Reprints Captain America And The Falcon #177-186
Written by Steve Englehart and John Warner.
Penciled by Sal Buscema, Frank Robbins and Herb Trimpe.
Inked by Vince Colletta, Joe Giella, Frank Giacoia and Mike Esposito.
Note:This is Part 2 in a series of reviews, Part 1 is here if you missed it yesterday.
Captain America is no more!
Steve Rogers has given up the costume. His crime-fighting days are over. His dealings with the Secret Empire have caused him to grow cynical about the American Dream. He is dedicating his time to his private life and his relationship with Sharon Carter. The Falcon keeps trying to get him to re-form their partnership, but Steve tells him no. So Falcon is forced to go it alone, accompanied by Redwing, his trained falcon.
Lucifer (a villain who previously fought the X-Men and Iron Man) is exiled in another dimension. When he's able to return to Earth, he arrives in Harlem and teams up with some local gangsters. Lucifer is being transmitted back to his dimension and fuses his essence with a criminal named Rafe Michel. He later breaks into a prison and frees the Aries from the Zodiac crime cartel and splits his essence between Rafe and Aries. Now Lucifer's power is divided between two "Lucifers". Morgan, a Harlem crime boss, wants the Falcon dead and hires the Lucifers to do the deed. Falcon is nearly killed, but Steve Rogers (in a ski mask) shows up and takes out the Lucifers.
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| Lucifer merges with Aries; Great art by Buscema & Colletta. |
Shortly after Lucifer's defeat, Steve and Sharon are walking down 5th Street. Suddenly, an arrow flies towards them. More arrows follow, pinning Steve to a wall. The arrows are the work of a bowman who calls himself the Golden Archer. The archer flees, saying he will bring death to Steve Rogers. Steve is worried, since it seems like Golden Archer knows that he used to be Captain America.
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| Steve & Sharon's date is interrupted by the Golden Archer! |
Steve tracks down the Golden Archer and easily defeats him. We learn that it was actually Steve's former Avengers teammate Hawkeye in disguise! It was a plan to get Steve back into the crime-fighting business. Hawkeye understands why Steve doesn't want to be Cap, but why not adopt a new alias? Steve thinks it's a great idea, but Sharon isn't happy this development. She was enjoying the fact that Steve didn't run off in the middle of dinner to fight supervillains.
A new superhero is born when Steve makes a new costume. His loss of faith in America has made him "a man without a country", so he takes the name Nomad.
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| Nomad is born! |
He's barely broken in his new threads when he stumbles on his old foes Viper (who previously battled Cap as Madame Hydra) Cobra, Eel and Princess Python, AKA the Serpent Squad! Nomad makes quick work of the Serpent Squad, but they get away when Nomad trips over his own cape.
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| The Serpent Squad gets away when Nomad steps on his own cape! |
The Serpent Squad regroups and teams up with Warlord Krang of Atlantis. Krang has found the fabled Serpent Crown of Lemuria. Whoever controls the crown will rule the world. Nomad is able to defeat the Serpent Squad, but the Serpent Crown disappears.
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| Viper battles Nomad & shoots Cobra when he tries to escape. |
At the same time, others are stepping forward to claim the identity of Captain America. The first two wind up with serious injuries on their first attempt at playing superhero. But a young man named Roscoe Simons steps up to become the new Cap. Roscoe knows Steve because they train at the same gym. The Falcon agrees to train and help Roscoe.
But disaster strikes. On Roscoe's first patrol, he and Falcon are attacked by the Red Skull! Roscoe is brutally murdered by the Skull and left as warning to Nomad. Steve feels somewhat responsible for this and realizes what it means. He must become Captain America once more. Steve dismisses his disillusionment with the United States as naivety and suits up.
Cap and Falcon set out to find the Red Skull's hideout. They arrive and make easy work of Red Skull's minions, and Cap has Skull on the ropes. Suddenly, Captain America is jumped from behind and knocked out by...The Falcon! He's being mind-controlled by the Red Skull!
Can Captain America escape? Or will his partner the Falcon kill Cap under the command of the Red Skull?
(Contains lots of major SPOILERS)
Captain America and the Falcon: Nomad starts out good.
It's interesting to watch Falcon patrolling the city on his own. Bringing back a fairly obscure villain like Lucifer was a nice touch. Steve Englehart writes some nice scenes of Steve and Sharon enjoying Cap-free romantic life. And I appreciated Sharon's reaction when Steve said he going back into the superhero game. It was understandable and realistic for her to be disappointed.
And I'm glad Englehart paired Peggy Carter off with Gabe Jones. The Cap/Sharon/Peggy love triangle was always awkward at best, and interracial romances were rare in comic books at the time.
The rest of this story isn't very good.
I've always been a fan of the Serpent Squad, in its various incarnations. But the story built around the Serpent Crown contains tons of buildup with little payoff. Nomad beats up Krang and defeats the Squad with relative ease. He doesn't even call Namor for help. I'm not sure why Namor was even written into this story.
Gamecock is a silly villain (I'm not sure if that was intentional or not). He's just a bad guy in a rooster suit. Check out the image below: it's hard to buy the hype balloon that declares the story, "Another Classic!", when Gamecock is right next to the balloon.
Englehart at times seems determined to show that the Falcon is nothing without Captain America. Falcon battles Lucifer for two issues and is about to be killed. Then Cap shows up and defeats Lucifer in a few panels.
And there's a weird line from Nomad when he's searching for the missing Falcon. He thinks Luke Cage might know where Falcon is, Nomad says "Cage's color is a very slim lead, but it's all I can come up with right now!" What's up with that? Does Steve Rogers think all African-Americans know each other? Why would Englehart write something like that?
But the worst comes in the book's final chapter.
Through an extended flashback, we learn that Falcon has never been anything but a pawn of the Red Skull. His partnership with Cap (which had existed for 54 issues at this point) was set up by Red Skull as a scheme to kill his greatest enemy. He wiped Sam's mind and created a new personalty using the Cosmic Cube. It doesn't make sense and it pretty much ruined the Falcon for the next decade. The final insult comes when we learn Falcon was once a petty criminal who answered to the nickname "Snap". Sam is depicted wearing a stereotypical 1970s "pimp" outfit .
This is the worst thing Englehart ever wrote during the Bronze Age.
Art:
Sal Buscema and Vince Colletta, the same art team from the previous tpb, pencil & ink the first 5 issues reprinted here. Their art looks good, giving us more great fight scenes, and some very nice full-page drawings.
But Frank Robbins takes over the penciling after that. It's a shocking contrast from the Buscema/Colletta portion. Here's the last page penciled by Buscema:
When you turn the page of the tpb, you see this:
To my eyes, most of the characters look like crazed zombies. It's almost painful to look at some of it. Robbins had a long, great career in both comic books and comic strips. I don't like to speak ill of the dead, but Robbins' art doesn't work here.
On a positive note, Robbins' pages are interrupted for one issue by Herb Trimpe's pencils, inked by Frank Giacoia and Mike Esposito. Trimpe always delivered good, solid art and does that here.
The beginning of Captain America and the Falcon: Nomad is a solid follow-up to the "Secret Empire" story, but what follows isn't very good. They say it's hard to follow a legend and the stories contained in this are a testament to that statement. The art from Buscema, Colletta and Trimpe saves it from getting a lower rating.
J.A. Morris' rating:
.5
2 and a half Sals.
