HeroesCon Booty: Captain America

(Not long ago, I purchased a few dozen comicbook trade paperbacks at the HeroesCon in Charlotte, N.C. I'm reading all of them.)

Ugh. It's not often than I've got no interest in finishing a comic, but Captain America: The Chosen has simply defeated me. I'm half way through the trade paperback edition and pretty sure I won't go any further.

I was looking forward to this book, too. David Morrell is a terrific writer. Best known as the author of First Blood, he also penned the novelizations to the two Rambo sequels and made them much more visceral and gritty than their screen counterparts. (I'm also a fan of his short story Orange is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity, which is worth searching out.)

Naturally, I was excited about seeing Morrell working on a Captain America story. It seemed like a golden opportunity for a kick-ass action piece. Instead, The Chosen is a slow, ponderous tale about a psychic Captain America guiding a U.S. soldier through some hairy situations in the Middle East. Cap spends the first three issues in a coma, communicating via telepathy and ... you know what? Fuck it. This book is a tedious disappointment. I'm a fan of what Marvel has done over the last decade, but Captain America: The Chosen gives credence to just about every complaint some fans have had about the inconsistency of celebrity writers, the vacant nature of "decompressed" storytelling and pretentious ideas.