The Death of Captain America: The Man Who Bought America

There are not too many complaints one could have with this Captain America saga. You have love, death, a rebirth and some intense fighting scenes. The story flows well and the illustrations are excellent. You don't have to know too much about Captain Americas heroic exploits. They make sure you understand his impact on the world. A top notch comic book!

This third collection of the current Captain America Comic is excellent. The art and writing are both great and compliment each other perfectly. I recommend it to anyone who likes the art of comics as well as really good adventure and political thriller stories.

Ed Brubaker is a god! If you want a great story, read this book.

After twenty-four stellar issues, Captain America (Steve Rogers) died in #25 of his current series, a move that attracted unprecedented attention from the mainstream media and momentarily catapulted Marvel's longrunning best comic into the spotlight. The news moved on, eventually. So what then? Then we got "The Death of Captain America", an epic eighteen-part story that reaches its conclusion (for now) in this hardcover, collecting issues 37-42, "The Man Who Bought America". Ed Brubaker and artist Steve Epting (with a guest-issue by Robert de la Torre) maintain the incredible momentum the series has had since issue one, and, at long last, bring many of the threads that have been going since #25 or even #1 to a close. The last collection saw James 'Bucky' Barnes take on the mantle of Captain America in honour of the deceased Rogers, struggling with the intense legacy that he must now uphold, in contrast to his own turbulent past as a brainwashed assassin. Teaming up with Captain America's longtime partner the Falcon (Sam Wilson) and Barnes' own ex-girlfriend Black Widow (Natasha Romanova), he vows to rescue Steve's brainwashed lover Sharon Carter, now in the clutches of the Red Skull and his associates, Doctor Faustus, Arnim Zola, and Sin. At the same time, the Skull puts his plan to place a patsy in the White House into effect, and is also cooking up some strange device in the basement of his fortress. What does this have to do with Sharon? Brubaker is a master of espionage/techno-thriller elements, and he fuses them effortlessly into the superhero comic, aided by Epting's marvelously real art. Brubaker cut his teeth as a writer of noir crime drama (see his current, excellent ongoing "Criminal" series for Marvel's ICON line), where characters don't always get happy endings, a touch that he brings to a certain extent into his superhero work, most notably in "Daredevil" (though that series is always depressing; Matt's life being terrible is a given for most writers). In "Captain America", the end result is a juxtaposition of good and bad; the good guys must achieve some level of success, perhaps a surprising amount under the circumstances, but, for Sharon especially, there's a terrible tragedy forced upon her, albeit one that shows her underlying steel. And the Red Skull's comeuppance is wonderfully inventive, taking into account the realities of death in comics. So what's next for New Cap and his allies? Hopefully, many more stories of the calibre of this one. Highly recommended.

Ed Brubaker's epic Death of Captain America trilogy comes to a conclusion with The Man Who Bought America, which brings the Red Skull's conspiracy to a head. With Bucky adjusting to his new role as the new Captain America, he and Falcon attempt to take the fight directly to the Red Skull and his minions, with S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Sharon Carter's life hanging in the balance. Things get even more complicated however when the Skull unleashes a new element to his devious plot, and no one is more surprised than Bucky when it appears that someone else is running around in a Captain America costume, and appears to be none other than Steve Rogers. Or so you would think. As I've said many times before, I was one of the few readers who didn't think Brubaker's run on the title since its relaunch is as brilliant as everyone claims it to be, but over the past year or so, I became a believer. There are so many little nuances and surprises abound that you manage to stay on the edge of your seat during the entire read. Steve Epting provides more solid artwork as well, helping further cement the status of his run with Brubaker as being THE definitive Captain America team. All in all, Ed Brubaker continues his prolific run on Captain America, and here's hoping what he has in store next for the title continues the greatness.