by Josh Powell, Editor-at-Large

Official Synopsis:
THE CAPTAINS AMERICA MOURN THEIR FALLEN! After the harrowing events of CAPTAIN AMERICA: COLD WAR, the Captains America return home to mourn their fallen – and strive to honor the power of legacy. Plus: The secret origin of Sam Wilson’s new shield revealed, and a bold new direction for Sharon Carter! In honor of 750 issues of CAPTAIN AMERICA, a team of fan-favorite guest writers join forces with superstar artists to spin timeless tales celebrating the epic history of the star-spangled hero! Don’t miss this jam-packed oversized issue!

Creative Team:

A nice milestone hodgepodge for The First Avenger making it 3/4 of the way to the biggie that only Superman and Batman have reached so far.

Tochi Onyebuchi starts things off with “A Cup of Tea”, said cup being consumed by Sam Wilson and Misty Knight as they (well, he) angst over the snazzy new shield she had made for him with love from Iron Man, Thor and the Black Panther, amongst others (“Mayor Luke Cage”- say what?).  Seems Mr. Wilson is concerned that those are some mighty big floppy red boots to fill, to say nothing of the symbolism of a black man charging around draped in the flag in these troubled times.

Onyebuchi is still best known for his prose work (see World Fantasy Award-winning Riot Baby) but he and artist R.B. Silva (House/Powers/Dawn of X) have already teamed up to explore this theme before in Captain America: Symbol of Truth.  Even in this 65-page monster, there’s no time to dwell on it here, though- the next story is queued up in the player!- so fortunately some anonymous mooks happen by (seriously- their identity is so irrelevant and they are rendered unconscious so quickly, they never do figure out who they were- Hydra? A.I.M.? SMERSH? S.P.E.C.T.R.E.?  Proud Boys?)  Who cares!  The point is they have such fun beating their asses for a few panels that Sam decides a little nationalistic jingoism here and there is good for the soul, and boy does that shield bounce off face real good.

Next up are Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, a writing team who mainly work with Brandon Sanderson, the fantasy author who finished off the Wheel of Time and then banged out every other fantasy series for the last fifteen years and probably polished off his latest in the time it took me to write this review.  Lanzing and Kelly pull the assignment of wrapping up some loose ends with Classic Cap by writing a piece set at the funeral of Steve Aubrey, the original Destroyer/Union Jack, who was holding it down in WWII while Cap and Bucky got all the press sinking battleships with the Sub-Mariner and the original Human Torch (and Toro).  Forgotten for the better part of 70 years, he recently got a chance to pull off his long-delayed Heroic Death (and unlike Steve Rogers, Steve Aubrey’s will probably stick).  All the Timely characters left get to say a few words, including the Buckminster Soldier, but he has to do it under a tree in the rain, because lately he has been a bad sidekick (for Heroic Reasons) and everyone is mad at him.  He and Steve patch things up, mostly, and then the grandson of yet another old comrade (of sorts) comes wandering in through the rain to give them the adventure key to really stick it to latest bad guy group The Outer Circle hard.  Carmen Carnero and Nolan Woodard supply the appropriately subdued art for “Nothing But A Fight.”

With two nearly full-size stories to take care of the continuing action in the can, Marvel allows another issue’s worth of space for no fewer than five quick vignettes so various creative teams can tip their winged caps to the icon.

Stephanie Williams and Rachael Stott contribute “Reflections” wherein Sam Wilson shows up in his Cap gear to regale a captive audience of Harlem schoolchildren with stories of the times that he still dressed like a bird, and joined the Avengers, and Hawkeye was a racist dick, and he (Sam, not Clint) was driven to overcompensate by deploying the questionable battle tactic of kicking a concrete man in the head.

Industry legend J.M. (Moonshadow) DeMatteis teams up with relative newcomer Sara (Ultimate Spider-Man) Pichelli (scratch that, what am I talking about?  USM is vintage now) to tell “The Hero”, the story of Arnie Roth, one of Marvel’s first crypto-gay characters, who they floated back in the 80s to show that Cap was down with everybody, though society was too jittery for them to outright say so in a book meant for children! children!  Of course, all super heroes are opposed to intolerance, but Cap’s Rogues Gallery in particular includes a bunch of super-powered actual nazis so things were rough for Arnie standing next to him as an LGBT-Jew (there’s a character idea).  He came through it all okay (no such luck for his boyfriend), but what’s he doing now?  Well, he’s dead (spoiler) as I guess he would be since Cap is over 100 and they were contemporaries.  Nevertheless, this tale shows he left his mark on the MU by showing scrawny Steve how to act when he got muscles.

Dan Jurgens and Brett Breeding prove they are still alive (they were responsible for the Death of Superman mega-seller in the 90s) and provide a blast from the past with “Then & Now”.  It’s interesting to consider Cap’s perpetually updated chronology, continually having been awakened Just A Few Years Ago.  Here Iron Man is shown in one of his first red-and-gold models from circa 1970, but incredulous that he has to explain why phones need cords.  The Vietnam Memorial was not built when Cap first emerged from that iceberg, but here he visits it and later someone appears to be having to tell him that Obama happened.  Super-powered nazis are still there, with splash pages of Cap punching Baron Zero, and then handing it off to Sam to crush the Red Skull because he’s occupied breaking the jaw of the Hate Monger, who you will recall was literally Hitler (albeit a clone) with a ray gun that turned people into assholes.  Northstar shows up in the background as well, as though to show, that, in these enlightened times, we have even grown to be near-universally tolerant of Canadians.

Steve and Sam bro-bond while comparing shield-slinging abilities in Cody Ziglar (She-Hulk: Attorney At Law) and Marcus Williams’ “The Mantle”, and Daniel Acu˜a illustrates industry veteran and noted-refrigerator-death-objector Gail Simone’s volume-ending tale of urchins who unfortunately bear witness to Cap getting shot in the head but fortunately take possession of his shield before Hydra can get it and then show pluck and grit by keeping it safe until its rightful owner can reclaim it (spoiler: he’s okay).

Overall, a solid volume, uneven as these buffet-style compilations are, but what’s not to love about a triple-sized dose of red, white and blue uplift this Independence Day? 

Rating:
ComicsOnline gives Captain America #750 – (!) a patriotic July 4 out of 5 stars.

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