Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty #10
Recap
The Century Game is in full swing as AIM continues its invasion of New York with MODOC leading the charge. With Steve Rogers’ New Invaders currently out of commission due to the floating head’s psychic attack, will one of them manage to break free and save the others, or is the fight already over?
Review
Sometimes, all it takes is one voice to stoke the fires of revolution and inspire others.
For the New Invaders, that man was Steve Rogers, and in the beginning, he managed to lead them and his civilian friends to victory until MODOC played his hand in the last issue. The megalomaniacal mind spends most of this issue torturing them all with their fears and desires, and things seem hopeless until Roger Aubrey, The Destroyer, steps up to the plate. One of Cap’s few Silver Age hero friends still kicking, Aubrey stands as the focal point of this issue as he manages to break free of MODOC’s control where everyone else on the team cannot. This is an excellent use of a lesser-known character by Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, as they’re able to pull on the character’s older history in such a way that his involvement in the fight against fascism is in line with how long the Outer Circle has been playing their Century Game.
Lanzing and Kelly allow the Destroyer to break the boundary between him and his friends and eventually MODOC’s control over all of them while emphasizing both of the main themes of this story; camaraderie and bravery to stand in the face of impossible odds. Aubrey can overcome his personal odds through the power of love and helps everyone else do the same, from Cap’s fear of losing Bucky again to Fury not wanting to lose another soldier to government bureaucracy to Sharon not wanting to be the one to carry the weight of dark actions so that Steve doesn’t have to, they each stand against their manipulation to free each other and the ending to this issue is even more potent because of it.
Carmen Carnero’s art does nothing but elevates this story and its intensity. Her art is nearly perfect between the tense, character-driven moments and the bombastic action of later pages. She has an excellent eye for characterization, utilizing facial expressions to tell each character’s story and inform their relationships with the memories that they’re forced to see. It also helps that the initial few pages of the book make great use of medium and close-up shots that allow readers to get a more personal feel into our main characters while making them diverse enough as not to be boring to the eyes.
Her set-piece moments flow excellently when they get into full swing as she draws these excellent double-page spreads that comprise the book’s final third. With Destroyer crashing through the star points that make up the Outer Circle’s symbol, his poses are heroic and dynamic as glass; his powerful punches and attacks knock away chunks of rock and other debris. It sells a sense of impact as he saves his friends from the psychic capture and kicks the book into high gear, paying off the build-up of the earlier pages of the issue.
Nolan Woodard’s colors act perfectly as the lively counterpart to the fantastic line art. They contrast Carnero’s inks amazingly at every turn, allowing the characters to become the main focuses of their panels as they stand out against sometimes mostly black backgrounds or other flat colors, like Fury’s brown army uniform popping against the mostly light yellow background of the desert or Peggy Carter’s dark green costume against the void of her mind. His colors pop off every page in the book, from the muted blues and whites when Cap remembers a tense moment with Bucky, giving off a sense of cold melancholy to bright oranges and reds as anger bubbles in Aubrey’s heart and mind.
Joe Caramagna’s letters complete the package with their excellent placement and variation. Making great use of Carerno’s page and panel design in the opening, Caramagna makes sure to point out whose mindscape readers are in with character names in the upper left corners as they appear and save vital sound effects for the final panel to effectively state their impact – from BLAMs to BANGs, he makes sure that readers understand the intensity of the situation as MODOC tortures his victims. There’s also a significant differentiation between MODOC’s word balloons and the regular versions, as they are light yellow with red letters with an electrified tail.
Final Thoughts
Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty is a fantastic, action-thriller that everyone should be reading. Lanzing and Kelly are fantastic storytellers alongside their fantastic art team in Carmen Carnero, Nolan Woodard and Joe Caramagna! And we certainly can’t wait for more!
Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty #10 – Fight With Fearlessness
- Writing - 8.5/108.5/10
- Storyline - 8.5/108.5/10
- Art - 9/109/10
- Color - 9/109/10
- Cover Art - 8.5/108.5/10