Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty #8 Review

Written by: Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly
Art by: Carmen Carnero
Colors by: Nolan Woodard
Letters by: VC’s Joe Caramagna
Cover art by: Carmen Carnero, Alejandro Sánchez
Cover price: $3.99
Release date: January 4, 2022

Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty #8 brings the mind-wiped allies of Captain America back together to assess AIM’s attack on NYC and figure out where their memories went.

Is It Good?

Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty #8 is odd, and not in a good way. When last we left Cap, he woke up in the middle of a Kansas cornfield and learned from a passerby that NYC was taken over by AIM. The ending was, to be generous, jarring. Now, we get a little more insight into Cap’s missing memories with a help from a salacious mutant.

In no particular order, we can surmise that AIM took over NYC to get at the neganite reactor left by MODOK in the Steve/Cap+Sam/Cap one-shot released in the Spring of 2022. That revelation is only mentioned on the preface page, so if you’re looking for engaging dialog that spells out that discovery, you won’t find it.

Cap and his allies eventually find each other, and with little choice, Cap calls on Emma Frost (using a bizarre choice of secret passphrases) for memory help. They learn a different kind of MODOC, with a ‘C’ for Control, is responsible for their missing memories. Where did this new MODOC come from? Unknown. What, if anything, does the new MODOC have to do with the AIM attack on NYC? Unknown. How did MODOC find Cap and his allies, and why did it go through the trouble of dumping them in the middle of Kansas? Unknown. What happened during the 5-day gap, and if the knowledge of those days is so dangerous, why not simply kill Cap and his friends? Unknown.

If it’s not clear what’s happening, that’s because the story Lanzing and Kelly have written is not clear. It reads like multiple, random events strung together to make an intriguing mystery, but the assembly results in a confusing mystery with as much curiosity effectiveness as spaghetti thrown at the wall.

What’s the outcome of all this confusing randomness? Cap and his team of side characters decide to pull themselves up by their SHIELD-issue bootstraps and rename themselves the Invaders to take the fight to AIM. Now, that’s a name change that isn’t earned by any stretch, but here we are.

Carnero’s art is fine in this issue, but in all honesty, there isn’t much to look at. Most of the issue is people standing around talking with brief action interruptions scattered throughout. That said, what you get by way of art looks well done.

About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.

Follow @ComicalOpinions on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter

Bits and Pieces

Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty #8 is an odd issue that loosely strings seemingly random events together to create a general approximation of a story. Some of the random events make sense, most do not, and the majority of the issue is simply people standing around talking.