WRITER: JAMES ROBINSON
ARTIST: JOE PHILLIPS, TRAVIS CHAREST, AL RIO, JOE BENNETT
While the second halves of Fantastic Four, The Avengers and Iron Man declining in quality, albeit only slightly for the latter, the surprise of the second half of Captain America is a drastic improvement even with a dodgy ending. The key factor is not only the binning of Rob Liefield but also the brief stint of the excellent James Robinson. He came on board when the title was reassigned to Wildstorm and purposefully takes Cap out of the mass of jangled plotlines and on a bike ride to get back in touch with the country. It's an old device that won't be to the taste of anyone who doesn't like Captain America comics anyway but it brings it more in line with Mark Waid's pre-Onslaught work.
Naturally rather than getting to meet the backbone of America he runs into racial supremacy group Sons of the Serpent. Thus follows a few issues of subterfuge and commando raids with Cap being unflappable, firm and principled but not a flt platitude-spouting poser like in the Loeb/Liefield material, with some sharp dialogue and crisp, clean art from Joe Bennett.
However, someone must have told Robinson there were some regulations that required stuffing up any perfectly sensible story. Nick Fury is rapidly revealed to be the head of the Serpent Society, except that he's really not, it's an L.M.D. and the real thing has been in a cell on the Helicarrier since long before the start of the series. This seems to be a response to a belief that Nick wouldn't have done some of the incredibly dicey stuff he does in the series, once again filing any edges that set the Heroes Reborn version out from the Marvel Universe version right off. And it plain doesn't make any sense either, as the real Fury immediately knows everything that's happened since his imprisonment.
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