Captain America: Reborn #1
This review written by James Hunt on Jul.02, 2009.
[We don't normally say it, but since this is a big event: Beware. Spoilers are ahead.]
Okay. There’s this series, right. It’s intricately plotted, tightly dialogued and it isn’t afraid of playing the long game when it comes to handling its myriad secrets and mysteries, leaving its fans hanging for months, even years before revealing the whole picture. It’s truly unique in its field, with a multi-faceted cast and a brilliantly consistent level of quality. Just when you get a handle on where it’s going, it yanks the rug from under you. Somehow, against the odds, it’s managed to stretch beyond the genre-ghetto that spawned it and truly enter the public consciousness without ever compromising the singular vision of its creators. And we all know what that series is.
Yes, I like Lost as much as the next person. And the next person is apparently Ed Brubaker, because for reasons I can’t begin to comprehend, he’s managed to replicate one of Lost’s most memorable plot points wholesale. And we’re not just talking homage, here, we’re talking “oh, that’s a good idea, I can use it.” And we know this because the issue delights in using the same wording – that’s THE SAME, not SIMILAR – that Lost itself uses to distill its often complicated concepts into simple, comprehensible slices of dialogue. “Steve Rogers has come unstuck in time,” says Armin Zola. “[They] kept referring to me as The Constant,” says Sharon Carter. “We have to move the island,” says The Falcon. Well, maybe not that last one, things are already starting to blur a little.
Now, let’s be fair – Lost didn’t invent the “unstuck in time” concept. Slaughterhouse Five did it way earlier, for one. But it didn’t have a “Constant” like Lost did and Cap does, nor was Slaughterhouse Five the basis of a massively prominent TV series watched by millions over the last 5 years. Let me be clear: I am in no way questioning Brubaker’s credibility as a writer – everyone gets their ideas from somewhere, after all. I am, however, questioning his timing and judgement. Was now the right time to do an “unstuck in time” plot? And was there really no better way to refer to these concepts than the same way Lost does? The story itself isn’t bad, but it undoubtedly suffers when considered against the wider cultural context of its release.
And what of the story? Well, it’s… okay. Hitch’s pencils are as good as ever, though the scenes of WW2-era Cap make Reborn look far too similar to the Millar/Hitch Ultimates for comfort. In a book where the originality of the writing already feels compromised, it doesn’t help to have large swathes of the artwork looking like re-purposed Ultimates offcuts. The prominent use of both Mighty and Dark Avengers cast members takes the book outside Captain America’s usual insular world, justifying the story’s spinning-out into a miniseries, but the additional grounding in the Marvel Universe means that it lacks the timeless quality of Brubaker’s run to date. It’s all a bit, well, underwhelming.
One thing you can’t fault it for, however, is delivering what it was supposed to. If you want to know what happened to Steve Rogers, well good news: there’s no dodging it here. And the question of how they’ll get him from where he is to where he should be does sound like a story I want to read. The only thing that remains to be seen is whether the rest of the series can give me something to worry about that takes precedence over how similar its plot points are to Lost. It’s not impossible, but really, that shouldn’t have been this big of a distraction in the first place.
July 2nd, 2009 on 10:48 am
Plus, of course, there’s something straaaangely familiar about that whole “Everyone thinks this iconic superhero is dead, but! He’s actually trapped back in time!” thing that I can’t *quite* put my finger on…
July 2nd, 2009 on 3:05 pm
“Popular superhero appears to die after being shot with a magic time-travel gun” is a strange plot to come up twice in the same year, that’s for sure.
July 2nd, 2009 on 11:30 pm
What with just about every issue of Captain America containing at least 60 references/flashbacks/etc. of WWII (or events involved), I think it was only a matter of time until Ed actually brought him back there.
July 5th, 2009 on 6:36 pm
Not having watched Lost since the first series, does its use of the unstuck in time stuff link back to WW2?
Because if not…. well, I’m completely amazed people are somehow thinking any minor terminology overlap makes it more of a Lost homage than a Slaughterhouse 5 – a book, just to remind everyone, *is about a WW2 soldier becoming unstuck in time*.
(Of course, the unstuck in time stuff fits perfectly with Cap America, making literal the modern-origins of the character *as a character unstuck in time*.)
Also – James, man. If Lost has the line “XYZ has come unstuck in time” it’s because they’re both homaging the famous opening line of Slaughterhouse 5, “Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time”. It’s one of the most famous lines in the whole of Vonnegut.
I kinda feel sorry for Ed on this one, in that it’s all been set up years earlier, as io9 worked out before* and… well, what to do?
This comment has been brought to you by the phrase “unstuck in time”.
KG
*http://io9.com/5301510/is-this-the-secret-behind-captain-americas-rebirth
July 5th, 2009 on 8:08 pm
It’s not the phrase “unstuck in time” that raises the red flag as much as the combination of using the phrase in conjunction with the concept of “a constant”. This combination is what makes LOST so very different from Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five.
In the LOST ‘verse, someone who has become unstuck in time will experience a series of brain injuries that start small and eventually result in massive hemorraging leading to death. The only way this can be avoided is if the person who is unstuck in time can connect to “a constant”. The constant being a person who lives in both time periods that they have some sort of connection to.
The true stroke of genuis was in the way the LOST writers deftly managed to combine this abstract concept with an emotionally moving story about love lost and regained despite great odds and much suffering. The ep is regarded by many critics and fans as one of the best of the series.
That Brubaker would partially lift the concept, given it’s recent resurgence in popularity, is questionable. But the fact that he wholesale reused the new twist that the LOST writers brought to that concept is flagrant plagiarism.
Yep, Brubaker plagiarized. That’s a big difference from creating an homage, or using a literary allusion. He took someone else’s original idea and gave no credit for the idea.
By combining the romance of “a constant” with the sci-fi chestnut of becoming “unstuck in time”, the writers of LOST created one of the better original ideas to come out of pop culture in the last few years.
This comment has been brought to you by the phrase “intellectual property”.
July 5th, 2009 on 10:16 pm
Hey Kieron – in fairness, I did acknowledge that Slaughterhouse Five did it first – but Lost seems like the more obvious reference point. Not because of the time periods in play (though Lost does have a degree of WW2-era action) but because of the “constant” being a necessary component of the time-travel, which something Vonnegut didn’t use, but Lost did. Brubaker may have been setting it up a couple of years ago (nor would I ever suggest otherwise) but Lost still pre-dates it, having been doing time-skip stuff since late ‘06.
I’m not so sure I’d go as far as to call it plagiarism, as Mr. Kirby Vs. Shark here does, but I do question the judgement of using the concepts at the same time that they’re receiving such prominent exposure elsewhere. My point about the terminology was just that Brubaker could’ve dressed it up so that it wasn’t so distractingly similar – because that’s what it was: a distraction.
Certainly, 10 years down the line when the context of the story has waned a little, this won’t be an issue, but right now, that’s my experience as a reader, and that’s why the impression makes up the bulk of the review. I can rationalise and analyse why that is, but it’s never going to change the gut reaction.
July 6th, 2009 on 9:52 am
James: Lost has WW2 stuff in? Great. Okay – Is Lost *just* about a WW2 solider unstuck in time. It’s not, and that’s why no matter what else may be there is why Cap is primarily a SH5 homage.
You said that SH5 did the concept first, but you also wrote: “And we know this because the issue delights in using the same wording – that’s THE SAME, not SIMILAR – that Lost itself uses to distill its often complicated concepts into simple, comprehensible slices of dialogue. “Steve Rogers has come unstuck in time,” says Armin Zola”
That shows you believe the line of dialogue comes from Lost. It doesn’t. It comes from Slaughterhouse 5 – *it’s the most famous line in slaughterhouse 5* – and Lost apparently homaged it. You giving Lost primacy is openly insane.
God knows about the Constant, really. I wonder if Ed realised that people were going to call him on it, and decided that a nod towards Lost would be better than not. As in, the ground-work for the Cap/Carter was already clearly there – and there before Lost made it explicit – so he thought that by lampshading it with the terminology Lost used, the readers would be more likely to go along. I dunno.
I suspect it’s been proved that here was one area he made a mistake – as in, expecting readers to grasp the subtleties of homage. I now worry people are going to accuse me of ripping off Paton in my Ares mini, y’know?*
(I only mention *that* one because it’s in the preview art.)
KG
*Actually, I’ll be fine for the reasons you say. Namely it’s an older film. Unless, of course, someone else homages it in the next few months on a TV show, and then I’m a plagarist.
July 6th, 2009 on 1:07 pm
Again, though, I was giving Lost the nod in terms of its language because it happened right alongside another concept that has an explanation taken directly from Lost, not because I think Lost Said It First. And even if I hadn’t been aware of SH5, would that invalidate my reading of the story? I didn’t see a caption at the start saying “Warning: you must have read Slaughterhouse Five before starting this issue!” so I can only assume it wouldn’t have.
The point I make in the review, and that I stand by, is that there was ample time to rework the dialogue to avoid any Lost comparisons when it became apparent they’d be made. The creative term, from writing through editorial, opted not to do so. Arguably, that choice services the long-term interests of the story – but in the short term, it means people like me can’t read it without being distracted by the similarities.
July 6th, 2009 on 1:26 pm
From the perspective of someone who’s never read SH5, I thought “So it goes” was the most famous line in the book? ;-)
July 6th, 2009 on 2:28 pm
Seb: Apart from that one!
James: Cap America as Billy Pilgrim is the high concept for it. You rework “Unstuck in time” and you stop being a SH5 pastiche in the same way rewriting a riff off Genesis to not start with “In the beginning, there was darkness” or whatever.
As a friend, man, I’m going to be relatively polite: your expressing of your reaction to the work was unfair to Brubaker. You say the only reason he could write what he did was because he wanted to rip off Lost. That’s claiming enormous powers of telepathy. You can say it as a “any consumer of pop culture can only wonder why we appear to be lifting dialogue entirely from Lost” or something similar – which could be just as cutting – because you’re talking about the work and your response to it.
KG
July 6th, 2009 on 4:48 pm
Hmm. I have to say, I did want to be fair to Brubaker, which is why I tried to criticise the context rather than content of the story, but I admit I did get carried away when emphasising the similarities I perceived with Lost, and obviously there’s no-one else I can blame for that. I don’t have anything more to add, except to say that I will, of course, keep this discussion in mind – particularly when #2 comes out!
July 7th, 2009 on 7:40 am
Wow! Kieron Gillen, why accuse the critic of not being fair? His response was totally valid. He found the source material and the timing of the work questionable. So he called the work into question. That’s what critics are supposed to do.
Maybe instead of riding the critic, or shamelessly plugging your own upcoming work (yawn!), you should have educated yourself by watching “The Constant.” Eps of LOST are easy enough to come by online. You yourself said you hadn’t watched the show since the first season (great way to establish your credibility on the topic, by the way!).Instead, you ride the critic and come off sounding like a narrow-minded, Brubaker apologist.
Let the critic do his job, your censorship is boresome.
July 7th, 2009 on 10:15 am
Kirby: I’m friendly with James, Kirby. I’m having a conversation. You may note, I’ve not been talking to you.
I’m also a pop-culture critic for 15 years or so. A critic can write what he wants, sure… but not if they want to be any good. James *is* good and wants to be better, and the line of argument was – as he admits – not exactly where he wanted to go. He took a rhetorical line rather than offering something with a bit more stringency.
Were I his editor, I’d have picked up on it and questioned it, which is what I’m increasingly doing here. Why did you write that? Why are you claiming something you know that you cannot realistically claim? Yeah, it’s funny. But perhaps you could have been just as funny and just as cutting without compromising on actually being correct. *Your stylistic choice was sub-optimum*.
I’m no more censoring James than James is censoring Brubaker. Criticism is human expression too – that is, art – so subject to criticism.
I’m pleased you’re enjoying Lost.
KG
July 8th, 2009 on 4:43 pm
I totally agree with the addition of the wider universe lessening the “timelessness” of the run, and I’m not sure how I feel about it going away from the main series, for one thing, what’s going to happen in the main series while this mini goes on for (in theory) five months? It is monthly right? Does it crossover or do we get months of treading water? or will we have to wait a year or so like we did for Ultimates 2?
Also, with all the Theatre of War One Shots, and flashback stories and talking about Rogers, I don’t feel like we’ve had time to miss him yet. As much as I loved Winter Soldier, I want to see him as Cap for a while longer. All in all I’m a bit disappointed with Reborn, but the rest of the series has been so bloody good that I have faith I’ll love it by the end of it (fingers crossed).
July 8th, 2009 on 9:14 pm
Val, they’re going to release #601 this (or next?) month and then go on hiatus until about November/December (maybe January) once Reborn is done. Can’t remember where I read it, but I’m pretty sure that’s it.
July 9th, 2009 on 11:25 am
Ah, ok. That’s better (Iguess). A bit pointless to have it as a mini, but I guess that’s comics.