Captain America Double Feature!

Captain America Theater of War and Captain America Living Legend 

“We all have duties Emilia, sacrifices we have to make for the things we love... But I guess that's how we know we love them.” ~Captain Steve Rogers, Prisoners of Duty

Welcome to our first double feature, readers. So rather than come up with some elaborate story, I'm just gonna cop to the true origins here. When I posted the poll for what books should be reviewed in July on our patreon, I forgot to limit the votes per person. So both of these comics got votes, and because this is my fault, I decided, why not review both? (That isn’t the real reason. It’s because if he didn’t worship the God of Abraham, he’d sacrifice fascists on the altar of Steve Rogers. This is not a criticism. {It’s also ridiculous Captain Rogers would never accept human sacrifice, even Nazis}) Especially considering that Theater of War is more a collection of short stories than a graphic novel per se. Living Legend is a full graphic novel with a single story so let me confront that first.

Living Legend was written by both Andy Diggle and Adi Granov; the script work was done by Mr. Diggle, Mr. Granov illustrated the comic. It's interesting for me to note that neither of these men were born in the United States (It’s almost as if immigrants contribute to our society or something.). Mr. Diggle was born and raised in South London and currently lives in Lancaster with his wife and children. He started as an editor for 2000AD but branched off into other works and is mainly known for his work on books like Hellblazer, The Losers, and Swamp Thing. Adi Granov was born in 1977 in Sarajevo. In 1994, his mother took him and his sisters and fled to the United States to escape the civil war that was raging there at the time (For those of you too young to remember, during the post-Soviet breakup of Yugoslavia, Serbs throughout the republic tried to dominate over Croats and Boznians within the territory of the soon-to-be-former Yugoslavia. Independence was declared by said Bosnians and Croats into separate states - Bosnia and Croatia respectively - and a civil war kicked off. This civil war included the ethnic cleansing by Serbian troops of aforementioned Bosnians and Croats. By the way, never mention the fact that Serbs and Croats speak the same language in their presence.). He would study art and concept design in the US and find himself influenced by American and European poster artists and some manga artists as well. His first work in comics was for Dreamwave Productions (which is infamous for its bankruptcy saga but that's for another day) for which he wasn't entirely... paid (Read: his labor was outright stolen rather than alienated). Thankfully this didn't put him off working for comic book companies so when he received an email out of the blue from a Marvel editor to come on board, he was happy to do so. Not only would Mr. Granov end up on the team that wrote Iron Man: Extremis (which provided the base for Ironman 3), he also helped design the Iron Man and Iron Monger suits for the movie series. He even designed one of the suits for the Playstation 4 game Spider-Man (the Velocity suit). I suppose it's a good thing he was able to flee war and find asylum in the United States. I can certainly understand why he fled here, it's been almost 130 years since warfare last touched the continental United States. He met his wife Tamsin Isles on an online forum where they became best friends before heading into romance and marriage.

Living Legend was originally meant to be Astonishing Captain America 1, a new series that would launch in July of 2011 but was canceled before hitting the presses. However, Mr. Diggle and Mr. Granov were able to convince the powers that be to release the story as a 4 issue mini-series. I picked up a collected copy on ComiXology but a physical graphic novel collection was published in 2014. The story starts in World War II but mostly takes place in the modern-day and revolves around the encounter between Soviet true believer Sgt Volkov and Steve Rogers, aka Captain America. They were both sent on a mission to retrieve German Rocket Scientists in the last days of World War II. Now the use of armed forces and spies to kidnap or recruit Nazi scientists happened in real life, the American Operation Paperclip and the Soviet Operation Osoaviakhim both of which scooped up thousands of engineers, scientists, specialists, and their family members, mostly focusing on rocketry experts but also grabbing others along the way (Now there is a difference in the two programs. It would be fair to say that the Nazis picked up by the US defected, and the ones picked up by the USSR were prisoners. I will leave the audience to decide which of those two is better.). Both powers did so because bluntly they realized with the creation of the V2 rocket and later with the unveiling of the American atomic bomb that a nation that was unable to build an arsenal of weaponized rockets would be at the mercy of nations that could. Neither nation was all that inclined to depend on the mercy of others at the moment. While we never find out who got the scientist we do see that Volkov gets shot and is only saved by the intervention of Captain America. We also find out that Volkov would later become one of the men chosen for a Soviet mission to the moon in 1968. A mission that goes very, very wrong.

How wrong it goes is hidden until the 21st century when a western science station in Low Earth Orbit is pulled into Siberia when an experiment using Dark Energy goes wrong. As a side note, dark energy is an actual theorized thing in physics, suggested to be what's powering the expansion of the universe if I understand it correctly? (You do understand it correctly.) Well, the Russian Army surrounds the site and tells S.H.I.E.L.D to take a hike, which leads to S.H.I.E.L.D turning to Captain America to sneak into Russia, get past the Russian Army, find out what's going on and keep it from damaging life on Earth. Well, keep it from damaging life on Earth less than the average Kree invasion would. However, Cap is walking into a lot of hidden demons from the past, most of them someone else's but it turns out they don't have to be your demons to chew off your face. Which the help of a Russian Colonel willing to put his country ahead of his government, Dr. Lauren Fox - the sole survivor of the science station and creator of the experiment - and the protection of his mighty shield, Steve Rogers faces off against something that doesn't belong on this level of existence but wants to make itself at home... But what does Volkov have to do with all of this? Steve will have to find out quickly because as always the clock is ticking.

Living Legend was a fun read but it wasn't what I would consider groundbreaking or a classical Captain America story. However, it was well-done and I did enjoy reading it. The science-fiction elements were good but I feel like there was a missed opportunity to look at the American and Soviet use of German scientists after World War II and what they wrought both good and bad. Even the problems of modern Russia or the United States are kinda pushed to the side and the relationship between Volkov and Cap is rather distant, so it's not as memorable as it could be. So I'm giving Living Legend by Andy Diggle and Adi Granov a C+. It's a good example of a self-contained mini-series that you can read without knowing too much about Captain America, but not a great one .

Theater of War is a bit more complicated as it is a collection of one-shots. However, writer Paul Jenkins is the most featured writer in the book, so I'll focus mainly on him. Paul Jenkins was born in the Western United Kingdom in a single-parent home, he immigrated to the United States in 1987. He's been an editor and writer on a wide variety of books ranging from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (in fact he started in Mirage Studios) to Wolverine Origins, Spectacular Spider-Man, and a variety of other titles. He's also known for being a supporter of creator rights in part due to his start in Mirage and working at Tundra studios. He writes three of the six stories in this book and the ending poem ‘Ghost of my Country’ and so sets the tone of the work. Theater of War becomes less about Captain America the superhero and more about Captain America the soldier in and out of war under his influence and that pulls the book together.

I'll explain through examples. The first story “America the Beautiful” is about Captain America retrieving and bringing back the body of an American soldier who died in a German bunker during D-Day. The soldier in question is someone Steve Rogers knew, a man named Bobby Shaw who was honestly a horrible soldier and a bit of a coward. To be honest, reading the story, I can't help but think that in the modern military such a man would have washed out (Yes, but our current army is a volunteer army. Back in the 40s, it was largely a conscript army. The standards were different, and training wasn’t anywhere near as good. They didn’t actually have a good way to… teach kids how to deal with the fear and bluntly, the resistance to killing.) and it's interesting to me that Steve sees himself as having a lot in common with Bobby. Say what you will about Steve Rogers, he was never a coward. However, even the most scared man can rise above himself and become a hero and that's what Bobby Shaw did, giving his life to save his platoon mates and get them off that damn beach. Captain America can only fulfill a promise decades later to bring him home and he does. The next Paul Jenkins story “Brothers in Arms” takes place entirely in World War II, where Steve leads a detachment of rangers behind enemy lines to secure a vital objective ahead of the main advance. When the Rangers find themselves surrounded by SS troopers and themselves with a single Wehrmacht soldier as a POW (Wait, what? Correct me if I’m wrong here, but don’t Rangers behind enemy lines not typically take prisoners for this very reason? Note: this is not a criticism. Military necessity given mission parameters.{Their orders were to hold, so Cap being in command decided to take a prisoner} Ah okay. That’s a bit more reasonable.). Several rangers would rather just shoot the damn Nazi and be done with it. Cap of course insist that the laws of war be followed, even in the face of mockery from the SS. However the German soldier volunteers to be a medic and actually does manage to save the lives of several Rangers, only to be killed by the SS when Captain America tries to return him to his own side. To Soldier On, the third and last full story by Paul Jenkins is set in Iraq, first during the invasion and then during the early occupation. Given my own experience, which I won't bog the review with, this story stayed with me. Captain America isn't the main character here, that’s Sgt Anderson, an Army Sgt who witnesses Cap's abilities during the invasion and then is tasked to escort Cap as he attempts to win hearts and minds during the occupation. Mr. Jenkins does a fairly decent job of capturing the frustration of the early occupation before the emergence of new doctrine created by men like Army General Petraeus and Marine General Mattis as troops operated with no real sense of overall planning or mission and just tried to keep some sense of order and the explosions down to a minimum. Unfortunately when caught by Cap sitting on his hands while Iraqi Police beat a failed suicide bomber (to be fair the suicide bomber was trying to blow up the Iraqi Police, so they're gonna be a bit excited [Doesn’t excuse him sitting on his hands while they commit a war crime. I know you know, but I want to make it clear to our dear readers.{While I don’t disagree, the snob in me feels I should point out it’s not a war crime when native police units do it… Its police brutality} Country was occupied at the time, and if it wasn’t a war to have war crimes in, we shouldn’t have been holding people as enemy combatants without meaningful trials. One cannot have the cake and eat it.]), Sgt Anderson and his boys are sent out on a patrol and get caught in an ambush where Sgt Anderson loses his legs and one of his hands. However, thanks to advances in prosthetics (I kinda find it a grim joke that one of the few positive effects of the Iraq War was a rapid advancement in the science and art of prosthetic creation [Oh this is basically the history of trauma medicine and reconstructive surgery in a nutshell. War has always been the catalyst for medical innovation in these fields.]) mean that Sgt Anderson can stand on his own two legs. Captain America is more of a recurring character in this story interjecting an element of the fantastic into what would otherwise be a story that could have taken place any time between 2005 and 2010. These stories set a common theme of how war - even when you win and have to fight for good reason - is a tragic event, where good people die, lives are ruined and the worst parts of us are often given license to run wild. The only thing keeping it in check is the willingness of good people to make sacrifices for what they believe in and to refuse to condone or sanction or aid evil behavior and to give up much to stop it. War might be a terrible thing, but sometimes, it's not the worse thing.

Of the three remaining stories, Prisoners of Duty by Kyle Higgins and Alec Siegel fits best into the themes and overall tone set by Mr. Jenkins. Set in World War II, Steve Rogers is a POW and has to figure out to break out a company of his fellow Americans from an honest to God castle after the failure of Market Garden while being watched by a Nazi Colonel. There he meets Emilia, a German woman who had come to America but returned to care for her family and was impressed into service as a nurse. Prisoners of Duty fits in well with Mr. Jenkins stories because it's a story about how every victory in war is also a tragedy and every side will have good people working for it, even the damn Nazis (Especially given conscription and penal battalions. There were people who were forced to fight for the Reich who definitely didn’t want to fight for the Reich. They pressed POWs from other countries into penal battalions. There was one poor schmuck who was captured and pressed into the armed forces of three different armies and wound up as a Korean fighting in a German penal battalion in France. {That poor bastard, it must have been a shock when the US Army didn’t impress him into service} Honestly, I’m just shocked he survived.). Operation Zero-Point by Charles and Daniel Knauf is more action-packed, as Captain America is sent behind enemy lines to extract a scientist who has warned the allies that a powerful new weapon system is on the verge of becoming functional. Once there, Cap will have his hands full trying to stop the weapon and trying to keep everyone else alive. It does manage to not stand out too much but it does wander a bit away from the tone that Mr. Jenkins sets but does give us a new variation on the themes.

The last story sticks out like a sore thumb, entitled America First by Howard Chaykin. It doesn't feature Steve Rogers, but instead Commie Smasher Cap (Fuck that guy). I'll explain. In the original run, before Marvel bought the character, Captain America continued into the 1950s, retooled as operating on American soil against communist infiltrators and subversives (Oh Good God. Captain HUAC!). It didn't go over well, Marvel at first decided to quietly deep-six that part and bring back Captain America from 1945 by having the Avengers find him in the ice (in the original comic runs, Captain America wasn't a founding member of the Avengers). That worked a lot better and for decades everyone was content to simply pretend that the post-WWII run didn't happen. However, later it was decided to retcon it that there had been a Captain America active in the 1950s, but it was a guy who was surgically altered to look like Steve Rogers and was obsessed with finding Communists. In this version, a character who is clearly playing the part of Senator McCarthy is a deep-cover Soviet agent who has worked his way deep into America government and uses the preaching of paranoia to divide Americans against one another and amass power for himself, while inserting more Soviet agents (Now that is some maskirovka I can see the USSR considering, and then passing on because it’s too crazy. They were really good at inserting deep cover agents - to the point of having hand-drawn google street view of several cities - but not that good, and not every communist in the country was a soviet agent or even a fan of the USSR. Hell, I’m certainly not, weeping in communist over their not landing anyone on the moon aside. I will give credit where credit is due. The USSR beat us at every step of the space race except the moon {No, they didn’t, we had the first communication and weather satellite, the first pilot controlled space flight, first satellite recovered intact from orbit, first picture of Earth from orbit, we also were continually setting records having the first 8 and 13 day space missions, all before landing on the moon [I’ll grant that.]}, - including our two nearest planets - and they did it on a budget of practically nothing. Now we use their rockets to get to the ISS and all astronauts are russian-bilingual, because we forgot how to build the Saturn V <Weeps in American> {Stop your weeping, the BFR says we don’t need Saturn anymore.} Yeah, anymore). The writers clearly want us to side against the historic red scare but... very brutally undermine themselves by having the McCarthy proxy be right. There are deep-cover Soviet agents at every level of American society and he knows that because he's one of them! In such a situation we would have no choice but to assume he couldn't be the only one and adopt stricter security to weed them out or risk having the leaders of the Soviet Union know our plans and secrets before our own leaders do! Now I'm not saying the real red scare was right, in real history, Senator McCarthy was fear-mongering mostly to raise his political profile and was in the end resisted and thrown down. An example we should follow whenever fear-mongering politicians or demagogues rear their heads. You should always beware someone who tells you everything is on fire and he alone can fix it. Especially if he blames some other group or them, but I'll stop preaching here (That way lies fascism, and whether you are a leftist like me or a centrist, fascism must be opposed!).


I guess it's supposed to be a home front story but honestly, it's so out of place with the other stories that it just brings the whole collection down. So I'm giving Theater of War a B-, although I think it jumps nearly a letter grade if you dump the America First story, easily a B+.

Well, next week we are heading into the realms of nonfiction again, with what would be called a primary source (that is something written first hand by a first-hand observer) join me for A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, Slavery in the Years Before the American Civil War.  Also if you enjoyed this review consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where for a 1$ you can vote on what books get reviewed next month. 

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders.