Captain America, Volume 1: Castaway In Dimension Z (2013) - Plot & Excerpts
I enjoyed Castaway in Dimension Z in how it veered as far away from the overtly political tone that Captain America has taken over the past decade. To be sure, many of the books from that run are classics and I quite enjoyed the spy-thriller zest that Ed Brubaker and company brought to Cap... but that's always been but one aspect of this character. Writer Rick Remender and artist John Romita Jr. craft a very different, science-fiction tinged story here. Remender grounds that action with flashbacks to Steve Rogers' hardscrabble childhood and a very interesting new edition to Cap's life in a surrogate son. These two plot threads dovetail nicely throughout the trade and make for an engaging read.Romita's artwork is lovely, with a fine-tuned scratchiness that's only enhanced when he works with inker Klaus Jansen. His take on Dimension Z is a wonderfully twisted world that's fun to look at... and seemingly no one does large scale superhero fights as well as he does. He's clearly a craftsman at the height of his artistic power. I do grow a bit tired of Romita's formless monster characters, which he seems to employ any time a script calls for something along those lines (as it also did with Neil Gaiman's Eternals mini-series). They always look a little blobby and under-designed.I also have a bit of a problem with the way this trade ends on a huge cliffhanger. While I've become pretty weary of the "written for the trade" problem that has plagued genre comics for the past few years, I have always been under the impression that the whole point of buying a paperback collection of a superhero comic was to get the entire story under one cover. I don't understand why Marvel didn't just wait a few months and publish a giant Castaway in Dimension Z trade! It seems counter-intuitive to me.Castaway in Dimension Z is a fun five issue collection with a cool story and wonderful superhero art. I wish a bit more thought had been put into the means by which this story was collected. Not a bad book, but not a great one. The art wavered from being awful to fair to okay with occasional bits of better. The story was a bit annoying but the concentration just on Steve Rogers made it work. The backstory bits added to the overall story, though I am not familiar enough with the Captain America mythos to know how canon these details were. The world and villain he landed on and with was an irritant. As is knowing that this will either get rolled-back or be an alternate future. Worth reading though, not junk. 3.5 of 5.
What do You think about Captain America, Volume 1: Castaway In Dimension Z (2013)?
interesting story...taking Cap away from Earth and making a sci-fi "pulpy" fatherhood kind of story
—Vanes
very dark atmosphere, great foreboding artwork, nothing terribly original story-wise.
—vinayak
Beautifully illustrated. Very cinematic. Some nice Kirby villains too!
—katt
I can't say enough about how good this series is.
—denise
