Review: Captain America/Iron Man #3

Alex Ross needs to demand that his covers only Grace solid comics because having an artist of his caliber drawing covers for comics this bad is a tragedy. Captain America/Iron Man #3 takes every awful thing possible with comics and puts it in one place.

This issue takes what could have been an interesting female antagonist and makes her motivation misguided love for a machine. This has the most ham-fisted dialogue between our heroes that is clearly parroting the films. It has the resurgence of concepts and characters which no one ever wanted to see again such as Hydra Cap and the redshirt heroes from the 50 state Initiative. It has the most basic house style art. There are long conversations filled with babbling and exposition. Every aspect of this book is so awful as to make it farcical.

This book might make sense as a series for young kids, but no kid would understand the layers of continuity needed to understand what is happening here. Veronica Eden is Tony’s prior fling who has pretended to work with Fifty-One as he steals the Hydra Supreme armor. She tricks Cap and Tony into thinking she’s willing to trade information on Fifty-One’s plans and locations for leniency.

Veronica convinces them to take her into a Helicarrier even as her thoughts drone on in the background obsessed with the events of Civil War and other events that lead to the loss of innocent life. She reveals her information was all a fakeout to bring them to her love The Overseer who has currently taken the form of the Helicarrier. Meanwhile, the Paladins who are a team made up of the Fifty-State Initiative trainees wallow in their failure to stop Fifty-One and spend pages arguing among themselves.

Veronica reveals that she and the Overseer are out to kill all the superheroes and supervillains to prevent innocent loss of life. The Overseer in turn reveals that he actually wants to kill all of humanity including Veronica. This leaves Fifty-One, Veronica, Cap and Iron Man improbably on the same side against an armored army controlled by the Overseer.

The layers of betrayal take what could be a great villain in Veronica and render her a foolish pawn of a much less interesting villain. Steve Rogers and Tony Stark are barely characters in their own book. They feel like pieces on a chessboard who occasionally insult each other. The Paladins have more focus than either of the main heroes do and even that focus feels like pointless banter among inevitable Redshirts. Marvel has so much potential with these characters and rather than focusing on what makes Iron Man and Captain America unique, this story wallows in past continuity and focuses on side characters we have no reason to care about.

Writing: 1 of 5 stars
Art: 2 of 5 stars
Colors: 2 of 5 stars

Overall: 1.5 of 5 stars

Writer: Derek Landy
Art: Angel Unzueta
Colors: Rachelle Rosenberg
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Author Profile

M.R. Jafri

M.R. Jafri was born and raised in Niagara Falls New York and now lives with his family in Detroit Michigan. He's a talkative introvert and argumentative geek. His loves include Star Wars, Star Trek, Superheroes, Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, Transformers, GI Joe, Films, Comics, TV Shows, Action Figures and Twizzlers.