Review by Lewis Savarese
On the heels of Secret Empire, the award-winning duo of Mark Waid and Chris Samnee attempt to repair Captain America’s image. Home Of The Brave sees Steve Rogers embark on a cross-country road trip, motivated by the urge to meet more of his fellow Americans and perhaps find a new place to hang his helmet. Of course things are never that simple for Cap, as he is waylaid by an assortment of foes and eventually thrust into the future. Waid and Samnee’s classic storytelling returns Captain America to his roots as a super soldier enlisted in the fight against fascism.
Captain America’s first three adventures in Home of the Brave feel like stand-alone stories unified by Cap’s commitment to protecting ordinary people. Cap returns to a small Nebraska town he had previously saved from a white supremacist militia called Rampart, only to again thwart the group’s attempted takeover during the town’s Tenth Annual Captain America Celebration. In Georgia, Cap stops the Swordsman from opening a dam’s floodgate and wiping out a whole town. When Cap flirts with a woman in a dive bar, a scratch from her poison-laced ring renders him unconscious and he wakes up with an electrified collar around his neck, a captive of Kraven the Hunter. Cap and a seemingly helpless college student are forced to maneuver through a jungle full of booby traps as they evade Kraven. Some twists later, Rampart re-emerges and blasts Cap with a freeze ray.
While these vignettes are entertaining throwbacks, Home of the Brave picks up steam once Cap is thawed from the ice again, this time in a totalitarian America. With Captain America on ice, Rampart launched a massive nuclear strike across the United States. Earth’s superheroes died trying to contain the radiation and Rampart’s leader King Maximillian “King Baby” Babbington seized power. He creates an America that caters to wealthy elites and insulates them from the masses, including the rebels who thawed Cap from his icy prison. This nightmarish vision of an America under authoritarian control is undeniably Waid’s treatise on the first Trump presidency. As hyperbolic as this take on a democratically elected administration is, Waid skilfully addresses real world concerns such as resource scarcity, nuclear annihilation, political fearmongering, and wealth consolidation.
Waid and Samnee chart both the sharp deterioration of a democracy and the laborious process of rebuilding a nation via dynamic visuals. Flashbacks are highlighted in red which mimics the colour palette of the Rampart regime and the initial atomic blasts. The overall colour palette, courtesy of Matthew Wilson, becomes darker, allowing Cap to stand out among the irradiated wasteland. Captain America’s prowess as a soldier is given ample attention by Waid as he leads the rebels both before and after dethroning King Baby. Samnee crams one gruelling battle after another full of small details and legible action in a very retro way. At one point, other aspects of creating a New America relating to agriculture and infrastructure are shown in montage-like panels. Here Waid portrays Captain America out of his depth in matters of statecraft, a necessary humbling experience.
The reveal of two surviving Marvel heavyweights brings some hope to an otherwise bleak milieu. Although they help Cap establish New America, these heroes mainly exist to facilitate the deus ex machina of the finale. The ending lacks the gravitas of the preceding events and is beholden to the maintenance of Earth-616 continuity. Waid’s Cap continues with Promised Land.
