Captain America: The Extremists (Marvel Knights)

Rating:
Summary: A little more like it
Review: "The Extremists" moves the Captain America series just a little bit more toward the center after the ridiculous left-wing subversion of "The New Deal." But I see from below that the moral-relativist crowd is already objecting to Cap's return to true form.

If there's one character in all of comic-bookdom who should be allowed, nay, required to be patriotic, it's Captain AMERICA. Why does the left have to get their bony claws on everything decent and pervert it to their own ends? Captain America ought to be a political-correctness-free zone. If you want anti-American claptrap, go read the New York Times.

Rating:
Summary: Empahsizes the SOLDIER in Super-soldier!
Review: Great story-arc that shows that Cap is also the best soldier you can have. Captain America hasn't been this great since Mark Waid/Ron Garney were working on the book.

Rating:
Summary: A little more like it
Review: The Extremists collects #.'s 7-11 of the new Captain America series, and takes place after Captain America: The New Deal. The storyline tells of an attempt by Redpath, a Lakota ex-SHIELD agent who bonds with his tribe's god of thunder and plots to destroy Washington with torrential storms as part of his campaign to return the United States to the American Indian. But just who are the Extremists mentioned in the title, and what is the intent of this story? While Redpath's motivations are made abundantly clear, I'm afraid the drives of Cap come off as a little underdefined. In fact, when compared to The New Deal, The Extremists is almost its exact polar opposite. Whereas in TND, Cap was shown to be a well rounded character and his opponents somewhat plastic, here it is the `bad guys' who come off three dimensional, and Cap who gets the short end. Granted, considering current events, it is very difficult to successfully pull of a Captain America story. The character itself, almost like the American Western and the ideals one associates with it (ideals which are sadly misunderstood or ignored completely nowadays), are dangerously close to being cast aside. However, for me this is the appeal of Cap - that he is the unchanging, idealistic American champion (America is something like Thomas Jefferson - sometimes the philosophy and the practice doesn't match up). While we get some of that here, particularly in the earlier half of the book, by the last few pages, some of Cap's arguments against Redpath come off as a little narrow. Is this some new direction in the characterization of Steve Rogers? At one point Nick Fury comments on Cap's tendency to blind himself to the truth. Is this meant to be an instance of that tendency? For when Redpath reasons that the revered nation and ideals which Cap fights to defend were built upon the genocide of his own ancestors, Cap dismisses this as `terrorist double talk' and gets in with his fists. This seemed a little lame to me. Granted Captain America is completely against killing, and Redpath's slaughter of civilians in a hurricane and intended assault on Washington is reason enough for him to club Redpath, but he still looks like a bit of a Little Bush Republican here. I know when people think of Cap they think right wing zealot, but very few realize that this IS the man who broke with his government and pledged himself to defend the ideals of his nation and not necessarily the men who rule over it (particularly if they are corrupt, as SHIELD seems to be turning out to be). Not only that, Redpath (through the use of a peyote-like drug) reveals to Steve evidence of tampered memories which if they prove true, could turn the entire Captain America mythos on end. Yet Steve for the most part chooses to ignore presented facts in favor of taking Redpath down. Who is the real Extremist? Redpath, or Cap, or is it SHIELD? Another thing bothered me slightly, and that was a slightly racist undertone I detected in this storyline. Though it is never brought entirely out in the open, I got the notion that it was inferring that the Lakota god of thunder could not stand against Thor, his Norse counterpart. While I believe this match up is left unsettled in true Marvel teamup fashion, some of Thor's rhetoric towards the possessed Redpath almost felt like the white man telling the red that only an Aryan has the right to control the weather. I could just be reading too much into it. Another sinister moment for me came in the final passages, with Thor and the Captain favorably quoting Richard III - one of the most unscrupulous villains in Shakespearean literature! Is this subversion of the Cap on the part of the writers? If so, I didn't care for it. It felt like the writers sympathized much more with their villains than they did with Old Winghead. Dangerous stuff there. To write this character you need to be a bit of an idealist yourself. You need to watch Frank Capra movies and read the old Simon and Kirby stories, and understand where Cap is coming from. He's a guy who grew up in a time when the good guys were good because the bad guys were indescribably evil. But he is a man whose development was arrested. Frozen in time, he is constantly having his ideals questioned and subverted, but he still sticks to them because they are the only thing he loves which he has not had to leave behind. There is a nice dichotomy between Cap and Nick Fury which has been developing. Nick has lived through all that Cap has seen and more. Is he what Cap would have been if he had not been frozen - a shadowy, clandestine figure who has come to accept and live with the failings and evils of America - a sort of Dark Cap? And what's with Hana, the Atlanteean chick? She seemed a little out of place - like Erika Eleniak popping out of the cake in Under Siege.

The art is very nice, thought not as great as New Deal. However, my one complaint (besides a decided drop in illustrative quality in the latter half) is the depiction of the Brooklyn gangsters in the beginning. Anybody who has ever seen a real street gang outside of The Warriors knows that the obligatory white guy with the green haired mohawk (he seems to pop up as a street thug in most comics - I call him the Repo Man, cause he looks like an extra from the movie) and the security chain around his neck does not go side by side with Chinese/Black/Hispanic gangstas (unless its some PC requirement that he be inserted to promote diversity). Geez you guys, go rent 187, American Me or Menace II Society already (and invite the writers over, `cause the dialogue on such characters could use a jumpstart as well). A minor quibble, but for realism's sake, it might be nice to drop that guy out of the mix for once.

Final word: an interesting read in that it makes you think, but a little unsettling in its implications. Maybe it could have been thought out a little more. Beautiful art. Worth picking up if you are a Cap fan, but probably not much to offer if you're not.

Rating:
Summary: Who Are The Extremists?
Review: The Extremists collects #.'s 7-11 of the new Captain America series, and takes place after Captain America: The New Deal. The storyline tells of an attempt by Redpath, a Lakota ex-SHIELD agent who bonds with his tribe's god of thunder and plots to destroy Washington with torrential storms as part of his campaign to return the United States to the American Indian. But just who are the Extremists mentioned in the title, and what is the intent of this story? While Redpath's motivations are made abundantly clear, I'm afraid the drives of Cap come off as a little underdefined. In fact, when compared to The New Deal, The Extremists is almost its exact polar opposite. Whereas in TND, Cap was shown to be a well rounded character and his opponents somewhat plastic, here it is the `bad guys' who come off three dimensional, and Cap who gets the short end. Granted, considering current events, it is very difficult to successfully pull of a Captain America story. The character itself, almost like the American Western and the ideals one associates with it (ideals which are sadly misunderstood or ignored completely nowadays), are dangerously close to being cast aside. However, for me this is the appeal of Cap - that he is the unchanging, idealistic American champion (America is something like Thomas Jefferson - sometimes the philosophy and the practice doesn't match up). While we get some of that here, particularly in the earlier half of the book, by the last few pages, some of Cap's arguments against Redpath come off as a little narrow. Is this some new direction in the characterization of Steve Rogers? At one point Nick Fury comments on Cap's tendency to blind himself to the truth. Is this meant to be an instance of that tendency? For when Redpath reasons that the revered nation and ideals which Cap fights to defend were built upon the genocide of his own ancestors, Cap dismisses this as `terrorist double talk' and gets in with his fists. This seemed a little lame to me. Granted Captain America is completely against killing, and Redpath's slaughter of civilians in a hurricane and intended assault on Washington is reason enough for him to club Redpath, but he still looks like a bit of a Little Bush Republican here. I know when people think of Cap they think right wing zealot, but very few realize that this IS the man who broke with his government and pledged himself to defend the ideals of his nation and not necessarily the men who rule over it (particularly if they are corrupt, as SHIELD seems to be turning out to be). Not only that, Redpath (through the use of a peyote-like drug) reveals to Steve evidence of tampered memories which if they prove true, could turn the entire Captain America mythos on end. Yet Steve for the most part chooses to ignore presented facts in favor of taking Redpath down. Who is the real Extremist? Redpath, or Cap, or is it SHIELD? Another thing bothered me slightly, and that was a slightly racist undertone I detected in this storyline. Though it is never brought entirely out in the open, I got the notion that it was inferring that the Lakota god of thunder could not stand against Thor, his Norse counterpart. While I believe this match up is left unsettled in true Marvel teamup fashion, some of Thor's rhetoric towards the possessed Redpath almost felt like the white man telling the red that only an Aryan has the right to control the weather. I could just be reading too much into it. Another sinister moment for me came in the final passages, with Thor and the Captain favorably quoting Richard III - one of the most unscrupulous villains in Shakespearean literature! Is this subversion of the Cap on the part of the writers? If so, I didn't care for it. It felt like the writers sympathized much more with their villains than they did with Old Winghead. Dangerous stuff there. To write this character you need to be a bit of an idealist yourself. You need to watch Frank Capra movies and read the old Simon and Kirby stories, and understand where Cap is coming from. He's a guy who grew up in a time when the good guys were good because the bad guys were indescribably evil. But he is a man whose development was arrested. Frozen in time, he is constantly having his ideals questioned and subverted, but he still sticks to them because they are the only thing he loves which he has not had to leave behind. There is a nice dichotomy between Cap and Nick Fury which has been developing. Nick has lived through all that Cap has seen and more. Is he what Cap would have been if he had not been frozen - a shadowy, clandestine figure who has come to accept and live with the failings and evils of America - a sort of Dark Cap? And what's with Hana, the Atlanteean chick? She seemed a little out of place - like Erika Eleniak popping out of the cake in Under Siege.

The art is very nice, thought not as great as New Deal. However, my one complaint (besides a decided drop in illustrative quality in the latter half) is the depiction of the Brooklyn gangsters in the beginning. Anybody who has ever seen a real street gang outside of The Warriors knows that the obligatory white guy with the green haired mohawk (he seems to pop up as a street thug in most comics - I call him the Repo Man, cause he looks like an extra from the movie) and the security chain around his neck does not go side by side with Chinese/Black/Hispanic gangstas (unless its some PC requirement that he be inserted to promote diversity). Geez you guys, go rent 187, American Me or Menace II Society already (and invite the writers over, `cause the dialogue on such characters could use a jumpstart as well). A minor quibble, but for realism's sake, it might be nice to drop that guy out of the mix for once.

Final word: an interesting read in that it makes you think, but a little unsettling in its implications. Maybe it could have been thought out a little more. Beautiful art. Worth picking up if you are a Cap fan, but probably not much to offer if you're not.