Captain America: Steve Rogers #11 - Marvel Comics

CAPTAIN AMERICA: STEVE ROGERS No. 11, April 2017

In many ways, Nick Spencer would arguably have been far better off simply sticking to a script detailing the demise of Doctor Abraham Erskine in his ‘controversial’ Cosmic Cube altered reality, than trying to additionally squeeze both the funeral of Jack Flag and a nauseatingly long speech by the supposed Sentinel of Liberty into Issue Eleven of “Captain America: Steve Rogers”. Indeed, the Will Eisner Comic Industry Award-nominee’s technique of darting back and forth along the titular character’s time-stream not only erodes any sense of sombreness to Harrison’s reasonably well-attended burial proceedings. But actually detracts from the utter sense of betrayal and shock supposedly intended by this comic’s depiction of the naïve Super-Soldier scientist being cold-bloodedly gunned down in his own quarters whilst preparing his fresh-faced assassin some “rindergulasch”; “I made far too much, I am afraid.”

As it stands however, this twenty-two page periodical’s biggest problem is Cap’s terrifyingly trite monologue/discourse, which somehow manages to ‘run’ a staggering thirty panels in length, before culminating in Helmut Zemo bear-hugging his childhood Hydra friend, and promising to aid him in his mission to wrest control of the fictional terrorist organization from Johann Schmidt. Horrifically word-heavy and self-righteously monotonous, this discourse sadly permeates the entire book, and in doing so must surely have bored many of this title’s dwindling 36,610 followers. Certainly, the frustrating story-telling technique hardly helps create an atmosphere to “electrify” its readers as “Marvel Worldwide” optimistically advertised at the time of this comic’s publication.

Sadly, not even Spencer’s handling of Abraham’s murder is without its faults though, as it’s based upon the absurd assumption that as far back as 1940 Hydra owned “something Fenhoff invented” which allowed them to steal the minds of the dead; a preposterous-looking device pencilled by Jesus Saiz, which Rogers is clearly oblivious to. This unbelievably convenient piece of equipment at least vindicates why Zemo killed the Jewish scientist before he had a chance to test out his Super-Soldier serum. Yet it doesn’t explain why Steve attempted to poison the German chemist’s coffee a few days earlier (when such a contrived contraption wasn’t to hand), nor the Allies motivation to ‘broker a deal’ with the untrustworthy Arnim Zola to continue Erskine’s work before the scientist had even been killed?

The variant cover art of "CAPTAIN AMERICA: STEVE ROGERS" No. 11 by Joe Jusko