It may be by a different company, but Captain America: Reborn feels so thematically like both Green Lantern: Rebirth and the Flash: Rebirth. All of them are about bringing back their titular characters and examining their legacy and their future. That’s okay and all, since both of those two DC series are stellar comics. In the first issue of the story that will see the Steve Rogers Captain America brought back in some way, Steve has become unstuck in time as a result of the Red Skull and Arnim Zola’s plan and Sharon Carter’s interference from back in the Death of Captain America. Bucky and Black Widow infiltrate a H.A.M.M.E.R. ship with help from Nick Fury, and Sharon Carter and the Falcon visit the Mighty Avengers, specifically Vision and Wasp (Hank Pym) to get some help with the confusing machine stuff. Bucky and Black Widow end up getting attacked by Ares and Spider-Man (Venom), and we find out where Arnim Zola’s been hiding: Thunderbolts Mountain, under the careful protection of everyone’s least favorite psychopath at the moment: Norman Osborn.
Technically, this issue is very sound. It’s building on elements that have been clearly presented throughout Ed Brubaker’s run on Captain America. However, this series is definitely inferior to both of the previously mentioned DC miniseries, and it’s inferior to most of Ed Brubaker’s work thus far. The entire Slaughterhouse Five-esque unstuck in time thing is a very bizarre way of bringing Cap back. I still do trust Ed Brubaker on the execution, but this is just another contrived way of bringing a character back from the dead. There’s time travel, which is always confusing. And then there’s the question of where exactly Cap is coming from. Is this Cap from the moment of his death, bouncing around through his past? If that’s so, then how is it that Cap is dead in the current time? Are there two Caps as a result of the Red Skull and Zola’s fiddling? I’m not sure. At any rate, it’s contrived. It’s something that doesn’t fit in the street-level kind of world that Ed Brubaker has constructed.
As for the art, this is why Bryan Hitch couldn’t be bothered to finish his work on Fantastic Four. It’s as good as his normal work, which is pretty dang good. And the transition between him and Butch Guice is rather seemless. I just don’t think that Hitch fits with this series. I know Steve Epting is working on the Marvels Project, but he started this whole story with Brubaker, and he should finish it. At the very least, Guice or Mike Perkins should be the main artists here. Or someone else whose art looks like Epting’s. Even Luke Ross would be fine. In conclusion, this is an underwhelming experience. I hope that’s just because this is the first issue, and things will pick up later on. In fact, I almost count on it, since it’s Ed Brubaker. But I doubt my complaint about the art will change.
Plot: 8.4 Art: 8.8 Dialogue: 8.8 Overall: 8.5
