Captain America vol. 2: Castaway in Dimension Z Book II
After the first volume I couldn’t wait to read the conclusion to Cap’s adventures in Dimension Z! Now that I’ve read it… well… it’s not quite on the same level Maybe if it hadn’t started off with a terminally silly scene where Arnim Zola’s tachyon kung-fu powerhouse daughter Jet Black monologues about how much she wants Cap to bang her Cap stirs these strange feelings in her I’d feel differently. Yet that’s not the only problem with this collection. After Ian was kidnapped by Zola at the end of the previous volume, he’s subjected to the mad scientist’s brainwashing and turned against the adopted father who raised him. If you think you know how this is going to play out, then you’re probably right. Then you’ve got the surprise return of one of Cap’s closest allies in a way that makes her really unlikeable, to put it mildly.
Now that all that’s out of the way, it’s time to back up and start talking about what this volume does right. Between Remender’s writing and John Romita Jr.’s art, there’s a tremendous amount of energy infecting the proceedings on the page. Even as Cap’s list of injuries start to defy belief, you can’t help but be caught up in the action as it escalates to catastrophic levels. As Romita Jr.’s swan song at Marvel before heading over to DC, his work here has him leaving on a high note. The work he and Remender did setting up Cap’s relationship with Ian in the previous volume also pays dividends here as I was still invested in the predictable conflict they engaged in here with this volume. Even Cap’s “final” words to his adopted son managed to come off as heartfelt rather than sentimental. Same goes for the ending which finds the character having saved the world yet again at a tremendous cost to himself. No, this second volume doesn’t live up to the intense excitement offered by the first, but it still shows us that Remender’s “Captain America” is a title well worth reading.