Written by: Derek Landy
Art by: Angel Unzueta
Colors by: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letters by: VC’s Joe Caramagna
Cover art by: Alex Ross
Cover price: $3.99
Release date: March 2, 2022

Captain America/Iron Man #4 finds Cap and Tony fighting for their lives to escape a squad of Myrmidons under Overseer’s control. Meanwhile, Veronica Eden’s conspiracy plan is revealed and it’s… something.

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Was It Good?

My immediate reaction after reading Captain America/Iron Man #4 is: uhh… what?!?

Talk about taking a long way around to get to an outcome. Landy fashioned the most convoluted, confusing, unnecessarily complicated plan for Veronic Eden you could imagine, and it didn’t work. Who’d a thunk it?!?

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

The plan, if you can call it that, involved Veronica teaming up with a corrupt politician to acquire the funds and resources to take over both SHIELD and Hydra, eventually consolidating the groups to take over the world. The “what” isn’t the complicated part. The “how” is what’ll make your head spin.

The Senator enlisted the Paladins in a series of staged fights against Hydra to convince the world SHIELD needed to be reactivated under the Senator’s control. When the Paladins weren’t getting enough public attention, Veronica explained they could get more cred by activating a Myrmidon for their next, staged fight. The Myrmidon (as Veronica predicted) reactivated the Overseer. The Paladins panicked and fled. Veronica established a “romantic relationship” with the Overseer as a method of control based on a flaw in its programming and tried to use her attention to convince the Overseer to assimilate a SHIELD helecarrier to take over all helecarriers to form an assassination network that would take out all supers across the globe via death from above. In other words, it’s a repeat of the Captain America: The Winter Soldier plan.

Realizing the Paladins are in the wrong, Fifty One tried to get the word out and stop the Overseer by obtaining the Captain Hydra armor from Veronica. Breaking Veronica out of police custody was a means to an end for Fifty One and he was a good guy the whole time while the remaining Paladins were in on the plan with Veronica almost since the beginning.

What a mess. At least you can say the art’s cool. Unzueta and Rosenberg are pulling out all the stops to give you great action and exciting visuals. There’s plenty of robot smashing, so if you’re looking for mayhem, you’re going to get your money’s worth.

Final Thoughts

Captain America/Iron Man #4 connects all the dots to reveal the villain’s master plan, but it’s a convoluted mess. Landy goes out of his way to prove that the shortest distance between two points looks like an unspooled ball of yarn gathered in a heap. That said, there’s plenty of great rock ’em, sock ’em robot smashing. Buy it for the visuals, but save yourself the headache and ignore the mess of a story.

5/10