Marvel Pick Of The Week – November 9, 2016: Steve Rogers #7

America has changed completely this week, and Nick Spencer’s Steve Rogers is helping us to process the grief and disbelief about this. We need him.

Pick Of The Week: Captain America: Steve Rogers #7 by Nick Spencer and Jesus Saiz

America changed this week, and in a direction that about half of the voting populace fears and mourns. And someday, I’m going to be angry. But right now, I’m mostly scared. And sad. And nauseated. I don’t want a comic book to tell me everything is fine. I want a comic book that tells me it will be. And Nick Spencer gave me that this week.

Steve Rogers’s reinvention as a Hydra sleeper agent has stirred controversy, to be sure, but it’s moving Spencer’s story from Sam Wilson’s biting political commentary to this book’s taut thriller. Rogers maintains his nobility, but now that a cosmic being has rewritten his motivations toward Hydra, he is one of the most compelling villains Marvel has. At this point in the story, he recognizes the Red Skull as a ridiculous extremist who shames even the Nazi stand-in group, so he sneaks around laying plans for a coup. If he’s going to make it, he’ll have to pull in one of the most surprising “friends” he’s got.

This was a hard read the day after the election. Red Skull’s scenes drip with menace and a frightening wit, a man we thought too laughable now become a threat. Rogers’s consistent employ of the lesser evils, SHIELD’s grimly pragmatic approval, all twist the screws tighter on my nerves.

But this book gets it. It’s not telling me I’m fine or that I should suck it up and accept. Spencer tells a scary story, Saiz shows it with lush realism, and by the end, it is still okay to feel scared. Frustrated. Confused.

I trust that Spencer will end the Hydra-Cap story arc well. But right now, I need validation more than I need a happy ending, and this book understands that. My fellow Americans, we will come together. We must. But half of us need to mourn this week, and this book lets us do that.

Honorable Mentions:

All-New X-Men #15

Madelyn Pryor’s mundane recitation of her bizarre backstory makes me love her all over again. Welcome back.

Black Panther: World Of Wakanda #1

That thought bubble! World Of Wakanda is easily the most romantic book on the stands this week.

Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #1

And the married duo of Peter and Mary Jane Parker is a close second for most romantic. This week wasn’t all gloom and doom, America!

Catch up on previous Picks here!