Captain America #12

By Rick Remender & Carlos Pacheco

Two issues after the Dimension Z storyline and Captain America is still, rightfully, struggling with what happened to him there. Cap is a man out of time once again. Dimension Z feels more like home to him now than New York does. His friends from New York feel foreign to him and he longs for the bonds he forged while away. Cap is at one of the lowest points the hero has ever been.

Writer Rick Remender’s fresh take on Captain America is still a blast to read. His stuff with Cap in this issue is top notch. Everything from him doodling pictures of him and Ian to his cross-town run with Falcon as he spilled his guts about what happened is some strong stuff. It’s heartbreaking stuff. Cap was horrendously beaten, physically, while in Dimension Z and now that he is back he is even more emotionally beaten. Remender knocks Captain America’s scenes in this issue out of the park.

The problem is Cap is barely in this issue. The issue is bookended with a new villain obtaining power and Nuke blowing things up in a foreign country. All that could be fine if the villains didn’t spend all of their page time monologuing. Neither the new villain or Nuke speak to anyone but one another and they are on a soap box the entire time. Villains have a tendency to monologue and love the sound of their own voice but when it is for nearly a whole issue it begins to grate on the reader.

Carlos Pacheco’s art is great. While the villains spend the issue monologuing at least there is some solid action to look at. Nuke’s rampage through who knows how many soldiers looks great and the action flows nicely from kill to kill. His facial work on Cap is heartbreaking and takes the scene to the next level. When Cap breaks down in front of Falcon it looks gut-wrenching…in a good way.

Captain America #12 suffers from feeling a bit too uneven. The scenes, what few there are, with Captain America himself are wonderful and sad and great. The scenes with Nuke are the polar opposite. They are boring to read and are way too focused on monologuing why the villain thinks the way he does.