Book Review - Captain America: Steve Rogers #3

Captain America: Steve Rogers (2016-) #3 by Nick Spencer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When reading this book, a Bee Gees song lyric popped into my head:

"Problems, problems haunting me
Circle my head"

Author Nick Spencer has a plan, and he's obviously had it well before issue #1 came out with the explosive news that Cap was Hydra. Everyone lost their minds when they read that one panel, but few thought to analyse it - Cap was never really going to be Hydra, Marvel and its authors know better. But when you have had a character running almost non-stop for 70-odd years, someone has to come up with something new to keep people interested in his series. Steve Rogers isn't going away any time soon - he takes breaks for short periods of time, but the heads of business know better than to put him in storage permanently.

The thing is, Spencer's new take is at once innovative, polarising (comic book fans = knee-jerk reaction, unfortunately) and problematic. He's trying his best, but how far can this premise go?

In issue #3 the logical issues of the premise start cropping up - not in the text, but between the lines. Cap's long association with beating the crap out of the Red Devil is putting the entire series in dire straits. Can logic be shelved, or can the author explain everything to us? There is a limit to how much of Cap's history we can mentally cull to make this series' plotline plausible.

It's hard to get behind this series and take it seriously - or I'm being overly harsh. Cap's not the man we know him to be and that has an impact on the likeability of the character and the series. But you know what, it is worth giving it a shot. I want to know how successfully the author is able to realise his premise. There's a lot of effort put in here, especially given how much preceding material the author has to navigate and circumnavigate. The art is good, the intentions are great, but will practicality win out over style? We can only wait and see.

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