Welcome to VOCIFERY, my attempt to re-watch every piece of media in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – every movie, every television series, every one-shot, every web series, and every tie-in comic book, using the Wikipedia entry on the MCU as a guide, before the release of Avengers 4 in May 2019. Join me as I write my thoughts about what I’m seeing, as I see it!
Also, spoilers follow – if you’re worried about that kind of thing, view before reading.
Marvel’s Captain America: The First Avenger comic tie-in (2013)
Marvel’s The Winter Soldier Infinite comic tie-in (2014)
This is going to be a short post.
The next stage of our re-watch is a pair of tie-in comics. The first is a fairly straight-forward retelling of the plot of Captain America: The First Avenger, the 2011 film which introduced us to Cap and landed him in the present day.
There is very little to attract readers to this one. The only benefit I can see is that you can read both issues in around twenty minutes so, if you were pressed for time, these might be of use. Otherwise, there is nothing offered here that you can’t get in the film; in fact, the film has more in it than these comics, given that a lot of the movie was cut for page space.
The Winter Soldier: Infinite Comic, meanwhile, is an original tale set between the events of Marvel’s The Avengers and Captain America: The Winter Soldier: we find Cap on a mission with Rumlow (aka Crossbones) to recover some stolen S.H.I.E.L.D. weaponry, in this case a biological weapon. The pair are joined by Natasha Romanoff (aka Black Widow) later.
Again, there isn’t a lot of new information here. The book exists – it appears – to sow a few seeds of doubt into Cap’s mind about what SHIELD are up to, to explain why he is so suspicious after the mission on the Lemurian Star – that mission is not the first time that his own values have been at odds with the work he is doing for S.H.I.E.L.D.
The other thing is that having sown those seeds of doubt, I thought it was weird not to introduce some of the conflict between Cap and Rumlow. This is a spoiler for The Winter Soldier, and a nice twist there, but it was almost strange by omission that there was no moment in this infinite comic where Rumlow and Cap disagree; if anything, Rumlow is a little too kiss-arse.
Also, for a comic named The Winter Soldier, there was a surprising lack of The Winter Soldier.
Anyway, another pair of fairly forgettable tie-in comic books. It is possible that the binge-viewing method I’m using is making me see their faults a little more closely – I guess they would provide a handy recap for readers when they originally came out.
But as part of a re-watch of the whole universe, they provide little in the way of value.
Next: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Season 1 Episode 13!