Captain America by Remender vol. 4: The Iron Nail

When does Remender’s penchant for breaking his protagonists down work best in a story?  That would be when the protagonist in question is getting ready to be replaced.  So even though Steve Rogers feels like a tired man out of time who is also one step behind the bad guys in his fight against the title villain and his partner, Dr. Mindbubble, it doesn’t grate as much as it should.  (Assuming you know that his partner, Sam “The Falcon” Wilson, will be taking over as the title character in the next volume.)  A bigger problem is that a lot of the plot hoops Cap has to run through here have been done before and done better elsewhere.  Superpowered villains ranting about the evils of America?  Present.  S.H.I.E.L.D. developing a superweapon that falls into the wrong hands?  That’s here too.  Cap having to force his way out of an imaginary paradise by sheer force of will?  This story has it.  Rick Remender is a skilled enough writer that he makes all of the contrivances go down relatively smoothly and at a fast pace.  Still, the most memorable parts for me were the visuals artist Nic Klein wrangled from showing us S.H.I.E.L.D.’s city-sized helicarrier in action after it transforms.  It’s tricky to get the kind of scale Klein is playing at to come off effectively on the page, but he manages it.

So it’s not bad overall, but I’m not as excited by these recent volumes as I was for the “Dimension Z” arc.  While the passing of the torch from Rogers to Wilson has the potential to reinvigorate the title, Remender doesn’t set it up as well as he should’ve here.  Wilson spends most of the volume in the background and only emerges at the end with a killer full-page splash to take out the bad guy and save his friend.  It’s certainly an impressive moment.  The character could’ve used more of them, or maybe even a full issue to himself like Jet Black gets here.  I realize that she’s new and needs to be fleshed out, but it felt like she got more — and more varied, as not many people use a drill to ask for cooperation — scenes to show what she’s made of.  Anyway, it’s been shown over the years that Wilson has the strength of character to take on the mantle of Cap and there are four more issues to really sell the transition.  It just would’ve been nice to have seen more of the groundwork for that event laid here.