Captain America Reborn #4 (OF 6)

I don't know if Hitch kicked it up a notch for this issue or if I just finally "got" his style, but I thought the art in this issue was really phenomenal. Baron Zemo standing in the rain firing his machine gun... I just stared at that for several minutes. I still think the whole issue is a bit heavy on splash pages for my taste -- Funny, I LIKE panels and sequential art, go figure -- but I can not deny they looked great.

Storywise I am still a bit bored with the lost in time nonsense, but a lot of other stuff happened this issue, including Hawkeye (and they called him Hawkeye) blowing up a Hammer tank with an actual bow and arrow. Vision gave a message from the past (not that we heard it, oddly enough), Doom/Red Skull/Zola verbally sparred and tried to out-megalomaniac each other, and of course Cap's body finally came back. And even the lost in time scenes finally got around to when Bucky got blown up, clearly the most traumatic and interesting event of Steve Rogers' life.

A lot of people are already loving the final page and I can only whole-heartedly agree. Red Skull Captain America is both disturbing and a great idea (played with before, of course, but I think actually in Steve Roger's body is a first). While I strongly suspect Brubaker plans to get Steve back in his body by series end, for the first time it seems to me like that is not a foredrawn conclusion. The lack of tension around this issue (of course Steve Rogers is coming back... It's called Captain America Reborn for God's sake) has been the biggest problem for me with the whole storyline. Imagine reading the book "Ole Yeller Gets Rabies and Is Then Put Down". It might have some problems holding your interest.  I don't think it will happen, but I now think there is a chance Skull will keep the body, at least for a while. In such a case Steve would have to come back in some other form... robot? A woman? A child? Again, the odds are strongly against, but at last Brubaker has sowed just the tiniest seed of doubt and that really helps amp up the stakes.