Review: Captain America "Man Out Of Time"

Captain America : Man Out of Time

Written by Mark Waid

Art by Jorge Molina

144 pages

Published by Marvel Comics 

With Captain America: The First Avenger hitting the big screens this July, its just normal for Marvel to capitalize on their blockbuster film and gain some good comic book sales by releasing a plethora of stand-alone Cap stories, but only one stands out as probably one of the best superhero novels of 2011.

That my friends is Captain America: Man Out of Time written by Mark Waid with art done by Jorge Molina.

I know what you might be thinking: "Another origin story". And I can't blame you, because a lot of out-of-continuity stories are usually re-telling a particular superhero tale that we already heard a million times before.

But this one is different. Different in a very good way.

This book not only recounts the story of Captain America being thawed by The Avengers in the present time after finding him encased in a block of ice in suspended animation, but it also tells us a story entirely seen from Captain America- or better yet - Steve Rogers' perspective, something that very few books have done before.

Here you will see a man, suddenly waking up modern times after being asleep for 50-plus years, seeing a completely different world and completely different America. Here is a story of an extra-ordinary man, struggling to keep his own humanity, finding it hard to accept that he cannot go back in time to save his friend Bucky, before ultimately realizing that the world still needs him more than ever, and that he can do that together with his newfound friends and teammates - The Avengers.

Mark Waid makes an entirely vulnerable Captain America, one that I haven't seen in recent books. Waid's impeccable writing enabled this story to have a lot of substance, a cinematic feel that I really loved, and a very-well mixed balance of action and drama that is packed with a lot of realism. And just like his other great superhero novel Superman: Birthright, Waid's superb storytelling skills has made this an emotionally-gripping and inspiring tale that could go up there as one of the best Captain America stories of all time.

Art-wise, Molina's pencils and Frank D'Armata's colors are not that enough to make this 100% visually-compelling, and Bryan Hitch's below-average covers doesn't make do any good in this department but despite the flaws, all of that didn't make this book any thing less but GREAT.

But I have to say, Jorge Molina's dynamic style using the flashback technique is awesome especially in that 1945 jump-explosion scene which then switches over to the present day with the Avengers finding him in a block of ice. Those two panels are flat-out good, and he incorporates many more flashbacks in the entire book which were very well done in my opinion. 

     

Now collected in a gorgeous hardcover edition, Captain America: Man Out of Time is a definite must-read for anyone -  one of the best comic books out there in the shelves that is worth every your every penny that also works as a very nice hype-vehicle/backgrounder for the upcoming Cap film.

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