Captain America by Remender vol. 3: Loose Nuke

If you thought Cap was due for a break after Rick Remender stranded him for two volumes in the wilds of Dimension Z, then you thought wrong.  Not only does the title character have to deal with all of the traumatic events of the decade he was stranded there, but Nuke — the crazed super-soldier of the Vietnam era — has shown up in a small Eastern European country to enact his brand of bloody American vengeance.  He’s only the face of the problem at hand as a former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent turned communist sympathizer seeks to bring down the organization by unlocking the secrets of the Weapon Minus program.  Most of the volume is spent on developing this new threat, who goes by the nickname the Iron Nail, except that he winds up being more distinguished in how he got his powers than his own personality.  The Iron Nail comes off as a fairly generic evil mastermind so far whose successes are dictated though plot necessity than any real struggle on his part.  At the very least, the writer could’ve given him more amusing villainous schemes along the lines of his kidnapping of members of the “one percent” to dig a hole to nowhere.

Remender has better luck developing the fallout from “Dimension Z” as Jet Black is uneasily integrated into the Marvel Universe proper, and Cap copes with those events by setting fire to his past and hugging it out with The Falcon.  The fight against Nuke is somewhat hamstrung by the tired arguments about American foreign policy and freedom of the press that are brought up here; but, against my expectations I wound up feeling a certain amount of sympathy for the supervillain in the end as we see the extent to which he was manipulated.  The proceedings also look better than I was expecting as inkers Klaus Janson and Mariano Taibo and colorist Dean White give artist Carlos Pacheco’s pencils a grittier and more striking look than I’m used to seeing from him.  Nic Klein also turns in solid work for his issue in the middle of the volume.

All in all, this was a decent effort that begins the march to Steve Rogers’ replacement as Captain America.  That involves breaking him down as a character, yet Remender manages that in a more interesting way than we saw from Ed Brubaker and the constant stream of losses he tossed at the character over the course of his run.  My main reservation here comes from the introduction of the new supervillain we see on the final page of the volume.  The man looks like he walked in from a series with a completely different tone.  I can only assume that Remender may be trying to invoke some of the same “Man Out Of Time” vibe that Cap brings to his stories with this new guy.  The way this character is introduced, however, does not leave me optimistic that what the writer is trying here is going to work.