All that "tired" I've been feeling this week has turned into full-fledged "sick", and my nose is leaking like a sieve. So, in the interest of being able to go to sleep early, just one book today:

CAPTAIN AMERICA #25: I was less of a fan of the telegraphing of the issue (ie: all the "And here's why Steve is just the ginchiest!" stuff, and I thought the "Remember" flashback was pretty awkwardly staged as a story beat, and I also thought that as an "epilogue" to CIVIL WAR, this wasn't the statement *I* would have made (America Dies) in the wake of what they seem to want to be presenting as the through line (Surrending civil liberties is a good idea!), and I wonder how many people in the offices see that meta-textual read. Also, this is the SECOND assassination attempt during CIVIL WAR (remember, that's what turned poor ol' Robbie into PAINMASTER, THE GOTH-MAN AVENGER)

Also, as is probably not to be surprised, I don't much buy that Steve Rogers is "dead dead" -- I can think of at least 2-3 ways out of this story without even straining, and I'm no fancy writer-man, AND that doesn't even count the "cheap" kind of resurrection of Captain Marvel in THE RETURN. Steve will be back, probably within 3 years, more likely by issue #50. I do hope that Bucky doesn't become Cap -- Sharon'd be a much cleverer choice (but then, I think Ralph and Sue should come back as crime-solving ghosts, ala TOPPER, so what do I know?), but, for the most part, I trust Brubaker on this.

See, despite my sort of base level hesitations as noted above, I thought this was a pretty competent and well told story; one that, if a civilian were to read it, might possibly get them interested in comics over the long-haul. There's certainly craft on display here.

I wish Marvel had laid out the score for us a lot better -- certainly when Superman was killed, we knew MONTHS in advance, and it resulted in millions of copies ordered. Even with the supposed generous overprint, I'll be surprised if we end up with even the same number of copies of CAP #25 on the market as CIVIL WAR (ie, nowhere near enough). The REAL problem is, because (I'm guessing) the reorders are going to fill from newstand copies, and because of the way that Diamond and Marvel work with OSDs (over-short-damage), it seems likely that reorders won't arrive for 2 more weeks. That's going to be way too late, I think.

Anyway, all that aside, yeah, good craft, I'll go with a (low) GOOD.

What'd you think?

-B