The Basics

Various, old school adventures of Captain America and The Falcon.

My Thoughts

The real test of comics from an older era is the test of time. This is true of any book, but comics will especially fall under this scrutiny. At the time this volume was originally being written, more emphasis was put upon quantity than quality. It rightly amazes people the amount of work that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were putting out. And at such a ridiculous rate. The amount of story they carried on their shoulders really is impressive.

But it’s not good. Writing a lot, drawing a lot, cannot be equated with creating things that stand the test of time. To put it bluntly, stories and drawing of worth. In these comics, people talk out loud to themselves for the benefit of the reader. Even when the dialogue is between two characters, it’s stilted. The descriptions are overly verbose, as if using big words can hide the fact that the writing is weak. And Kirby’s Cap is consistently wall-eyed, cross-eyed, or contorting in ways that I can’t imagine are comfortable.

If I was going to cite something I enjoyed, it was finally finding a story that incorporated The Falcon. It didn’t always incorporate him well. There were some iffy moments where he was off-screen doing whatever-who-cares while Captain America got in on the real action. That disappointed, but in the same breath, I like this character, like his potential, and enjoyed reading about him.

When you hear something is a classic and fans lift it up and exalt it, you expect more than this. Everything was awkward. In fact, that’s the word I feel sums up the culmination of Lee and Kirby’s run here: awkward. Nothing looked right or sounded right. Maybe I’m spoiled by modern comics, where the standards for art and storytelling are incredibly high, much higher than they were then. Knowing that, one would hope I’d at least get a giggle out of how quaint the old stuff was. No. Rather I thanked my lucky stars we’ve come so far.

Final Rating

2/5 ( )