Sunday Splash Page #103

"Cap Thought It Was Pretty Self-Explanatory", in Captain America #371, by Mark Gruenwald (writer), Ron Lim (penciler), Dan Bulanadi (inker), Steve Buccellato (colorist), Jack Morelli (letterer)

The majority of the Captain America comics I own are from the middle-third of Mark Gruenwald's lengthy tenure as writer. More specifically, a 25-issue stretch starting with The Bloodstone Hunt up through the point where Diamondback gets booted from the Serpent Society because she's been canoodling with Captain America. Kieron Dwyer as artist in the early going, then Ron Lim later on. Neither of them is exactly a flashy artist, but I'm not sure you necessarily need one for Captain America. 

Certainly not Gruenwald's Cap, who is played as pretty square mostly of the time. In this issue above, he explains to Diamondback that he's not the sort of guy who would look right going out with a girl with magenta hair. I don't see what that has to do with anything, but sure, Steve.

There's nothing revolutionary about this stretch, but The Bloodstone Hunt's an enjoyable globe-trotting MacGuffin hunt story. The Acts of Vengeance tie-ins give us Magneto putting the boots to the Red Skull before leaving him to slowly die in an old bomb shelter. The Streets of Poison's a goofy story where Cap gets dosed up on cocaine, and Gruenwald tries to draw some pretty iffy analogy between recreational drug abuse and Super-Soldier Serum. But wacked-out Cap throwing down with Bullseye is novel, if nothing else. Plus, you get the Red Skull (in a clone body of Cap's) fighting Wilson Fisk to determine whether the Skull gets to sell drugs in NYC. I really like the notion that basically all other villains hate the Red Skull.

Gruenwald introduces Crossbones during this stretch, who's kind of become a mainstay hench-villain even outside Captain America comics. The whole romance angle with Diamondback, which does provide some focus to the strain it puts on her professionally and personally. I don't know if the Serpent Society was always depicted as this sort of cliquish group of low-level villains, but this is where I encountered it, and that's kind of nice. The shifting alliances and in-fighting, jockeying for position. And Cap getting caught in the middle of it, not really sure what he's even doing there, other than trying to help a friend.