Captain America No. 8 review: Stuck in the prison of Baron Strucker
By Alex Widen
Captain America has been railroaded for murder! Can he endure the prison of Wolfgang Von Strucker?
Captain America No. 8
Writer: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Artist: Adam Kubert
Colorist: Frank Martin
Cover: Alex Ross
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There are two men in the same universe claiming to hold the mantle of Captain America in prison. The only difference is one belongs in there, and one does not. Former Nazi mastermind Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker has gone “legit” and now runs a for-profit prison for super villains, of which Steve Rogers is now among. But what of the “pale mirror” of Cap as created by the Cosmic Cube during Secret Empire? This parallel Cap goes by “Steven Rogers,” because the “n” must stand for “nihilism.” He also bares the symbol of Hydra on his chest, yet never had the heart to tell them that their symbol is that of an octopus, not a hydra.
Image by Marvel Comics
Formerly the Supreme Commander of Hydra, he conquered the nation — and nearly the world — by tarnishing Captain America’s name and image. Now he’s doing pull-ups in tattered shorts in an “undisclosed location.” He’s visited by Alexa Lukin, who boasts of getting him a presidential pardon. She even caters to his ego by complimenting him about his looks. Yet is the Supreme Commander about to get played by a far more cunning manipulator? Or is he a pawn in her game?
Image by Marvel Comics
Joining the Chain Gang!
The legitimate Steve Rogers is also in prison — a highly advanced facility called “the Myrmidon.” Latin for “minion,” the warden is his old nemesis and former founder of Hydra, Wolfgang Strucker. Despite being a cartoonish Nazi super villain for decades, Strucker earned enough favors from the government during the Secret Empire’s reign of terror to clear his record and be allowed to manage a legitimate prison. And since America is teaming with monsters to jail, it looks the other way.
Image by Marvel Comics
While Cap acknowledges that he’s lodging with some of his worst enemies — the Wrecking Crew, Slither, Grey Gargoyle, Jigsaw, and Jack O’Lantern — he realizes they don’t deserve this. As a method of torment, Strucker releases one prisoner at random, and challenges them to escape through him. The end result is a brutal beat-down broadcast to all of the other prisoners. The Wrecker is the latest victim, who is no match for Strucker and his life-draining “Satan’s claw.”
Image by Marvel Comics
Steve has quickly learned the rules of Strucker and his prison, and none of it feels right to him. He knows the torment is beyond the simple brutalizing of one inmate at a time, or catering to sadism. It’s intended to break the inmates’ minds and spirits as well. Strucker is very much the domineering Nazi he always was; and just like in 1930s Germany, he has found a group society is fine with tormenting. The lines become blurrier upon realizing many of these crooks are bad.
Image by Marvel Comics
Debates with Super Villains Abound!
Yet Steve’s attempts to keep alone and avoid trouble fail. He’s fought nearly everyone within the Myrmidon, and they’ve lost much of the awe and respect they had for him, even as an enemy. Cap initially believes it is because they genuinely believe he’s guilty of murdering Thunderbolt Ross (who, as the Red Hulk, was a bigger monster than most). But in a yelling match with Bulldozer and Piledriver, Steve realizes how the shattering of “the dream” has even made the crooks lose faith.
Image by Marvel Comics
Bulldozer was once a soldier, yet he didn’t fight as glorious a war as Rogers did. And while Piledriver is hardly a saint, he blames the lie of “the dream” that Cap represented as leading to the deaths of plenty of innocent people — including Rick Jones. The big dilemma here for the reader is that the story wants to present these figures as having a halfway decent argument, but it’s impossible. The Wrecking Crew are all vicious, murderous, and at times lecherous, brutes.
Image by Marvel Comics
Things shift to more interesting gears when Sharon Carter has a meeting with Wilson Fisk. The former (or at least less obvious) “Kingpin of crime” has been elected as the mayor of New York City. This was due in part to his organizing of order during the Secret Empire, as well as political corruption and the sheer mania of the previous mayor, J. Jonah Jameson. Yet Carter is under no such delusions that Fisk has changed, even as he brags of representing the will of the people.
Image by Marvel Comics
Selene versus Supreme Hydra!?
Despite being the size of half the room, Fisk hardly makes Carter flinch. Since Ross was presumably murdered in “Fisk’s city,” she doubts he wouldn’t have been aware of the incident, at the very least. Carter hasn’t come slinging accusations without proof, as she reveals photographs of Fisk hobnobbing with a slew of the international elite — including Alexa Lukin. Despite the end of SHIELD and even her youth, Carter is still around, and doesn’t blink when staring down tyrants.
Image by Marvel Comics
Much like Piledriver and Bulldozer (and Owl in the previous issue), Kingpin relishes the idea of Captain America falling from the public’s grace — even if this is the 167th time. Fisk boasts that he’d be considered more popular both locally and nationally than Captain America now. If true, then the Avengers should seriously consider leaving New Yorkers to their fates the next time aliens invade. Wilson Fisk had been a brutal mob boss who skirted legal justice for decades.
Image by Marvel Comics
But what of “Hydra-Cap?” Steven has been lured onto an airplane by Alexa Lukin, perhaps under the lure of becoming a part of their “Power Elite” of reformed fascists and corrupted businessmen. However, it turns out that both she and Selene are seeking to remove him from play before he can possibly escape or challenge another vigilante at the wrong time (as he recently had against the Punisher). Plus, Selene always needs a life-force meal, and a super-soldier likely has a ton of it.
Image by Marvel Comics
No, the 1400 Club Isn’t a Televangelist Infomercial!
To give the former Supreme Commander credit, he puts up a valiant effort against a mutant who has challenged entire teams of X-Men. However, despite her own magical powers, Alexa barely even looks back at their fight, since its conclusion is predetermined. Eventually Selene overpowers Steven, since she’s mostly immune to physical injury — which is all he can inflict. Before long he’s cowering on the floor and at the mercy of Selene’s psychic powers, pledging Hydra’s oath to the end.
Image by Marvel Comics
Meanwhile, it seems as if in the staredown between Agent 13 and the Kingpin, it’s the big man who blinks. He offers Sharon a flash drive which offers a lead on the person who actually murdered Thaddeus Ross. It turns out to be another Spider-Man nemesis, the Foreigner. Created by Peter David in 1986’s Web Of Spider-Man No. 15, he mirrors the band of the same name that he doesn’t know what love is. He’s a master assassin and novice hypnotist with international acclaim. He’s also the ex-husband of Silver Sable, a mercenary who used to kill Nazis for profit.
Image by Marvel Comics
Ta-Nehisi Coates continues to tell a far more contemporary story than Mark Waid had beforehand. Much like Luke Cage did in 2017–2018, he is using the very real dilemma of “the for-profit prison industrial complex” as creative ore to forge this story. Much like David Walker did, he’s placed an obvious villain in charge of the latest “evil prison,” but he struggles with presenting his philosophical argument against some of America’s ills by having them come from obvious baddies.
Image by Marvel Comics
Is the Message, or the Messenger?
In this arc, and the last, Captain America’s heart is heavy with what he sees as structural corruption and hatred within his country. He has once again seen villains like Baron Strucker or Kingpin become embedded into government positions. He has once again seen how the public is often fickle at worst and manipulated by elites at best. He has become the victim of the 24-hour news cycle, in which not even Black Panther is a credible witness for him. Rogers chose to go to prison as a way to concede to the will of the people, which always seems to resist its ideals.
Image by Marvel Comics
Or, at the very least, a chance to practice what he preaches. As he tells Bulldozer, the rules are still the rules even when inconvenient. It’d be illegal for Rogers to go on the run with a legitimate warrant for his arrest coming, so this time he chose obedience. However, he entrusts Sharon, as well as fellow allies like Mockingbird, Misty Knight and White Tiger, to clear his name behind the scenes. It makes for some interesting, if heavy handed, narration from the sentinel of liberty.
Image by Marvel Comics
The biggest problem with this issue, and the last, if that some of the grievances and points of view about what the “reputation” of Captain America wrought would have better effect if it wasn’t coming from vicious killers. There is a legitimate point of stating how Steve stood for liberty yet, ironically, became a figure who was trusted blindly, and thus partly responsible for villains assuming his guise. The idea of the “American dream” being a lie for some (or many) isn’t always wrong.
Image by Marvel Comics
Just Who Is Slither, Anyway?
Ironically, a better character to make such statements was standing right beside the Wrecking Crew. A minor villain who has a few silent cameos is Slither, created by Cap co-creator Jack Kirby in 1977, would have been a better mouthpiece. A member of a “one-and-done” gang of Brotherhood mutants organized by Magneto, he and his pals were frequent super villains for various groups. Yet Slither and his friends were also once forced into becoming government soldiers (as many villains have), and literally pitted against the Hulk! He also fought against mutant registration.
Image by Marvel Comics
Some readers may wonder why Ta-Nehisi Coates, or any writer, could have chosen to give such dialogue to a Z-lister like Slither rather than more well known villains like Piledriver or Bulldozer. And in fairness, Bulldozer’s past history as a soldier is utilized well. But on the other hand, those Z-listers can be great fodder for spectacular writing moments. Christos Gage did so with the lame Dazzler villain Johnny Guitar in the brilliant, and underrated, Avengers: The Initiative No. 27.
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Bulldozer, Piledriver, and Kingpin (or Owl) are remorseless criminals, killers, and brutes. It doesn’t matter how legitimate or even intelligent some of their points against Captain America may be. They simply have no legitimate moral ground to stand on. More could have been made of Slither, as a mutant with an “obvious” mutation, feeling he had no choice but to fall into a life of criminality. That, ironically, may have mirrored the lives of many real life convicts all too well.
Great Art on an Arc Which Tests the Pulse of Its Readers!
Regardless, Andy Kubert and Frank Martin deliver another terrific issue on art and colors. The Coates run on Captain America has benefited from two A-List artists in a row. There are some bits of reused artwork, especially with some of the Strucker hologram images, but by and large it is strong stuff. Kubert, part of a legacy of great comic book artists, can cover both brutal action and more subtle sequences equally well. The fight between Steven and Selene is fast paced, but the more subtle showdown between Sharon Carter and Kingpin is also memorable.
Image by Marvel Comics
It’s possible that Coates is deliberately having the voices of criticism of America’s ideals and Cap’s legacy come from obvious villains is a means of lowering their legitimacy. That Thaddeus Ross, despite being a monster and a symbol of military overreach, is just the sort of connected peon that the government and mainstream media would deify in death. On the other hand, some of these arguments and debates could be executed stronger with less obvious speakers than brutes or Nazis. Even in a social climate when it seems like the villains of the past are rising once again.
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Next. Rogers Gets Railroaded in No. 7!. dark
Overall, this remains a flawed yet satisfying issue of Captain America. While Coates is struggling with doing a more routine plot than he may realize — Cap has been framed or had his image tarnished by villains often — he is introducing some novel ideas. The bit with Bulldozer had its moments, and Sharon Carter and her “daughters of liberty” are on the cusp of greatness. The scene between Carter and Fisk is gold. This remains a run for readers to keep their eyes on.