Captain America #16: Review

Feb 2014

Rick Remender, Pascal Alixe

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Story Name:

New Friends

Review & Comments

Rating:

Captain America #16 Review by Peter Silvestro (February 9, 2014)

Review: Well, this is different! From her sudden heel turn in the Dimension Z arc, wherein by talking to Captain America for five minutes she overcame her years of indoctrination and betrayed her father, I was expecting Jet Black to become a mildly comical fish-out-of-water companion for Cap (though please don’t let her become his love) and waste a lot of potential. Instead Rick Remender has surprised me by revealing in this issue-long character study that Jet has not suddenly abandoned years of mind control and is seriously regretting joining with Cap. This story arc looks like it’s finally going somewhere…and it may be somewhere good. About time.

Comments: “The Iron Nail Prologue: a Decision #1” and “All-new Marvel NOW!” on the cover; issue is numbered 016.NOW. Captain America appears only as a hallucination presented by the Red Skull. No inker is credited in the issue. Red Skull and his S-Men were introduced in UNCANNY AVENGERS #1-4.

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Captain America #16 Synopsis by Peter Silvestro

On a gloomy winter’s day in New York, Jet Black moves above the city, barely concealing her contempt for the ugly, chaotic, and weak world she was raised by her father to rule. Suddenly she hears the sounds of violence. Looking into to an alley, she sees two junkies beating up a store owner who refused to sell them medicine. Jet Black’s arrival frightens them off. She picks up the injured man and ridicules him for his weakness in allowing himself to become a victim. Heading over the rooftops she is accosted by a man who calls himself Tsar Sultan, who treats her to a meal in a restaurant (which she refuses) and tells her that her father Arnim Zola had friends in this world. Sultan works for such a man, a man who is strong unlike his own father, a missionary who was killed when Genosha was destroyed. An impatient Jet demands to be taken to him. They proceed to a slum where a dingy tenement conceals a lavish townhouse and Jet meets the Red Skull. The Nazi villain praises her father and claims that he wanted the Skull to continue her training. When she refuses, he produces illusions of a weak and sniveling Captain America and her father demanding that she abandon Cap to pursue her destiny. She flees the room and suddenly finds herself back with the injured shopkeeper who tells her "You were presented with a choice…and you almost made the wrong one."

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