Captain America #606-610 (2010): 1st Beetle 3

To their credit, Marvel didn’t force Ed Brubaker to start back at #1 when Captain America entered the Heroic Age. That’s good, because his run is best read as a single end-to-end story. (And yes, I know he started with #1 and then reverted to old numbering so now he’s at #606). Ghost, who was a Thunderbolt under Norman Osborn, meets Baron Zemo, the founder of the original Thunderbolts. Baron Zemo has something very interesting (and very “meta”) to say: Zemo laments that Osborn wasted an opportunity to capitalize on a “grey” world that was missing Captain America, and because Osborn insisted on being super-bad he’s now forced the world to create a new Cap and to get into a more black-and-white morality. This is deep for so many reasons. The United States (and indeed much of the world) is going through a similar extreme polarization as I write this in 2026. Plus, Marvel had an opportunity to have a much more textured Earth 616 but instead has launched a “Heroic Age” that reverts back to good/bad norms. We could probably ponder this for pages and pages, but I doubt you, the readers, would care. So, back to the story. As Zemo and Ghost share stories, Bucky Cap is haunted by recent even...