Rating: WARTY!
I came to this novel under false pretenses. I don't know who decides how to categorize these novels when they're put up on Net Galley as advance review copies. I suspect it's the publisher, but whoever it was misrepresented this one. It was categorized under graphic novels, but it's no such thing! There are no graphics in sight - in this case not even a cover, so I was disappointed before I began this. My advice to publishers is not to put your text novels under the graphic novel header. It's misleading at best and dishonest at worst. Nevertheless I gave it the old college try, and I have to report that it was not a beautiful day in the neighborhood for Mr Rogers, aka Captain America. I really could not get into this. I made it to just beyond the half-way point, and when it didn't remotely look like it was getting any better (indeed it got worse, descending into monologues and pages of exposition), I gave up on it.
I'm not a huge comic book fan, but then this was not a comic book, as I was sorry to discover. My experience of Captain America is all from the Marvel movies which have been hitting the screens with a routine and regularity, and a runaway success that's nothing short of breathtaking, and every one of those movies has been funny, amazing, action-packed, intelligent (for Hollywood!), fast-paced, and thoroughly entertaining. This novel was none of that. Instead, it was a series of uninspired fights followed by uninspired dialog, followed by more fighting. And there was neither anything super nor heroic about it. You could have taken out the Cap, and substituted one of the GI Joes, or one of Schwarzeneggar's older characters, like the one from Commando, or tossed in a Jason Bourne or James Bond, or any such macho action dude, and it could have been exactly the same story. There was no reason for the Cap to be here.
The story began with Commander Maria Hill contacting Cap to ask him to take care of her niece, Katherine, who plays the standard maiden in distress, despite the fact that she can handle herself and gets the Cap out of more than one scrape, yet she never gets any respect. I think this story would have been a much better adventure if Commander Hill had taken charge and cap had not been involved, but it is what it never was, and that's what I have to review.
The dialog was uninspired and not amusing, except unintentionally, such as at one point when the Cap is fighting a character named Taskmaster, who has "photographic reflexes" (what's really meant is cinematographic reflexes - any move she sees he can emulate). At one point, while fighting Taskmaster and attempting a futile distraction, Cap asks, "So who's paying you, Taskmaster, and how much?" Was Cap not paying attention two minutes before when Taskmaster came flying through a window and announced, as an introduction, "...she's worth a lot to me. Two million dollars to be exact."? I guess not. His motive is to collect a bounty. he's being paid two million dollars to be exact! Cap doesn't come off as very smart in this story, which is another problem. Of course that doesn't explain who's offering the bounty, but that's not exactly what Cap asks, is it?
The writing is a bit clunky, too. Workman-like for the most part, but not inspired. At one point, in the same paragraph we got "Then it came to him...then with a jolt it came to him..." which made for jarring reading. I guess the first time it came to him it didn't jolt him enough? Or maybe he needed to drink a Jolt cola before it came to him? Character descriptions were boilerplate, along the lines of "a lion's mane of hair" and "a curved beak of a nose." Not very inspired or inspiring. It felt like the author had cut & pasted these from other tepid random novels.
It was hard to find this on Goodreads because the title there is different. In fact the title seems very fluid. It's listed as Marvel's Captain America, but the novel itself is titled Marvel Captain America Sub Rosa. That latter Latin means literally beneath the rose or by way of translation, in secret. But it can be no secret that the Cap deserved a lot better than he got here. I can't recommend this based on what I read, which was more than enough for me when there are other novels out there which are desperate to be read and enjoyed and promise to be more rewarding.
