. The mastermind of this deception (and this dimesion) is Arnim Zola – former Nazi scientist, current runner-up in a Krang look-a-like contest.

Zola injects something in the Cap’s chest that Hurts Like Hell. So Captain America makes a break for it, gathering his costume, his shield, and that boy in the tube, and venturing out into the wilderness. And then a year passes.

Yup – a year. (Issue two just starts with a black page that reads in giant white letters “One Year Later.” I nearly spit out my gum – and I don’t even chew gum.)

In that time, the only thing Captain America has managed to do is survive and keep the tube-boy alive with him. Rogers names the kid Ian, after his grandfather. The landscape is just full of nightmarish dangers, and even though Cap starts to learn the way things work, he has persistent migraines and body pains from that terrible injection over a year ago. Eventually, our father-son-ish pair fall in with a tribe of rock-men in hiding from their tyrannical overlord. Rock-men not being known for their civility, some of their animosity boils over in to some outright in-fighting. Cap’s a stand-up guy, so he steps in to try and make peace between the rock-men – which he succeeds in doing while also getting this shit kicked out of him. But why isn’t he bleeding more? Oh, I’ll field this one: IT’S BECAUSE ZOLA IS INSIDE YOUR CHEST NOW.

For all the darkness (and weirdness!) jam-packed into these pages, there’s a remarkable amount of heart. Maybe I’m just a sucker for fathers and sons alone against the world. Hell, they don’t even need to be alone against the world. One of the most effective images in the story so far is simple – almost domestic: Cap and Ian making camp for the night.

The details here are otherworldly – the craggy landscape, the shield-as-wok – but the sentiment is immediately recognizable. Artist John Romita, Jr. gives both of the characters this distant look of indifference, as though they’re both disappointed to spend another night like this, but too exhausted to do anything about it. Which is just how camping is (if you’re doing it right). As much as this series earns its bread from showing us the unexplainable wilds of Dimension Z, I see an awful lot of my own experience  camping with my father here.

Another way the series grounds itself is with regular flashbacks to Steve’s youth – growing up poor in the ’20s in Manhattan. Shelby, what do you make of those flashbacks? They show Steve in a world where he really could have used a father, but they also show him in a position without strength. While he may find himself on the opposite end of both of those equations, it’s not entirely clear what purpose they’re meant to serve. Maybe they’re just there so we remember we’re talking about the Sentinel of Liberty, and not just any muscle bound jerk in sci-fi land?

Shelby:  I think it’s so interesting that what made you originally give up on this title was what made me stick with it. As soon as our Dashing Hero was dumped into crazy sci-fi land, I was instantly hooked. I love science fiction, and I love seeing straight-laced, straight-forward Steve Rogers in this outlandish setting. I’m glad I was able to convince you to quit being such an asshole and pick this up again.

There are a lot of interesting things happening here with identity. In issue 1, Steve is considering marrying his ladylove Sharon. She tells him she won’t make him stop being Captain America, but that she wants to marry Steve Rogers; she’s putting Steve in the position of choosing which of his identities he wants to use. Does he want to “lose himself in the uniform” and be the super-soldier forever? Or does he want a chance to just be Steve? Before he can decide, he’s thrust into a world where the only thing he can do is rely on his super-soldier identity to survive, and he can only just barely do that. He’s applying his soldier’s instinct and tactical skills to an environment that doesn’t follow any sort of logic; his skills are only just applicable. Finally, though, in issue 3, Steve’s identities fall apart completely. His super-solidering fails him when he is unable to defeat the rock-man tyrant. His “Steve Rogers, man who always stands up,” identity fails him when his advice gets the only person to show him any kindness in this world killed. On top of all that, he’s physically got another identity to deal with.

Not only can Steve not rely on everything that’s made him who he is, he literally has got someone else inside if him.

This title is a really unique addition to the Marvel lineup. I feel like it shouldn’t work, for all the reasons Patrick listed in his recap. And yet, I think we’re on to something really special here. Remender is stripping away everything from Cap, boiling him down to just his very essence as a character. We’re going to see what truly makes Steve the man he is, and what kind of man this situation is going to turn him into. I’m loving this breaking down process so far, and I’m looking forward to seeing how Cap is going to be rebuilt. Also, he’s got a Zola TV in his chest now, how the hell is he going to explain THAT once he gets back to Manhattan?For a complete list of what we’re reading, head on over to our Pull List page.  Whenever possible, buy your comics from your local mom and pop comic bookstore.  If you want to rock digital copies, head on over to Comixology and download issues there.  There’s no need to pirate, right?