Writer: Ta-Nehisi Coates

Art Team: Jason Masters & Matt Milla

Letterer: VC’s Cory Petit

Cover: Alex Ross

Release Date: January 29th, 2020

Price: $3.99USD

New York has gone crazy! Word has gotten out that Mayor Fisk was assassinated (the close range bazooka in midtown Manhattan last issue may have helped spread the word), and meanwhile Scourge is upstate, probably in The Hamptons eating tomatoes and loading his heavy artillery weapons and washing his rusty old pickup truck. Somehow it will take the entire Daughters Of Liberty to quell the angry New Yorkers and take out a mysterious loner in the woods. Let’s jump in and see how in CAPTAIN AMERICA #18 by Ta-Nehisi Coates!

Picking up after last issues coffee date in the suburbs, Cap and the Daughters take on the rioters. Some clever sleight of hand and subtle pheromones later, Cap gives the ol’ Steve Rogers inspirational speech and despite Steve being framed publicly for the murder of General Ross (and that whole Hydra Supreme leader thing) all it takes is Cap asking “can’t we all just get along”? for them to LOVE him again! Meanwhile, the NYPD has done what Cap, The Daughters Of Liberty, conceivably the Fantastic Four and The Avengers couldn’t – tracked Scourge to a cabin in the woods. Give those Detectives a raise!

Cap and The Daughters arrive at the cabin and concoct quite possibly the most ridiculous plan available. They literally know exactly where Scourge’s command center is while Cap runs straight through a bunch of gunfire. Just in the nick of time, Scourge gives us an evil villain mini-monologue, runs out the back and is taken out by his own guns. Cap faces the implied camera and gives a “meh, what can you do?”, where it turns out Mayor Fisk is alive? How? Who knows! Could be an LMD, could be holograms. Give us more details! Meanwhile, John Walker is acting shady with Alyssa Larimore (widow of one of the slain Police officers), while Cap snoops on Sharon’s phone. You’d think with all the experience he’s had with women since WW2 he’d know women really don’t like that.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

The penultimate issue of this arc… and it really falls flat. Yet again, Ta-Nehisi Coates drags things out, and this book is moving simultaneously at a snail’s pace, while details to fill in the gaps are completely glossed over and never referenced again. Coats seem to want Steve to have his cake and eat it too. He wants Steve to still be distrusted and looked at with suspicion, but at the flip of a switch be loved and admired againwith no buildup and no foreshadowing. We all love a great Steve Rogers inspirational speech, but here it just comes across as banal and uninspired. Here’s hoping after this arc is finished we can start moving again!

5.5/10