If you’ve been following the long saga of Steve Rogers, you’ll know that this year he returned to superpowered heroism as the current second Captain America. You’ll also know that he came back with some... intriguing quirks, like, for example, being a secret brainwashed Hydra agent. That’d be bad enough, but now, he’s become a loopy supervillain, and it’s amazing. Over the past few issues of Steve Rogers, Captain America—by Nick Spencer, Jesús Saiz, and Joe Caramagna—Steve has been plotting a takeover of the resurgent Hydra from under the control of the Red Skull. It’s involved the sort of double-crosses and twists and “wait, wasn’t that guy dead???” moments of subterfuge you’d expect from a sinister backstabbing plot involving an organization like Hydra, even if your protagonist is a cosmic-cube-brainwashed version of America’s most beloved and patriotic superhero. But this week’s Steve Rogers, Captain America #8 leaves much of the Hydra-based secret shenanigans behind, as Steve finds himself on the front lines of defending Earth from a surprise Chitauri invasion alongside Captain Marvel and Maria Hill. The waves of Chitauri soldiers have been heading towards Earth on a more frequent schedule recently, much to the confusion of Carol and her Alpha Flight, tasked with safeguarding the Earth from cosmic threats. While Steven and Maria are in orbit with her, they discover another wave of aliens is on its way, bigger than anything that has tried to hit them before: Things look very bad for our heroes until Avril Kincaid, the new incarnation of Quasar introduced earlier this year during the Standoff miniseries, shows up out of nowhere and uses her burgeoning new powers to turn the entire horde of Chitauri into cosmic space bits. You’d think everyone would be pleased that they and the rest of Earth didn’t just get turned into Chitauri kibble, but out of nowhere, Steve is pissed at Avril’s unannounced act of heroism.
He lays into Carol and Maria, enraged because he thinks that they called Avril into action, despite Steve’s own express request that she be kept from being put on duty before she’s completed her training with the former Quasar, Wendell Vaughn. He even gets some good digs into Carol for the outcome of Civil War II, while he’s at it, before storming off in a huff back to his secret Hydra Lab of Evil Machinations (I’m sure that’s its real name, probably). But why is Steve so angry that Avril saved all their butts, and the entire planet while she was at it? I mean, being Hydra doesn’t mean you actually want the entire Earth to be invaded by aliens that would come and eradicate the humans you want to rule over, right? It turns out Steve’s plans have gotten way more ridiculously villainous than simply taking over Hydra.
He’s the one responsible for trying to get the Chitauri to invade the Earth. By luring them to Earth by secretlyhiring a farmer in Montana to hatch a Chitauri Queen. Steve’s anger comes from the fact that there’s now someone capable of stopping his plan of bringing the Chitauri to Earth to cull the human population. This is way, way beyond the bad guy turn we’ve been seeing from Steve Rogers since this series started. Even if we know his heel-turn was due to some cosmic cube-altering shenanigans from Kobik, this is just amazingly, almost hilariously evil. When this twist was first revealed, I said that I was in for the long run just to see what Spencer and Saiz did with an evil Captain America. “Captain America secretly planning a giant alien invasion of Earth for shits and giggles” is absolutely not where I expected it to go, and I kind of love it for going there anyway. NEXT ON COMICS
A
number of writer Nick Spencer’s narrative choices (like turning Captain
America into a literal fascist and supreme leader of Hydra) have made
Marvel’s Secret Empire event difficult to stomach. In this week’s issue of the controversial series, though, a familiar face shows up to put all of Secret Empire’s messiness in perspective—and you know what? It’s pretty damned good.
Following
Hydra’s coordinated attacks across the US to solidify its control over
the country, the world’s heroes have been stuck in a variety of
uncomfortable holding patterns. Currently, all of New York City is
trapped within the Darkforce dimension, and most of the planet’s
cosmic-level heroes are marooned in space on the other side of a
planetary shield they can’t break through.
That leaves a small
group of resistance fighters on the ground who have to balance staying
on the run, hiding, and mounting what meager offense they can against
Hydra’s hordes of foot soldiers. While the current odds are obviously
heavily weighted in Hydra’s favor, both sides know that ultimately,
whoever manages to collect the most pieces of the shattered Cosmic Cube
will be able to win the war.
Secret Empire #4 opens with
both Hydra and the Resistance learning of the existence of a new Cosmic
Cube fragment and immediately beelining to its location. Under normal
circumstances, this might lead to the two sides bumping into one
another, fighting, and exchanging witty (if dark) banter, but this
particular fragment just so happens to be located in the heart of a new
city built by none other than...Ultron. Also the city is full of
murderous Ultron clones. For flair.
When we last saw Pym in Uncanny Avengers, he
had merged bodies with Ultron, resulting in the creation of a new
being whose mind and body were equal parts mad scientist and murderous
robot. While Pym-Ultron struggled to make sense of who and what he was,
the rest of the Avengers did the sensible thing and jettisoned him into
the sun, reasoning that keeping him around was too dangerous. As is
often the case with Ultrons, though, he managed to avoid destruction and
make his way back to earth just before the beginning of Secret Empire.
Both
Hydra and the Resistance make it into Ultron’s new city with clear game
plans as to how they’re going to stealthily steal the Cosmic Cube
fragments, but when the groups cross paths, they immediately blow their
cover and break out into an all-out fight right out of Civil War. But then, just as quickly as the fighting begins, it’s halted by Pym-Ultron, who patiently explains that he lured them
all there specifically because he wanted to have family dinner with the
Avengers and to talk about what the hell they’re doing fighting each
other.
It’s
here that Spencer manages to do something really interesting and
unexpected with Pym-Ultron. After the human-robot traps everyone at a
literal dinner table, the two sides of Secret Empire begin to
go at each other verbally in lieu of using their fists. While both sides
try to convince Pym-Ultron that they’re in the right, he ultimately
shuts them all down by pointing out that literally all of them have
spent the last couple of major story arcs and events fucking up in
massively different ways.Pym-Ultron reminds Tony of the two super
Civil Wars he helped start, and in the same breath shades the hell out
of Steve Rogers for joining Hydra, Cosmic Cube be damned.
Pym-Ultron
goes on to remind them all of the fact that the world still hasn’t
fully recovered from the time that the Scarlet Witch rewrote reality,
and when Tony challenges him on what this speech is about, Pym-Ultron
reveals something new about himself. Despite the fact that he looks like
Ultron, he claims that his consciousness is entirely Hank’s and that
he’s holding Ultron’s murderous side at bay.
Hank gathered them all there, he says, because the problem at hand is one that requires all of
the founding Avengers to be present, himself included. Hank doesn’t
have an all-out solution to the conflict, but ultimately, he desires
that the Resistance should have the fragment considering how outgunned
they are in the grand scheme of things. It’s a decision that neither
side fully understands (see: Ultron being historically evil and likely
to side with Hydra) but that doesn’t matter. Pym-Ultron isn’t interested
in rooting for teams here, he’s just trying to be fair.
Pym-Ultron reminds Tony of the two super
Civil Wars he helped start, and in the same breath shades the hell out
of Steve Rogers for joining Hydra, Cosmic Cube be damned.
Pym-Ultron
goes on to remind them all of the fact that the world still hasn’t
fully recovered from the time that the Scarlet Witch rewrote reality,
and when Tony challenges him on what this speech is about, Pym-Ultron
reveals something new about himself. Despite the fact that he looks like
Ultron, he claims that his consciousness is entirely Hank’s and that
he’s holding Ultron’s murderous side at bay.
Hank gathered them all there, he says, because the problem at hand is one that requires all of
the founding Avengers to be present, himself included. Hank doesn’t
have an all-out solution to the conflict, but ultimately, he desires
that the Resistance should have the fragment considering how outgunned
they are in the grand scheme of things. It’s a decision that neither
side fully understands (see: Ultron being historically evil and likely
to side with Hydra) but that doesn’t matter. Pym-Ultron isn’t interested
in rooting for teams here, he’s just trying to be fair.
Considering that Secret Empire’s
been defined by iconic characters acting in ways that don’t match up
with who we’ve known them to be in the past, it isn’t entirely
surprising that Pym-Ultron is one of the event’s more level-headed
players. In a story where one of the most trustworthy heroes has turned
villain, it makes a warped kind of sense for a fusion of Avengers
founder and archenemy to call these Marvel stalwarts on the carpet for
their mistakes.
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