The Death of the Dream

• Writer - Ed Brubaker
• Penciler - Steve Epting
• Colorist - Frank D'armata
• Lettering - Virtual Calligraphy
• Lettering - Joe Caramagna
• Ass't Editor - Molly Lazer
• Editor - Tom Brevoort
• Editor in Chief - Joe Quesada
• Ass't Editor - Aubrey Sitterson

Summary

  Ed Brubaker's other big release of the week is Captain America #25, in which Captain America gets killed yet again, but has the good fortune to do it in a slow news week.

  The usual observation is that, of course, we all know he's coming back. Well, yes we do. This issue doesn't have a back door, so much as a clearly signposted fire exit. But that's missing the point. You can predict the finish in most genre stories. It's all about how interesting the journey is. The usual reason to be cynical about this kind of thing is that it tends to be done as a cheap stunt to boost sales, and the details - such as the plot - are hammered out later on. This is an Ed Brubaker story, and Ed Brubaker is a proper writer. If he's writing it, I'm prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt and assume there's an actual story.

  Basically, the issue consists of Cap's supporting cast - who'll have to carry the book for the remainder of this story - reminiscing about him and then failing to stop a sniper attack which is evidently part of some dastardly scheme by the Red Skull. It's a fine opening chapter. If you divorced the comic from the hype, and treated it as an issue like any other, it would be a great start to a storyline. No reader would actually believe Captain America was dead, but the story doesn't rely on you believing it. It relies on the fact that the characters believe in it, and that's why it can work even though we all know these things are almost invariably reversed in the end.

  Now, having said that - given all the hype they've spent on this story, I'd be seriously tempted to leave Cap dead, or at least keep him out of circulation for a good long time to come. He's a difficult character to write - he was created for a much simpler type of story, and he doesn't really accommodate much in the way of moral complexity. Fitting him into modern superhero comics is tricky. He's also one of a handful of Marvel characters capable of being turned into a "legacy hero" - you can't really have a new Spider-Man, but you can have a new Captain America. And since most people barely know anything about Steve Rogers, it wouldn't much dent his marketability. In the modern world, perhaps the best stories you can tell with Captain America involve him as a dead icon that other heroes try to live up to.

  At the very least, I think that beneath all the hype, there's a potentially good story to be told here. And Ed Brubaker is the sort of writer who can make it work.