Captain America: The Chosen has received some wildly divergent reviews.  The first issue has been variously interpreted as either a powerfully realistic depiction of the US forces in Afghanistan, or jingoistic flag-waving nonsense.

I find myself somewhere in between.  I'm not sure quite what to make of this story, and a lot depends on how much of this issue we'll ultimately be asked to accept at face value.

The series is written by David Morrell, a novelist whose main claim to fame is creating Rambo in his novel First Blood.  It's tempting to draw the obvious conclusions from that, but in fairness, Morrell wrote the book, not the film.  Now, I've not read the book, but by all accounts it's a lot more morally complex than the film.  And Rambo, the sequel, wasn't based on Morrell's work at all - though he did write a novelisation of the film.

The story is about Corporal James Newman, a US marine posted to Afghanistan.  Under fire and on the verge of mental collapse, he has an inspirational vision of Captain America which leads him to keep fighting.  And, leaving aside a closing "just how much of this is real?" cliffhanger, that's basically the first issue in a nutshell.  We're in the Marvel Knights imprint here, so strict continuity is not an issue, but it's perhaps worth spelling out that the story is clearly set in some version of the Marvel Universe.  Newman's colleagues don't question the fact that Captain America exists; they just assume that he's had a vision of a public figure.

Morrell's Captain America is a one-note character.  He shows up and gives inspirational speeches about courage, honour, loyalty and sacrifice.  He talks about "fighting the enemies of freedom."  You know the sort of thing.

Much depends on how far you want to take this at face value.  Captain America is a problematic icon because he simultaneously symbolises a whole load of generic saintly virtues, and he's supposed to symbolise the United States of America.  Inevitably, he results in an awkward conflation of two concepts that ought to be distinct: America and perfection.  This is hardly surprising considering that his roots lie in the 1940s, when nobody really expected anything more sophisticated than crude propaganda.  He wasn't designed for anything more complex than that. 

Modern writers have tended to deal with this problem in one of two ways.  Either they downplay the patriotic element entirely, or they use the good Captain as a symbol of America-the-ideal, to contrast against America-the-reality.  Morrell, at least in the first issue, is just playing him straight.  And an utterly straight Captain America is fairly indigestible these days, so I can understand why the story sticks in the throat for some people.  On the other hand, it's more than possible that Morrell does intend the Captain to be an icon of America-as-ideal - after all, he's a hallucination - and that he plans to spend the remaining five issues looking at how you make those ideals fit into the real world. 

I'm prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt for now.  I honestly don't know how seriously we're supposed to take a lot of this stuff, but there are enough hints that I'm willing to assume that there's more to it.  And I think it's unduly harsh to dismiss the story as jingoistic; there's nothing especially obnoxious about the way the soldiers are written.

On the other hand, nor can I subscribe to the idea that this is some sort of remarkable exploration of the soldier's experience.  If anything, it's fairly well-trodden and superficial stuff.  Newman seems like a decent enough man.  He wants to do good in Afghanistan.  He can't tell the bad guys apart from the locals, and find it all very frustrating and stressful.  All of this is fine, and I have no problem with it, but it's hardly revelatory.  Some of it is frankly trite.  (Do we really need two pages of exposition to remind us that Al-Qaeda are the bad guys?)  Again, I can see this all being perfectly acceptable as a starting point, depending on where Morrell is going with his story, but I can't buy into the idea that there's anything exceptional going on in the first issue itself.

That said, Morrell does adjust quite well to the comic book format.  It's reasonably well-paced, it's primarily visual, and it's got a neat twist on the closing page which does its job effectively by setting up a mystery and inviting sceptical readers to keep an open mind about where this might be heading.  Then again, there's not much actual plot in the first issue, and it's a classic example of something that will work better as the first chapter of a trade paperback.

The story's biggest selling point is the art by Mitch Breitweiser and colourist Brian Reber.  It's elegant work, with a suitably subdued palette, and it shifts effortlessly from understated realism to the big action scenes.  The Captain does look suitably inspirational, albeit in a somewhat corny way - but then, that might be the point.  Who knows?

Depending on how much of this we're supposed to take at face value, this could either be the set-up for something reasonably good, or it could be the first issue of something pretty but painfully simplistic.  I honestly can't tell at this stage, and that makes any response inescapably provisional.  There's just enough to suggest a more complex agenda that I'm prepared to give it another issue to show its hand.

Rating: B-

back | continue