Cap on Drugs (Captain America 372-378)

Mark Gruenwald took a unique approach to his anti-drug storyline "Streets of Poison". After Cap is exposed to major amounts of "ice" during a drug bust, it bonds to the super soldier serum in his blood, leaving him permanently high, and increasingly paranoid and sleep deprived!

Anti-drug comic book stories are pretty much always corny and cringeworthy. In real life the very real dangers and down sides to drug use often aren't immediately apparent to users, but comics and TV shows generally have to compress the storyline so that drugs are always doing real destruction immediately, and in doing so the stories damage the credibility of their message. This story isn't much better, but at least it takes a fresh approach. And it's always worth remembering that the folks who manufacture and import these drugs aren't doing it out of a benevolent desire to spread good feelings throughout the world. (A friend of mind in college had his head chopped off by a couple of young marijuana dealers.)

Interestingly, in the end Cap's problem is solved with a complete blood transfusion. Even without the super soldier serum inside him, Cap finally manages to defeat the Red Skull's loyal henchman Crossbones. I don't know if this story was ever undone. Writers in the 70s and 80s were generally pretty clear that Cap didn't have any superpowers anyway, and that the serum had merely pumped him up to the height of human perfection, with Cap taking it from there. On the other hand, these days Brubaker seems to suggest that Cap is at least somewhat super strong. It doesn't matter much, but I wonder if some story I haven't read yet explains the apparent contradiction.

  

      

  

[Postscript, okay the super solider serum regenerated itself inside Cap by issue 384.]



Diamondback in Love (Mark Gruenwald Year Five, Cap 355-371)

Seeing as Mark Gruenwald felt that Captain America didn't need a civilian life (he promptly ended Cap's relationship with Bernie Rosenthal), it seemed the only real romantic prospects left for Cap during this era were in the adventurer community. Hence Cap's improbable relationship with Diamondback, one of the villainous Serpent Squad.

Mark Gruenwald had an obvious interest in workplace dynamics, and one of the first things he did was introduce a new Serpent Squad, featuring villains who were just out to make a buck and get health insurance, via gigs for hire. It didn't really catch fire, but Gruenwald followed up on it by showing more of the logistics behind Cap's leadership of the Avengers, and the Red Skull's ongoing relationships with his newly enlarged group of cronies. Only the Red Skull's crew reached the level of passably interesting so far.

Ignoring the fact that simply being a member of the Serpent Society arguably makes Diamondback an accessory to murder, Gruenwald seemed to have positioned Diamondback as a possibly love interest from the start, introducing her as a relatively benign mercenary who began crushing on Cap almost from the start. It's a little hard to buy that a goody-goody like Gruenwald's Cap would ever show much interest in such a character, but readers were, I think, willing to suspend disbelief so that we could see Cap doing something in his off-hours besides attended meetings with architects regarding the new Avengers headquarters.

The big problem is that Diamondback is a pretty one-dimensional character, even by Gruenwald standards. (Character creation definitely wasn't Gruenwald's forté.) I really don't have a thing to say about her.

For all that, I'm generally enjoying reading Gruenwald's run at this point. He didn't push the medium forward any, but Gruenwald's lack of pretensions and love of classic superhero serial storytelling make his run a pretty easy read.

Covers: Teen Cap (Captain America 355)

The cover of Captain America 355:

The DC comics influence is pretty clear. As silly as it is, it makes you curious about the contents of the book, doesn't it? I actually kind of dug the way Gruenwald tried to hook people with the covers of his books. (Yeah, he didn't draw them, but I think he dictated the contents.) On the cover of issue 344, Cap is fighting President Reagan, who's been transformed (by the evil Viper) into a half-lizard man!

Sadly, these days comics covers are generally serious looking portraits or action shots:

The New Cap (Mark Gruenwald Years Three and Four, Captain America 332-354)

In his third year on the book, Mark Gruenwald gave us a new Captain America. A Commission of Presidentially-appointed big shots (including the heads of the CIA and FBI) claimed government ownership of the Captain America name, costume and shield. They demanded that Steve Rogers once again work directly for the government, as he agreed to do when he was chosen to receive the super-soldier formula in World War II. However, Rogers no longer felt that Captain America should be a government propaganda figure, and resigned as Captain America. He was uncomfortable with taking his case to the people or fighting the government in court, and opted instead to assume a new, slightly different identity- the Captain:

Meanwhile, the government enlisted John Walker--the Super-Patriot-- to be the new Captain America (and his drinking buddy Lemar to be the new Bucky, later Battlestar). Walker took the job seriously, doing his best to live up to a legend he once mocked, and fought guys like the Watchdogs:

Unknown to almost everyone though, there were mysterious forces working to undermine Walker, and push him over the edge.

The nice thing about this storyline was that it meant Steve Rogers was absent from the book entirely at times, which was good because Gruenwald's depiction of Steve Rogers tended to be "dishwater dull" (in the words of one letter writer). The flawed (and sometimes brutal) John Walker was much more compelling. Of course, inevitably Steve Rogers reclaimed the Captain America identity (and not by brawling with Walker over the name, mercifully). And Walker is still floating around the Marvel universe in a modified version of Rogers' black outfit, under the name USAgent. He's had a couple of mini-series, and has been a member of the Avengers, Force Works, the Invaders, and Omega Flight. He's the Marvel universe's super-powered government hardass.





Mark Gruenwald Year Two (Captain America 319-331)

Having dropped Steve Rogers and his supporting cast from the book, writer Mark Gruenwald used his second year writing the comic to depict Cap crossing America in a custom van, determined to be a hero for all of America, not just the New York City area. The writing gradually improved on the book, and by the end of the second year I no longer had to force myself to read it, even if I wasn't thrilled with the choice of direction.

Cap got a huge check from the government as back pay for the decades he spent in suspended animation after World War II. He used the money to set up a nationwide hotline so that people would be able to get in touch with him, and allied with a bunch of teen computer geeks who help filter his calls and help him get information he needs. He defeated the Scourge, who was killing minor Marvel villains (or did he?) and took on some uninteresting villains like Flag-Smasher and Super-Patriot. Unable to defeat the latter (a gloryhog jerk who tried to discredit Cap by sending folks with Cap's mask on to rough up foreigners), Cap went in search of how Super-Patriot got his powers, and ended up taking on a guy called the Power Broker (cute). The Power Broker is a nasty businessman who's been empowering everyone from heroes like Ms. Marvel to "Unlimited Class" pro-wrestlers like Demolition Man. Cap teams with Demolition Man to take down the Power Broker, but it seems the Power Broker may have been in bed with the US military via something called Project Augment. An army Lieutenant named Lynch sent an enhanced soldier called G.I.Max after Cap, but then accidentally shot Max (smooth). Meanwhile, an IRS auditor questioned that big fat check Steven Rogers reported on his taxes, and discovered Rogers was Captain America. When he reported it to his superiors they began to have second thoughts about giving Cap all that money...

Captain America 321-322 (Cap's Delicate Sensibilities and Code Against Killing)

Captain America is a soldier, not Dudley Do-Right. It's kind of annoying reading him wringing his hands over having to use deception and violence to rescue some hostages. No wonder comics readers of the era found Wolverine a breath of fresh air.

Gruenwald handled this better in later issues, but issue 322 introduces this:

What? Cap spent all his time on the front lines in World War II knocking people out and tying them up? I guess that makes him way more moral than those regular soldiers, who actually killed the enemy to win the war.

In fairness, this craziness may have originated with Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter, who had a strict "heroes don't kill" code. And Gruenwald actually does get away with letting Cap kill somebody in issue 321, when Cap has no choice but to shoot a terrorist who has opened fire on a crowd of defenseless hostages.

Still, a super-soldier who fought on the frontlines against the Nazis but never killed is a pretty weird notion. Brubaker mercifully wrote this out of continuity when he took over the book several years ago.

[Postscript] Here's Marvel's explanation of Cap's WWII career, from the letter's page of Captain America 327:

Neither Cap nor the Invaders ever carried guns behind enemy lines during the War. They were never actively engaged in combat with the Axis militia, but concentrated their efforts against Nazi super-agents and their leaders. All this is to say that Captain America never sought to kill anyone on the battlefield. It probably happened that soldiers who shot at Cap were hit by their own ricocheting bullets, but that's not the same as Cap shooting someone. We can't deny that Cap was at the center of a lot of bloodshed during the Big One, but he himself never shed another man's blood. The Ultimatum incident in CAP #321 was the first time Cap intentionally took someone's life.

[Postscript 2] In the letter's page of Captain America 328, Marvel backs down very slightly, by offering a vaguer response:

...we do not deny that enemy soldiers died because of Cap's actions. Still, Cap never regularly carried a gun, not was his mission to kill as many of the enemy as he could. His mission was to "destroy the enemies of liberty," which are the concepts of fascism, Nazism, and totalitarianism, not the individuals who espouse them. True, you cannot attack abstractions-- you can only attack the individuals who act in accordance with them. But its an important distinction. Further to the point, soldiers at war play by different rules than civilians at peace and Cap has had years to make peace with himself about his wartime actions. We're not saying that Cap is or ever was a pacifist, but he does have a profound respect for human life. It is a respect that has grown as he has matured, and includes respect for the lives of his individual enemies. Killing an enemy is always Cap's last resort, and every death he's ever been responsible for has taken its toll on his inner peace.

[Postscript 3]  A more detailed critique of the way Marvel handled the storyline where Cap killed a terrorist, and the events that followed, from the letter's page of Captain America #329:

Mark Gruenwald Year One (Captain America 307-318)

I've just finished the first year of Mark Gruenwald's ten year run as Captain America writer, and I'm remembering why I stopped reading the book at this point. It's not bad. But the writing and art are both kind of flat.

Mark doesn't seem too interested in the Steve Roger's side of Cap's life, and over the course of the first year he dismantles all of it. His fiancée Bernie leaves the state to go to law school. He moves out of his apartment, and sets up shop at Avengers mansion again. Gruenwald is strictly interested in superheroics here, and he tries to keep things light. Unfortunately, he writes Cap like one of those lantern-jawed two-dimensional heroes in a 1950s DC comic. He thoughts tend to be along the line of  "Wonder what possesses a guy like Blue Streak to squander his great athletic ability on crime? Such a waste of potential." Patriotic shouldn't be a synonym for dumb or naive.

The recurring villains in the first year are a new incarnation of the Serpent Squad. They're bad guys for hire with snake motif costumes and powers. They're run something like a business, with no agenda besides making a buck. And... um... they're not that interesting.

Also, there's an ongoing mystery about somebody killing third-rate villains.

I kind of find myself wanting to skip ahead to the Mark Waid era. A lot of people speak fondly of the Gruenwald era though, so maybe it improves. I know in year three there's a story about Steve Rogers being "fired" and replaced as Captain America. That doesn't really sound that interesting (I never really bought that anybody had the authority to do that) but who knows?