Captain America #110

"No Longer Alone"
Writer: Stan Lee
Art: Jim Steranko (pencils) and Joe Sinnott (inks)
Cover Date: February 1969

Synopsis
On a darkened street, a trenchcoat-wearing Steve Rogers lights a cigarette in a dark alley, and as he stands there, he hears a pounding from behind a nearby wall. All of a sudden, two enormous green hands burst through the bricks, revealing the Hulk, who is immediately set upon by some soldiers. They order Steve away for his safety, and he leaves, only to return in his costumed guise of Captain America. The solders cease their attack with conventional guns, instead using a cannon firing pure ionic energy that blasts the Hulk away. Cap tells the soldiers to fall back while he tends to the jade giant, while in the distance, he hears Rick Jones calling out to him, warning him to stay away. Distracted, Cap doesn't notice the Hulk rise, at which point the behemoth grabs him by the wrists as Jones yells to the Hulk to remember that Cap is a friend and not an enemy. Cap breaks loose with a flip-kick, and as the Hulk is stunned, Rick approaches the Hulk, only to be tossed aside in rage. Before delivering a death blow to the youth, Hulk leaps away, leaving Cap to pick up the battered boy, being drawn back to how his own carelessness years before led to Bucky's needless death.

Cap takes Rick back to his apartment to rest, and as the boy sleeps, Cap looks out over the city, lost in his memories, until he hears footsteps behind him. Turning, he finds Rick wearing Bucky's costume, and he tells Rick no one must ever wear it, as he won't watch another partner die. Rick tells him that he isn't buying it and that everyone loses someone as some point, but as he turns to leave, Cap reconsiders and says he'll give Rick a shot. Just then, the Avengers Alarm goes off, so the two suit up and head into the sewers, led by the audio-lectronic map coordinates they are being sent, to enter a fight against the forces of Hydra.

They engage the Hydra soldiers, but Cap is overcome with doubt partway through the battle, wondering why he let Rick come along. Telling Rick to run away into the tunnels, Cap knocks out the Hydra agent Rick is fighting with a throw of his shield, allowing the boy to escape, but Cap's concern only serves to get him captured after being hit by a stun blast. Coming to, he finds himself facing Madame Hydra, leader of the Hydra forces, whose plan it is to contaminate the city's water supply. Facing off against a Hydra agent in a Power Vest, which enhances the wearer's strength, Cap tricks his foe into breaking through the nearest wall to facilitate his escape.

Elsewhere in the tunnels, Rick knows that Cap was worried about him in a way that Cap would not have worried about Bucky, so he doubles back to prove his worth to Cap, only to distract Cap (who had beaten the Power Vest soldier and was wearing it himself to get close to Madame Hydra). His ruse foiled, Cap is beset by Hydra agents, while others turn their weapons on Rick, who is quickly captured by Madame Hydra. She pushes him toward to the rushing torrent of the city's water supply, but Cap manages to grab the youth before he falls to his death. Cap tells Rick that while they were successful in their mission of thwarting Hydra's plan, Rick would have to follow orders without question in the future or Cap would no longer let the boy be his partner. As they leave the scene Rick vows that while he may never be the partner Bucky was, he would never stop trying.

My Thoughts
From the outset, the reader can tell this is a new era for Captain America, as Jim Steranko used different layouts than the traditional splash page and the usual four- or six-panel pages that were the hallmark of Kirby's run, such as multiple small panels, smaller inset panels, or even art that wasn't in a traditional panel set-up. This is the top of the first page:



And this is a portion of a later page, where the use of small panels allows a short moment (Cap and Bucky entering the sewers) to be conveyed as dynamic, rather than how it would likely have been done under Kirby's hand, which would have been one larger panel showing one or the other jumping down, leading to them both being in the sewer in the next panel.



Steranko also played with the shape and form of the panels in a way that Kirby did not. In previous issues, nearly all of the panels were squares or rectangles with black borders, while here, Steranko did borderless panels (and just wait until next issue, where things get really out of the box, so to speak) or tried new things, like the following, where the second panel on the page has a border that follows the shape of Madame Hydra's boot from the first panel.



Going back to the initial point above, another thing that is definitely different are the human shapes. Gone are the angular features of Kirby characters, and in are curves and natural-looking bodies. As well, Madame Hydra may be the first truly "sexy" woman depicted in a Cap book. She has a womanly figure and her face is more normally-shaped than the round-faced Sharon Carter that Kirby drew.

Sharon Carter as drawn by Jack Kirby




Madame Hydra as drawn by Jim Steranko




As for the story, a couple of big things jumped out to me:
1. I'm not a huge Silver Age Hulk fan, but it seemed strange to me that Cap, even though he was in peak physical condition, was able to break free of the Hulk's grip and kick him aside so easily.
2. Poisoning the city's water supply is Hydra's plan? To what end, other than wanton death and destruction? For a psychotic maniac villain, this may be an OK plan, but I kind of expect more from Hydra.

Lastly, while this book is a major leap forward in terms of style for Captain America, it also includes a moment I loathe to my core, and that is the introduction of Rick Jones to the Cap mythology. As many long-time members of CCF know, my hatred of Rick Jones is only matched by two other characters, those being Wolverine and Deadpool, but my dislike of them is due to overexposure, while I actively dislike the "character" of Rick Jones. He's a mouthy, petulant little punk who is nothing but a useless luck-sack who succeeds in spite of himself, not because of any actual skills or abilities he has. In this issue alone, Jones:

1. Nearly gets killed by the Hulk, only surviving when the Hulk loses interest, and this triggers Cap's survivors guilt related to Bucky.
2. Wakes up in Steve's apartment and decides it's a good idea to put on the costume of Steve's dead partner, then tells Steve to "get over it" when told to take it off.
3. Ignores orders multiple times, resulting in Cap getting captured and/or beaten not once but twice.
4. Almost dies a second time, this instance at Madame Hydra's hands, if not for a last-second rescue by Cap, which allows Madame Hydra and the other Hydra agents to get away.

I keep telling myself that Cap is as annoyed by Rick Jones as I am, and he lets him come on missions in the hope that Jones will wind up buying the farm, figuring it won't actually affect him because while he liked and cared about Bucky, he will be doing the world a favor by getting rid of Jones. Sadly, I know this isn't the case, but it does help me get through the story a little easier.

My Grade: A-
Good story, great art, nice start to the post-Kirby era, but the presence of Rick Jones keeps me from giving it a full "A".