This is it: The one where Ed Brubaker finally tells us what everyone knew, which is that Steve Rogers isn’t dead. The wonderful thing about Brubaker’s 25-issue-long secret, though, is that you can see the seeds for it being planted for many years—all the way back to the first issue of his run on Cap. Unlike so many major “returns from the dead” (most notably, Jean Grey), this one rewards astute readers and therefore led to some really intelligent internet chatter before the big secret is revealed.
What was the secret? Red Skull displaced Steve Rogers from the time stream, holding his body in stasis, so that Red Skull could use Arnim Zola’s technology to put his soul in Cap’s body. When this happened, Steve Rogers’ consciousness moved through time, and Captain America: Reborn treats us to his witnessing his own life.
We get to see World War II, the Kree Skrull War, Namor finding his frozen body…It’s really a fabulous tribute to Marvel’s (ahem) FLAGship character.
While that’s happening, Sharon Carter and her allies are able to trace him through time and bring him back. There’s a bit of a “Batman” element here (and he, too, was “killed” but displaced through time in the early aughts), as we see that Captain America put “chronal tracers” in Sharon’s blood so that she would be able to pull him forward in time to return to her.
When he returns, though, he finds Red Skull in his body and the two have to battle it out, while outside, Red Skull nearly kills Bucky Cap.
They do, and Steve wins.
Along the way, Norman Osborn decides that “Red Skull Cap” would be a great ally, and he tries to foil the efforts to save Steve.
In the big final fight, Red Skull is forced to retreat to his robot body, ceding Steve Rogers to, well, Steve himself.
The robot is destroyed—seemingly killing Red Skull forever.
But these are comics. We know better, right?
In the final battle, Red Skull’s own daughter, Sin, is caught in the explosion of Skull’s robot body and her face is burned…
…So now she looks just like daddy.
I’m not going to do a detailed blow-for-blow, but I do want to note that in addition to being a long-awaited, perfectly told return for Steve Rogers, there is an army of MODOKs, led by Crossbones.
ScreenshotThat alone should make you want to read this.
This is a near-perfect comic book story!
English (US) · 