Captain America: Sam Wilson, Vol. 1: Not My Captain America by Nick SpencerMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is strictly a middle of the road comic. If you're a die-hard Captain America fan, you could do worse. If you're more of a general comic book fan that'll read anything as long as it's good, you can do better. In a weird way, I hate things that are middling. I can't tear into it without feeling bad, but I also can't praise it. Almost like an annoying talkative guy who sits next to you on an airplane or bus. Sure, you want him to shut up, but, if you hit him, you'll be arrested. And there were plenty of times I wanted to smack this book.
The biggest problem was the writing. Especially the dialogue. While not garbage, the text was highly inefficient. Each character needed to spew out several paragraphs worth of nearly meaningless dialogue when one line could do. Very rarely is this book ever concise and to the point. For example, there is a part in issue 2 where Sam is holding a guy upside down in the air. Even then, in most non-talkative situation someone could ever possibly be in, entire pages of dialogue are exchanged. Then Sam's trained bird, Red Wing, holds him up by the pant leg. And anyone who's seen Monty Python knows that's impossible.
There's also a weird werewolf thing that is used strictly to tell a number of lame jokes that gets really old really fast. Despite spending several days as a literal dog, there is zero character development for Sam or anyone else. Which is another problem this book has.
The art is a mixed bag. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's average. Obviously, this book had several people work on it so it could stay on schedule. If this was an independent publisher, I would honestly give it more slack, but, if Marvel has enough money to hire A-list actors to play minor roles in their movies, they can afford to spend more money on art.
I don't want to trash this book, but I also want to tell you to avoid it. It's not very good. Keeping track of what is going on with the Captain America character is literally to only reason you would want to read it. And that isn't a very good reason.
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