Captain America’s a rather curious blend these days, mixing provocative, big statements with a distinctly old-school tone and feel. Granted, the recent controversy over the use of Republican slogans in the racist Watchdog movement’s demonstration was an unintentional way of bringing one of the book’s lower-key arcs back into the spotlight, but there’s a general canniness to the way the old and new are combined here, which doesn’t always play out in the way that would be expected. The resolution to the ‘Death of Captain America’ scenario had the retrograde step for the book being the headline attraction, with Steve Rogers’ return all over the news-stands, while the unexpected element of allowing Bucky to retain the title and shield was relegated to a footnote. The outcry over the first part of Two Americas has shown the delicate balance that Brubaker is striking, injecting modern relevance into an apparently traditional tale of Captain America battling a separatist movement.

This second instalment continues to present an outwardly conventional face, with Bucky’s plan to infiltrate the Watchdogs going awry and the insane 1950s duplicate of Steve Rogers receiving an unexpected addition to his arsenal, but there a degree of subversiveness under the surface. Much of the conventional feeling comes from the artistic partnership of Luke Ross and Butch Guice. It’s hard to pinpoint whether the pencils or Guice’s heavy, near-noir inks imbue the book with it’s old-school vibe, but there’s an interesting feeling of the middle of the twentieth century in the Falcon’s attempted flight trough the fire escape of a run-down hotel. The narrative has given the fifties Cap the upper hand, and the art reflects this by adding an element of his lost era to the action.

What sets the book above its pulp inspirations is the occasional moments of sophistication, such as the 50s Cap’s fleeting recognition that the world he desires is long gone or continued re-writing of Bucky’s origin to increase the character’s plausibility. The stand-alone components of Brubaker’s Captain America may sometimes slip of the radar, devoid of reference to the broader Marvel Universe, but there’s a steady vein of richness running through the apparently inconsistent book.

With the return of Steve Rogers announced, most people assumed that the question posed in the title of this book was a bit of a foregone conclusion. However, anyone who felt a bit smug about that gets to eat their own words now, because as it turns out, the answer wasn’t what everyone expected. And since this does take place after an issue that isn’t actually out yet, I’ll extend a spoiler warning: stop reading now if you’re waiting for Reborn #6.

The rest of you, though, can keep reading.

So. The news that Rogers won’t immediately re-assume the role of Captain America was, for what it’s worth, something of a twist. Whether this is a genuine act of deference or merely killing time to allow for a more public return during Siege is less clear – but for now, we’re free to enjoy the potential stories it opens up. Will Steve take on a new identity? Will Bucky give it up before the classic Avengers team reassembles? It isn’t immediately clear, and that, in itself, is an impressive quality in a comic, because it means that Brubaker’s plotting and characters are well-formed enough to throw doubt on company character politics – even when there’s a Captain America movie in the works.

The issue itself, while posed as an epilogue to Reborn, is actually more of a segue back into the regular series, with Brubaker writing and Guice on art. The content, though, marks it out as something particularly special, with a fantastic grasp on the role of Captain America and how it applies to both Bucky and Rogers. Brubaker infuses Rogers in particular with an unusual sense of melancholy about being Captain America – and not just because of what he thinks is in store for Bucky if he re-assumes the role. There’s one fantastic scene where Steve watches Bucky in action, and when he steps in himself, it’s shown as not so much as a natural response, more as an entirely mechanical one. Would that all superhero comics were capable of such nuance.

Although Reborn ultimately came over as a bit underwhelming, this issue reminds us exactly how Brubaker managed to make Captain America into such a high-selling title in the first place. Yes, it’s been out a couple of weeks now, but despite the title of this one-shot, it’s worth picking up for plenty of reasons far beyond the mere plot it contains. It’s really the kind of character piece that can be enjoyed over and over.

This week, we serve up more capsule reviews for Captain America #48, Dark Reign: Elektra #1, Thunderbolts #130 and X-Men: Sword of the Braddocks #1.

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Well…that was all a bit of a damp squib, wasn’t it? After 4 issues inching out a few fairly interesting revelations about the secret history of the Ultimate Universe, the entire series turns out to be nothing more than an extended trailer for Ultimatum. Call me old fashioned, but I like to see an actual story in this miniseries.

Perhaps the biggest slip up is that the retelling of Richard Parker’s past has created a discrepancy in the allegedly tight Ultimate continuity. Peter was old enough to remember his family hanging out with the members of the Brock household, but as Ultimate Origins tells it, his parents were killed in an explosion when he was a tiny baby. I’m generally quite forgiving of apparent errors in continuity, but with the series now over, it seems certain that this is an outright error. Likewise, Ultimate X-Men has its timeline mangled yet again. It’s disappointing, especially when the whole point of the title was to lay out the “planned” history of the Ultimate Universe

If the introduction of the apparent Ultimate Black Panther towards the end seems tacked on, then the appearance of Ultimate Rick Jones is positively nailed unconvincingly onto Ultimate Origin’s forehead. It’s frustrating that a series that started with a fair amount of promise should stumble so badly at the end, utterly failing to wrap up any of its threads. It’s a wellspring of missed opportunities, and represents Bendis’ most genuinely lacklustre effort in some time – it feels more like it was compiled from his story notes than a comic he wrote.

The solicitation for #5 (always a good reference point) utterly screams “rewrite” when it mentions Bruce Banner and suggests a big revelation about his “destiny” despite the fact that the issue as released features neither hide nor hair of him. It seems likely that the series conclusion was reworked to provide a clearer lead-in to “Ultimatum”. Unfortunately, if even Bendis can’t make a crossover seem interesting, then god help us when Jeph “creative nadir” Loeb finally takes the reins.

We’ve said it before on this site a few times, but it does bear repeating that the Ultimate universe is in an awfully strange place at the moment. The catastrophe of the supposed flagship title, Ultimates, has of course had its bones picked over ad nauseam in the now-months-long wait between the third and fourth issues (that itself seeming to signify some pretty large-scale rewrites, you’d think). But elsewhere, there’s an increasing sense of pointlessness to the whole thing. Ultimate X-Men has just come out of an interminably dull Robert Kirkman run which seemed to forget it was even part of the shared universe, while Ultimate Fantastic Four hasn’t done anything of note since Warren Ellis’ run. Even Ultimate Spider-Man, the one shining light of the entire imprint, seems less concerned with building long-term story setups than it is with telling some cracking standalone stories – ones which you feel Bendis could do just as easily in a continuity-free, All Star kind of environment.

All this means that it’s hard to see what purpose a series like Ultimate Origins serves – it almost feels like an attempt to quickly tie up the various loose ends that have been planted over the years and which should have ended up meaning rather more, before Ultimatum comes along and puts the whole thing out of its misery (although again, with the Ultimates 3 delays, it’s hard to know what the hell’s going to happen with Jeph Loeb’s promised earth-shattering crossover – and it’s hard to care). What’s strange also is, after very little in the way of buildup, the series has suddenly been promoted quite heavily – the whole enterprise reeks of hasty afterthought, really.

Still, that said, it’s a chance for Bendis to start joining the dots, and in a way it is satisfying to begin to see some payoffs for things that you suspect he and Millar were planning all along. More than anyone else, it’s his universe, and if he wants to play around with it and give a firm “origin” for every instance of superpowers contained within, then so be it. It’s hard to deny that it’s quite a fun little read – the best moments coming in WW2 flashback, with the unfortunate demise of the first “Captain America” (a neat idea in and of itself), not to mention the bizarre team-up of Nick Fury, James Howlett and Wilson Fisk.

Art comes from Butch Guice, of whom I’ve been a fan since the days he was called Jackson Guice and drawing Action Comics. Here, as with his recent fill-in work on Captain America, his pencils are perhaps a little overly drenched in those thick inks and dark colours that have become something of a Marvel trademark of late, and so his usual level of character expression, and his elegant flowing lines, aren’t allowed to be quite so evident. Nevertheless, it’s decent, clear art that tells the story effectively, and the opening sequence with Spidey and the Hulk is particularly strong.

One instance of dodgy chronology aside (the first Hulk “incident” was only six months ago? Really? So two-and-a-half volumes of Ultimates and almost a hundred issues of Ult Spidey have happened since then?), this does bear the hallmarks of a masterplan coming to fruition – in fact, it feels like the opening salvo in a universe-shattering crossover, rather than one simply designed to give us some background. Is it too late to hand Ultimatum over to Bendis instead, do you think? Surely if anyone’s entitled to tear the place down, it’s him – Loeb’s already done enough of that with Ultimates, after all.

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To this day, I remain surprised that Brubaker has made me into a Captain America fan. I swear I’ll stop mentioning it soon. This issue sees the final part of the second part in Brubaker’s “Death of” epic, entitled “The Burden of Dreams.” With Bucky now firmly in the Captain America identity, the series finally has its title character back, after a fashion. So naturally, Brubaker gives us yet another twist…

Firstly, I’m going to address the issue of the Black Widow. It’s well-documented that Secret Invasion is going to stay well out of Captain America while Brubaker tells his story. However, plenty of people in the cast are also in the cast of other books – The Widow is currently appearing in Mighty Avengers and Captain America sporting vastly different looks (one has short hair, one doesn’t). Given that the skrulls were originally a metaphor for cold-war communism, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the Widow appearing in Mighty Avengers would be a good choice for an infiltrator – it could be a simple matter of continuity, as she appears to exit the cast of the title with this issue, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it was more than that.

Anyway, back to the action. Brubaker is currently weaving sub-plots in an utterly masterful way. Sharon’s pregnancy is certainly an interesting one – the child of Captain America is, after all, a big deal. Meanwhile, Bucky is doing very well as the new Cap when fighting hand to hand, but he finds that the other side of Captain America – being the icon – doesn’t come so naturally as he fails to inspire anything in a small crowd of rioting civilians, something that Rogers would’ve whipped into order in seconds. Either way, Bucky’s soon going to be public as the new Cap, and that’s an exciting prospect.

Elsewhere, Sharon’s pregnancy is slowly giving her the psychological impetus to break free of the Skull’s control. As she does so, she tries to escape and in the process, stumbles across a stasis tank that appears to contain the body of… Steve Rogers. Ye gods.

There could be a million explanations for what this is, but either way, it’s one hell of a cliffhanger. The mix of pseudo-political intrigue, modern espionage and character-based drama gives the title a flavour unlike any other Marvel book, and makes it easily the best of Brubaker’s ongoing Marvel Universe comics. Worth giving a try.