"Captain America is Going to Save the Country's Crumbling Infrastructure", in Captain America Annual #8, by Mark Gruenwald (writer), Mike Zeck (penciler), John Beatty and Josef Rubinstein (inkers), Glynis Oliver (colorist), and Jim Novak (letterer)
I own one Captain America Annual, and this is it. The one with the cover that's been homaged 10,000 times. The reluctant team-up with Wolverine. Cap telling Logan the Avengers would never have him, little knowing what was going to happen once Brian Michael Bendis got to write the Avengers.
(To be fair, it was Stark that pushed for Logan being added, not Steve Rogers, so Cap was true to his stance. Stark just overruled him, and exercised his usual poor judgment. And I can't remember anything significant Logan actually did while part of the Avengers. Get shot in the face by the Hood?)
I was gonna describe this as having the typical Marvel misunderstanding fight, but I'm not even sure Cap vs. Wolverine qualifies. I guess it does, in that Cap suspects Wolverine might be here for nefarious purposes under the orders of Magneto, who the X-Men had recently accepted into their ranks. Although before the issue is over, I think Cap realizes how silly the idea of Logan readily following orders is. But Cap doesn't leap in , hurling his shield around. He just starts speechifying at Logan until the Canadian loses patience and tries to carve him into pieces. There's no misunderstanding on Wolverine's part. He's got shit to do, this old man won't quit talking at him, so he decides to kill him.
I was gonna describe this as having the typical Marvel misunderstanding fight, but I'm not even sure Cap vs. Wolverine qualifies. I guess it does, in that Cap suspects Wolverine might be here for nefarious purposes under the orders of Magneto, who the X-Men had recently accepted into their ranks. Although before the issue is over, I think Cap realizes how silly the idea of Logan readily following orders is. But Cap doesn't leap in , hurling his shield around. He just starts speechifying at Logan until the Canadian loses patience and tries to carve him into pieces. There's no misunderstanding on Wolverine's part. He's got shit to do, this old man won't quit talking at him, so he decides to kill him.
But once that's out of the way, this is a team-up, against a prototype robot that was supposed to be America's defense against their own army of super-soldiers, if necessary. With only one super-soldier, and him missing, the project got mothballed. That's not a bad hook for a threat. A mutant calling himself Overrider, with the power to control machines, finds TESS and brings her online to help carry out his plan: prevent nuclear holocaust by getting rid of the U.S.'s nuclear arsenal, for the sake of his son. Not atypical for an '80s comic.
Both of the heroes are drawn in different ways, and each of them go about gathering useful information different ways. And it isn't simply Cap asking questions politely and Logan busting heads. Cap has his computer hotline thing people can contact him through, and Logan takes advantage of Cerebro's files to get a bead on who Overrider might be and his motives.
The two don't get along at all, but for all Logan's grousing about, well, everything Cap says or does to him, he mostly follows the shield-slinger's suggestions, if they're phrased nicely. Like me, Wolverine is willing to help, he just wants to be able to bitch about it while he does. I think TESS would be repaired and sent at the Avengers later as part of some group of machine foes, but my next encounter was when Doom repaired it to throw at Spider-Man during Acts of Vengeance.
Next week, well, I wanted to highlight a one-shot about Batroc Kieron Gillen and Renato Arlem did a few years ago, but there was no splash page. So we'll turn our attention to a different Captain.
Next week, well, I wanted to highlight a one-shot about Batroc Kieron Gillen and Renato Arlem did a few years ago, but there was no splash page. So we'll turn our attention to a different Captain.
4 comments:
I seem to remember a scene in which Wolverine flirts with Aunt May when everyone was living at Stark Tower, but that might have been in Amazing Spider-Man rather than Bendis' Avengers, although it was around the same time.
Since this issue was published, it's been revealed that Cap and Wolverine were part of the same super soldier programme, but did they have any sort of established past at this point? I'm sure they fought together in WWII but I don't know when that stuff was introduced.
I don't remember Logan flirting with May. He tried telling her what to do once when she was making breakfast for Jarvis and she dumped his cigar in his whiskey. That was JMS' Amazing Spider-Man run.
He tried it with MJ once, one of those "give her something to be angry about" moves during the five minutes Peter was dead during The Other. And there was one point when the tabloids noticed MJ was around Stark Tower and started spreading rumors she was fooling around with Stark and Logan spouted off about that. Peter threw him through the window.
This came out in 1986, so I don't think Logan and Cap had any history except maybe Secret Wars, which came out in '84. The X-Men vs. Avengers mini-series (when the Avengers are after Magneto to make him stand trial) was 1987. Claremont and Jim Lee established the two met in Madripoor during WW2 (protecting a young Black Widow, no less), but that didn't come out until 1990.
Oh gosh, the Jarvis/May romance. I'd forgotten about that. Didn't Jarvis turn out to be a Skrull? I'd stopped reading just before that but that's the sort of thing Marvel would do to poor old May.
Yeah, I think that Jarvis did turn out to be a Skrull. Or there was definitely a Skrull Jarvis.
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