Recommendation Road: Captain America: The Fighting Avenger

Captain America: The Fighting Avenger

To begin, I apologize for the washed out scans of today's pages. I upgraded computers this weekend, and my good old trusty scanner apparently was too old for Windows 7, forcing me to use another scanner. The color scans aren't the greatest, however grayscale B&W scans just fine... And that's what I scan art in, so that's really all that's important for me at the moment. I'll grab a new scanner someday, but it's not a huge priority for me. (The more cleaner scans were grabbed from Scans Daily.)

I figured after Mad Love's review last week, I'd make a regular routine of talking about certain comic books I truly enjoyed and recommend wholeheartedly. Basically, these are books that have inspired me creatively. Now today's book came out late last spring / early summer, curing the hype for the summer movie season. It's pretty much standard expectations that whenever a comic book company has a major motion picture coming out that they're going to put out a comic book, featuring the character from that movie, and that comic book will have the feeling of that movie. Now here's the thing, I hold the Captain America: First Avenger preeeety damn highly on the echelons of comic book movies. It's probably somewhere in the top three comic book movies I've seen... And I make it a habit to at least see every comic book movie at least once. (From the big blockbusters like The Dark Knight to the stupid pieces of garbage like Man-Thing.) The Cap movie was near perfect for me. If I had ANY complaints about it, it's that they put him in suspended animation a little too quickly. I wouldn't have mind seeing him running around in the 1940s for a little while longer, punching the likes of Baron von Strucker and Hitler in the nuts.

Now during early summer, they released the comic of today's subject matter, Captain America: The Fighting Avenger. This was written by Brian Clevinger, who some of you might know as the creator of 8-Bit Theater and the awesome Atomic Robo comic. The art is by Gurihuri, who's a team of Japanese illustrators who's work I first encountered in Marvel's recent Power Pack series. There's a fun, charming and whimsical feel to their work, and I won't lie... If I could rip off their art style, I'd totally do it. Now rumors have it that this story was originally going to be a four issue miniseries, but it got knocked down to a 48 page one-shot, which is a crime against humanity if I ever heard of one. This particular comic is not set in any preset continuity that I'm aware of. (Maybe the Marvel Adventures universe?) In this comic, it starts with a crack team of commandos being forced to take this 'corny flag wearing' rookie on a easy bridge bombing mission. Their reaction when they first see him?

Yeah, they are not thrilled with it all. Obviously as you can guess the mission backfires and they get in over their heads, leading to some great moments. Even though the four soldiers are new characters that we've never met before, they were all charming and you could really feel their frustrations with poor Steve... Who does know what he's doing, it's just he's just the new guy. This leads to a great conclusion in a Nazi castle, with a showdown with a certain arch-nemesis of Cap's. (Here's a hint. He's got a red skull.) The entire story is fun and adventurous... It was literally the most fun comic I've read all year.

Unfortunately,the comic's not very well known, which is a total shame. I begrudgingly understand why the story was shortened down from four issues to a one shot... I don't agree with it, but I understand. (It's like the Chris Rock joke about O.J. Simpson: “Not saying he should have killed her... But I understand.”) With Gurihuri's artwork, it probably gives that impression of it being a “kid's comic” which is a total damn shame, because it's not. It's all ages, much like the movie. Like I mentioned last week, with Mad Love, some people still sneer upon cartoony artwork as lesser artwork, because of whatever reason they want to use, when in reality, I find it superior... Because there's less room for screwing up. Yeah, it's not Adi Granov's artwork... But it's Captain America! What the hell do you want? 'DAAAAAAAARK AND SERIOUS'?

He punches Hitler, for God's sake! And he's awesome for it.

That aside, I can understand that they were worried about the reception of the movie. There were a lot of people who were ready to call it Marvel's first bomb, thinking that having the name “America” in the title would be bob office poison, especially in the international markets... Though I was very happy to be able to look those people in the eyes and say to them “Eat it, hater!” You see, out of all the Marvel movies, Cap was the one most was worried about. He's the most “corny” of them all. He's bluntly the most super-heroic. It's like I mentioned in the Intrepid Verisimilitude a bit back... Pretentious creators who think they're too cool for superheroes have no problem doing comic book movies as long as they can disguise it as something OTHER than a superhero movie. You see, they have this thought that the average movie going audience cannot accept the notion of a superhero, because it's 'too corny'. So they'll try to disguise it up as another kind of movie. It's not a superhero movie, it's an urban vigilante movie (Daredevil, Dark Knight). It's a sci-fi action film (X-Men, Hulk). It's a horror movie (Hellboy, Ghost Rider). They'll save the label of “superhero” for the weaker parody titles, like Superhero Movie or My Super Ex-Girlfriend. And when they don't do as well as expected, they can use the excuse that superhero movies just aren't a good idea. The thing is, occasionally you'll get those rare comic concepts that no amount of lying will work... It's a goddamned superhero movie, and you can't fricking avoid it calling it that. Like Spider-Man and Cap's movie. And almost every time they do it, it makes a crap load of money, both domestically and internationally. (I think the only exception to this rule was Superman Returns... And even that technically wasn't a bomb. It's just Bryan Singer thought he was making a different movie than the one we all thought we were seeing. Still, considering what it looks like Zack Snyder is doing... Yeeesh!)

But my point before I lose my train of thought, out of all the Marvel Movies, Captain America: First Avenger was the one that was the most obvious superheroic movie. Bright red, white and blue costume, punches Hitler, corny speeches... And in today's world, that's a bit of a hard sale to a cynical movie-going audience. But holy crap, did it deliver! Not only was the costume in there, they actually managed to IMPROVE upon it, to the point I actually preferred it over the one in the comics! It was treated as a war movie, but it was so obviously a period piece super-hero movie... It was near perfect. Got a bit slow in the middle, but so did Batman Begins. And it set things up wonderfully for the Avengers movie. (However, that leads to my problem where I wish he had stayed in the 40's to punch Nazis in the nuts more. You can't help but to shake the feeling the entire movie was just a giant movie trailer for the Avengers. Oh it's great, and I love it, and I'll see the Avengers opening night... I just like movies to stand on their own a bit more.)

Gurihuri's art has a bit of a cartoony flair, but it's completely awesome. And I'm assuming that if you're reading this blog, you're probably here because I drew Shadowgirls, or those fake DC comic covers... So if you like my art, you'll like their art. As far as Brian Clevinger script goes? I only wish it was longer, because I had such a fun time reading the comic. It's like the movie... There is no stick up it's butt. And there needs to be more comics like this.

Looks I'll have to do something about it. *winks*