written by Mark Waid
drawn by Chris Samnee
colored by Matt Wilson
Trapped in a dystopian future in which America is ruled by a despot, Captain America finds two old allies and, with his new team of Howling Commandos, makes a gallant push to unseat the tyrant King Babbington.
Okay, I'll just be very direct: this issue was very, very badly written. Quite honestly, for a writer of Waid's caliber, it's egregious.
As someone who actually works in Human Rights, I take strong exception to the way rednecks, "men's rights activists" and various other assholes on this planet have taken the term 'Social Justice Warriors' which aptly describes people who fight real world problems like racism, gender inequality and the yawning gap between the haves and the have-nots, and have turned it into something derisive or descriptive of someone easily offended. Of course it's the people of privilege, usually white males, who feel that way towards anyone trying to upset their precious status quo.
That said, it's ham-handed, clunky works of fiction like this that deservedly earn the derision that overprivileged fanboys are only too willing to heap on anyone challenging the way things are. Waid's writing, even in "activist" mode, is usually so much better than this, and this ridiculously clumsy allegory for what America has become under Donald Trump, complete with dialogue that is utterly on the nose, is really and truly beneath him.
I mean, how hard can it be to fold his meta-narrative into an engaging story? Even relative newbie Charles Soule is doing a halfway decent job of it on Waid's old haunt, Daredevil, which remains (for me anyway) a career highlight for Waid. Waid can do subtext, for crying out loud, and he's no greenhorn. This is the guy who wrote the fabled Kingdom Come, for heaven's sake, and who is a veteran of two previous runs on Captain America in particular. I cannot for the life of me understand why his writing here is so horribly heavy-handed. Even his writing on Daredevil, which tackled race issues sometimes, managed some degree of subtlety.
The only saving grace of this books is Chris Samnee's beautiful art, which we'll only be seeing for one more issue, on this title and in the pages of Marvel comic books in general, as he heads off for parts (as yet) unknown after Captain America #700.
I hold out some hope that, following the events in this issue, Waid has something up his sleeve for the landmark 700th issue, and for the few that follow it before Ta-Nehisi Coates and Leinil Yu take over. For that matter, I dearly hope Coates makes it a point to write compelling stories BEFORE he beats us over the head with his politics. The fact that his run on Black Panther started off pretty strong only to severely taper off in less than a year gives me cause for concern.
Writing this review really makes me sad, because to be honest the Waid/Samnee team-up on Daredevil was one of my favorite in comics history. For me their legacy survived their sometimes dodgy 12-issue run on Black Widow that started out strong but couldn't stick the landing, but after their work on this title, after a number of so-so issues, one genuinely good issue, and this utter embarrassment, I don't know that I'll ever view their collaboration in quite the same way again.
5/10
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