[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.

It’s hard to know what to make of Captain America at the moment. Ed Brubaker’s long term planning for the book has been exemplary, with the audacious move of restoring Bucky to life being followed with an even more attention-grabbing move. The playoff for killing Steve Rogers was enormous, both in media profile for the title and the storytelling momentum that swung to book through two years’ worth of stories without the need to pause for breath.

And then the pace began to slacken. Bucky Barnes’ adventures seemed to be stuck in a holding pattern, endlessly dwelling on his past. Almost as if the book was waiting for a certain issue number.

It’s impossible to write about ‘Captain America #599′ without considering the wider implications for the character of various hints from Marvel as to the content of next month’s spectacular. It may sound rather shallow to hold Brubaker’s run in less esteem if he has indeed always intended to raise Rogers from the dead, but the writer’s work will be viewed differently if his radicalism does prove to be a front.

The appeal of Brubaker’s run, and the reason why the writer has had so much success in drawing in readers with no particular attachment to Cap, was that he treated the property as a living, breathing entity. Of all Marvel’s properties, Rogers most resembled the Fantastic Four, who for decades have held little appeal for readers due to their static status quo. Over time, this has become a self-perpetuating view, with any actual change to their set-up being dismissed by readers as a temporary gimmick, and abandoned by the publisher when it fails to fuel sales.

This issue itself gives grounds for optimism, with last month’s return of energy to the writing maintained, as Barnes considers over half a century of birthdays. Given the tendency to melancholy the book has shown in recent months, it’s refreshing to see Cap’s musings being interspersed with comparatively light-hearted action, as he fights off an assassination attempt in modern-day New York. Another novel development is the inclusion of the Avengers in the book. While Brubaker has obviously enjoyed his work’s isolation from the Marvel Universe, a story about how his character has grow into his place in the world wouldn’t be complete without an appearance by his team, and the writer sensibly breaks his unwritten rule. At the risk of sounding rude, this issue is a very well crafted brick. It just remains to see what the finished house looks like…

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.

Continue reading »

This week in capsule reviews: Captain America #47, Mighty Avengers #22, She-Hulk #38 and X-Force #12.

Continue reading »

Another batch of capsule reviews from the Comics Daily team, including Blue Beetle #33, Captain America #44, Secret Invasion: Inhumans #4, Ultimate X-Men #98 and X-Force #9. Continue reading »

In a rare display of restraint, Jeph “I ruined Ultimates” Loeb actually manages to squeeze a half-decent story out of this annual. It’s not without its flaws, and there’s an utter laundry list of questions you could ask about why, exactly, this tiny continuity gap needed filling at all, but at least it didn’t feel as though it was insulting me as a reader. A definite step up.

But lets not pretend that it’s actually good. For a start, the title of the book is way off-base. This is an Ultimate Black Panther annual in all but name – Cap’s role in the story is fairly minimal, and largely serves to explain how he managed to impersonate the Panther, but not really why – there are a few jumbled reasons, but no single motivating factor. The reworking of the Panther as a Weapon X “graduate” ties well into the general fabric of the Ultimate Universe, but it does make the character feel watered down compared to his Marvel Universe incarnation. At least the relationship established in this series gives the Panther and Cap a good base for future stories, but as a story itself, this series is left somewhat lacking.

There are two artists in this issue – Marko Djurdjevic illustrates the Panther’s solo “origin”, and while he’s one of Marvel’s Cover Artists du jour, it’s usually great to see his interior work. Here, though, it’s incredibly dark and moody to the point of being hard to read. There are some great panels, and the revelation that the Panther has Wolverine-style claws is only made bearable because he’s drawing it. Bizarrely, that doesn’t seem to have featured in Ultimates 3 at all, despite the fact that Stark is specifically shown putting adamantium claws into the gloves of the fake Panther costume for Cap. Ah well, never too late for a good idea, is it? Or, it seems, a bad one.

The second half of the issue – the story that actually features Captain America – is drawn by Rafa Sandoval, who makes a much better stab at storytelling with clear, Brandon Peterson-esque work. The reduction of Ultimates to a generic Avengers-style superhero title is complete under Loeb, but at least Sandoval gives us a good example of that kind of story to look at, even if reading it feels painful. A definite improvement over recent Ultimates fare, but after the depths plumbed with the previous series, it would’ve been hard to go anywhere but up.