Captain America 25: DOA & Removal Events

CAPTAIN AMERICA 25. (Brubaker & Epting.) It's not the FRET's policy to spoil stories in the headline or with the initial image, but given that the events of CAPTAIN AMERICA have been all over the national news today and given that comics fans know good and well to stay away from comics sites on Wednesday I figured it was okay to make an exception today.

Captain America is dead.

There's little outrage over the death as I peek around the net and talk to friends because this is comics and we've been through this before. Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man are the three biggest stars in the comicverse and they've all had their time on the bench thanks to what I'm calling a "Removal Event." Superman "died," Bats broke his back, Spidey "wasn't" Spidey. Other heroes have had their time off, too. Tony Stark let James Rhodes be Iron Man, Hal Jordan was replaced by Kyle Rayner, heck, even Cap himself has taken time away from the red-white-and-blues.

Heroes go away and then they come back. Such is comics.

So Steve Rogers is dead and we all know it's only a matter of time before he comes back, likely for 2008's big summer event. Maybe Steve will have less time away, maybe he'll have more, but he's not gone for good and to think otherwise is to stand in the face of sixty years of comic history.

The question is going to be what happens during the Remove. At best, Removes allow for comic companies and fans to reflect on what's not there at the moment. Companies also get a chance to roll out some new characters, potentially in a Removed character's clothes. The basic idea, though, is that sometimes time away allows for a greater appreciation (again, from both fans and the company) down the road.

Superman's time away was a near complete failure. We got Steel out of it, and for a time there Karl Kesel was telling kick-ass Superboy stories, but on the whole the event was a big, dull thud. Bats' absence was a little better, as DC used the Remove to slow down the Bruce Wayne Grim-n-Gritty Train by showing us a guy (Azrael) who would cross lines Bruce wouldn't. Spider-Man's Remove was an embarrassment and possibly the worst creative attempt of the bunch; at least with Supes and Bats the heroes were removed by circumstance while with Spidey we were asked to accept that the wrong guy had been Spidey for all these years.

Marvel's doing a bang-up job promoting what's coming next - check out the Newsarama story on Fallen Son - and I'll let that speak for itself for now and concentrate on CAP 25.

While I'd rather they didn't take Steve Rogers off the scene for a bit, CAP 25 is a great comic. The plot is pretty simple - Steve is led, in Cap costume, up the steps of a courthouse. He notes a red targeting light on the back of the Marshall in front of him and tries to knock the Marshal out of the way so he can take the hit clean.


The sniper is revealed to be Crossbones, who proceeds to get the crap kicked out of him by the Winter Soldier. As Cap is laying on the ground, someone shoots him in the gut three times (or maybe twice, one of the bullet wounds looks like it's in his right knee.) Sharon Carter rides with him to the hospital, Cap is pronounced DOA on arrival, and then an agent of Dr. Faustus tells Sharon to "remember" and she has a memory flash into her mind that she was the second shooter, and thus the one responsible for Cap's death.

It's a brilliant move on Brubaker's part. He manages to make Cap's death tie into his ongoing storyline, so it doesn't feel like this was something forced on him by the events of Civil War. The way Brubaker lays this story out, too, works exceptionally well. He uses first-person narration through Sharon, Winter Soldier, and Falcon to touch on Cap's history and what he means to each of them. Sharon and Bucky are on the scene to execute Nick Fury's plan (presumably to free Cap, though it's never explicitly laid out what Fury had planned). The other details of the story are filled in by a news report, which gives us both an external view of the trial through the media, and then a personal view of Cap through the thoughts of his friends. And, briefly, through the eyes of Faustus and the Red Skull. Brubaker could've told the whole story through the eyes of Steve himself, but by not getting into his head Brubaker keeps Cap at a distance. Everyone is a viewer here. Fitting, too, that a character who entered the modern world as a mythic legend long thought dead (Marvel time being what it is, what was originally a twenty-year gap between his "death" in WW II and his reappearance in AVENGERS 4, has now been stretched out to a likely fifty- to fifty-five year gap), leaves as a mythic hero that seemingly touched everyone yet few felt they really knew.

The issue wants you to believe that Sharon is the killer. If she is (and I hope she is), then it makes Cap's death even more poignant, to be taken out by someone who loves him because of the machinations of the Red Skull and Dr. Faustus.

I'm less than convinced Sharon is the killer. I think the actual second shooter is the US Marshall sitting behind Captain America the entire time. There's one main reason for this theory - the angle of Sharon's approach and the angle of Cap's second shooter appear to be at odds. (I'll refer here to the "actual event" which is the panels we see depicting the second shooting, and "Sharon's memory" which is either the actual memory of what happened or an implanted false memory by Faustus.) Here's the breakdown:

THE CONTRADICTING ANGLES:

Looking at the angles in the actual event, Sharon is coming at Cap from the left, yet the gun jammed into Cap's stomach indicates the gun is coming from the right. So does Cap's facial expression, which is looking away from Sharon. The angle of the gun is coming from the opposite direction of Sharon's approach. For that angle to work, the gun has to either be pointed at Cap from someone coming in the opposite direction, or Sharon has to pull out her gun and put her arm out to the right, then bend it at the elbow to point back at Cap, instead of simply drawing and pointing. (As if she's wrapping her arm around something, which doesn't really make sense.)



Plus, when Cap slumps, it's into Sharon. In Sharon's memory, however, Cap's body is pointed the other way - instead of looking to our right, he's looking to our left, and his body position is going away from Sharon, meaning for him to slump into her she's got to shift his entire body around.

THE MARSHALL:

Here's a breakdown of the page Cap gets shot the second time. Looking at the Marshall behind Cap on that page reveals the following: Panel 1, he's behind Cap. Panel 4 he's looking to the right and reaching for something with his left hand. Panel 5 the gun is coming from the right, pointing left. Panel 6, Cap is wide-eyed and apparently looking at his killer. (Panel 4, 5, and 6 are the three panels in the image above. Click on the image for a larger view.) Now, if it was Sharon, even with the Marshall looking to the left you'd think he'd see Sharon shooting him, or at least be able to tell that it wasn't the sniper. It's the Marshall who yells Sniper the second time.

However, here's a theory on how it would work if the Marshall is the killer - In Panel 4 he could be reaching for a gun, which he then has to reach around Cap to point in his stomach. That makes the angle of the gun in Panel 5 work. Here's how I spin this out:

1) Maybe Cap doesn't see his killer in Panel 6. He gives no indication to Sharon during the ride that he actually did see his killer, so maybe that look on his face is just surprise at being shot again. This would explain why he doesn't accuse Sharon or tell her who did it.

2) (And this is the key to the whole theory from the point-of-view of the gun as a, well, smoking gun.) The gun barrel in Panel 5 looks a standard issue Marshall's gun much more than Sharon's SHIELD firearm. On the next page, the Marshall's left hand is on Cap's shoulder, but his right hand is mostly hidden, meaning he would've switched hands in the confusion because on the next page his gun is in his right hand and he's exiting to the right. Look at the gun (the image to the left) - it appears to be a match for the barrel of the Panel 5 gun.

4) A few pages later the Marshall asks Sharon to leave while he pushes Cap towards the ambulance, perhaps so he can ride along and finish the job, if need be.

5) In Sharon's memory (where we can see her big SHIELD gun isn't the gun that's stuck into Cap's stomach during the actual event - see image below), the Marshall isn't there when she fires the shot, yet the indication from the real-time event is that he was always there. If this memory is a fake, implanted by Faustus, then it would do well to have the actual killer removed from Sharon's memory.


I think the Marshall is the actual second shooter, not Sharon, though I'd love to be proven wrong. Sharon being the killer delivers a hell of an impact, though her not being the killer, in many ways, provides for greater story potentiality. There have been indications that the New Avengers title will be tracking down a conspiracy angle of some sorts, and the government thinking Sharon is the killer provides the perfect opportunity for them to declare this case over without satisfying everyone that this is actually what happened.

Now, all that said, the next issue will likely reveal a camera angle revealing that Sharon did, in fact, do all the killing, rendering everything I've just written completely moot.

That won't change the fact that CAPTAIN AMERICA 25 is the best single-issue of the entire CIVIL WAR event, and sets up a whole host of interesting stories and plots to run through the Marvel Universe from now until Steve Rogers returns to the costume somewhere down the line. For once, it's nice to have one of these Remove Events as the launching point for arguments and debate about the actual comics that are produced and less about the external, business reasons or skepticism for such a move. Those arguments will be there, of course, but Brubaker and Epting have delivered an issue that is far and away superior to any other Remove Issue we've seen. They stepped up and kicked ass.

And now, let the conspiracy begin. Can't wait to read what's coming. Next stop, Fallen Son.