Graphic Novel Review Captain America MAN OUT of Time
Captain America wants to change history – why not let Him?
GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW MARK WAID CAPTAIN AMERICA – MAN OUT OF TIME 2011 Marvel
A well conceived modern working of Captain America’s first adventure after being thrown into the future by being trapped in suspended animation under Polar ice for 60 years. It was a mere 20 years when this was first done.
Steve Rogers initially obsesses with returning to 1944 to change history and save his best friend, Bucky. He hates the new America where kids carry guns, and baseball players take drugs. Tony Stark impresses him with a selective history lesson on the great moments of history and how racial prejudice has largely been crushed. Barrack Obama personally orders Rogers to desist in his time travel obsessions (he planned on using a time machine invented by Reed Richards of The Fantastic Four0.
Rogers is then disillusioned once more on learning of America’s less glorious past, Watergate, losing the war in Vietnam, the assassination of Martin Luther king, etc.
An alien called Kang arrives and attacks the Avengers (in the original tale it was The Sub-Mariner0, and he imprisons the entire team except for Captain America who is left adrift in time, and ends up arriving in 1945, just too late to save Bucky. This seems a waste, as surely facing him with a moral dilemma of even getting to choose to save Bucky would have been powerful. The opportunity is bi-passed. Rogers sends a message to the future and Reed Richards fetches him in his Time Machine to let him rescue the Avengers and defeat Kang before joining the team.
There is a terrific pacing, with the ensemble cast working together well. Reed Richards seems uninterested in actually help fight Kang which seems unlikely, but it’s a great read and a fine revisionist take on the established Captain America story.
Arthur Chappell.
Liked it
