Captain America: Steve Rogers, Volume 2: The Trial of Maria Hill by Nick Spencer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Whoa-ho. There is SO MUCH DIALOGUE in this book that there’s barely room for art in the panels. The dialogue is pretty alright. It just…it feels a little decompressed. I’m all for a thriller that spools out the story slowly over time.
Wait, no I’m not. I hate that.
I wish this was moving a little faster. Captain America being a Hyrda-er (“Being Hydra?” Hydra-ing? Being a Hydrometer?) is a story and a half, but between this volume and the last, we’ve got more than a story and a half. Maybe two stories. Check my math.
Also, I’m not totally sure why I care about Maria Hill being ousted (or not) as the leader of SHIELD and being replaced with Sharon Carter.
Wait, yes I do. Because everyone wants to do a court scene.
Objection! Overruled! 5th Amendment! Leading the witness!
Everyone wants to do a court scene, but let’s face it, the court scene has been done amazingly well in so many different ways as to be unnecessary. You could just put in “A great court scene happened. Use your imagination” and we totally could.
After these court scenes another one has never been necessary:
-Omar on The Wire
-“Now, I may by just a simple country Hyper-Chicken, but I know when we’re finger licked.” from Futurama.
And we’re good.
I’m still curious to see how this all ends, but as stories go, the more the goodness of the story comes to hinge on the satisfactory resolution of an arc, and the more that arc starts to appear impossible to resolve in a satisfactory way, the more hope tends to dwindle. It’s like a TV show that ends. When a TV show strings you out such that the ending is super important (Lost) the quality of that ending can really hurt the legacy of the show. Likewise, if the show’s ending doesn’t really matter (Sopranos, arguably), then the same ending can be arguably good or bad, but the people who like it like the whole series, and the people who hate it still say, “Great show, except that ending.”
With this, we might be slowly sliding into territory where the ending is uber important, and when an ending is imbued with such importance, it’s nearly impossible to create something satisfactory.
The only thing that’s got that much build up and tends to deliver is…sex? Sex is probably built up for most people, and it tends to deliver. Not the first time, but eventually. At some point. If you’re living life the right way, it eventually comes to deliver pretty nicely.
The rest of life is like Chinese Democracy (the album by GnR, not the concept). After that much build up, even a totally competent, maybe even very good album just won’t suffice.