Captain America: Reborn - a Review

Writer: Ed Brubaker; Pencils: Bryan Hitch; Inks: Butch Guice

Rating 3 out of 5 stars

The six issue Reborn miniseries features the resurrection of Steve Rogers, the original Captain America, who was assassinated by his arch-enemy the Red Skull three years ago.

I've been reading the Captain America series regularly for two decades now, and am a big fan of the character. When he was killed off, a lot of people asked me how I felt. My typical response was "Eh, sooner or later Marvel will bring him back." And, yep, here we are, a few years down the road, and he has indeed returned.

At the time Captain America was killed, the Red Skull's consciousness was stuck sharing the body of former Soviet General Alexsander Lukin (long story). This was an arrangement that neither the Skull nor Lukin were happy with. So, they acquired time travel technology from Doctor Doom, and had the insane cyborg geneticist Arnim Zola modify it. When Cap was shot, he wasn't truly killed, but placed within a temporal lock, "frozen in a single moment in time."

What the Skull and Lukin planned was to later have Doom's machine pull Cap's body back to the present. At this point the Skull's consciousness would be transferred into Cap's mind, taking it over. However, the machinery was destroyed by Cap's girlfriend, SHIELD agent Sharon Carter. She then killed Lukin, and the Skull's mind was shunted over to one of Arnim Zola's spare robot bodies.

As Reborn opens, Steve Rogers is now unstuck in time, bouncing back and forth throughout his personal history. Sharon and the Avengers have finally realized what has happened, and set out to reclaim Doom's technology so they can rescue Cap.

Unfortunately, the time device is in the custody of Norman Osborn, the former Green Goblin, now the head of the Department of Homeland Security. Even though Osborn is mentally unbalanced, he is still a brilliant scientist. And his examinations of the confiscated tech have also led him to deduce Cap's true fate.

Osborn realizes that the Captain America's return would be a serious threat to the power he's amassed. But if the Red Skull was in control of Steve Rogers body, then Osborn could use him. A miraculously revived Cap who endorsed Osborn would help to cement the former supervillain's popularity and political influence. (Obviously it seems foolish for Osborn to believe the Red Skull would work for him. But Osborn, despite the fact that he thinks he's in control, is really not playing with a full deck, and so the plan seems perfectly reasonable to him.)

Osborn arranges for the Skull's right hand man Crossbones and daughter Sin to be released from prison. The pair join up with Zola, locate the Skull, and travel to Doctor Doom's country of Latveria. The not-so-good Doctor completes the experiment, pulling Cap out of the timestream, and transferring the Skull's mind into him.

The Skull, in control of Steve Rogers' body, leads Crossbones, Sin, and the terrorist organization A.I.M. against Sharon Carter, the new Captain America (Rogers' old partner Bucky Barnes), and the Avengers. This massive battle spills out into Washington DC. All the while, within Steve Rogers' mind, he and the Skull are engaged in a monumental struggle for control.

I seriously doubt that I am giving anything away when I say that Steve Rogers drives the Red Skull out of his body. We then have the long awaited first proper meeting of Steve and Bucky since the later's resurrection as the Winter Soldier. It's nicely underplayed by writer Ed Brubaker, as we see the respect and confidence each has for the other.

We also have Steve and Sharon reunited at the end of the miniseries. Again, Brubaker goes for a low-key approach, and we get a brief sentimental moment that avoids being sappy. I wouldn't have minded another page or two with them, as they have so much to discuss. (Brubaker does address their relationship in more depth in the epilogue to Reborn, the one-shot Who Will Wield the Shield?)

So, while the plot by Brubaker is on the complicated side, it does hold together. It's also very exciting.

The major problem I had with the Reborn miniseries is that it is just too padded out and decompressed. Reborn started out as a five issue miniseries. By the time I read issue three, I was already saying to myself "Does this story really need five issues?" Then, when chapter five came out, and the cover read "5 of 6," meaning Marvel had added an extra issue, I actually cursed aloud.

The main culprit here seems to be penciler Bryan Hitch. He draws so many damn splash pages and double page spreads that show Cap bouncing through time & space. There are splashes and spreads of Cap fighting in World War II, of him reliving his origin, of Namor rescuing him from his iceberg prison, of him alongside the Avengers in the Kree/Skrull War, of him battling the hordes of Hydra. And in the present, we have even more splash pages and double page spreads, this time of Bucky and the Black Widow fighting Osborn's Dark Avengers, of the Red Skull meeting Doctor Doom in Latveria, and of the real Avengers in their fierce battle with A.I.M.

Granted, Hitch's pencils, wonderfully inked by Butch Guice, look magnificent. The full-page images are incredibly exciting and dynamic, extremely well done. But there are just so damn many of them that the plot moves at a snail's pace. It just drags horribly. I would get to the end of each issue and think "That's all there is?" Reborn was a very good four part story that was unnecessarily stretched out over half a dozen issues.

I imagine that once Reborn is collected as a trade paperback, it will flow much better. But reading it over a half year long span in brief chunks, the story was ponderous and slow-going. That's the real disadvantage of "writing for the trade," in that the individual issues contain too little content.

So, while Reborn has both good writing by Brubaker and absolutely stunning artwork from Hitch & Guice, the drawn-out nature of the miniseries is a major detriment. It really could have used tightening up in places. Maybe if I sat down and re-read it in one sitting, I'd enjoy it more. But as a miniseries released on a monthly schedule, it just did not work all that well.