Wolverine & Captain America: Weapon Plus #1: My Name is America

I’ll be straight up, I had little knowledge of Ethan Sacks or Diogenes Neve work (outside of DC) prior to going into this so my expectations weren’t very high. Sometimes that can be a good thing though as this book turned out to be a pleasant experience. The dangers of doing a “retro” Captain America/Wolverine story is there’s been so, so, so many already. All things Weapon X have been hashed and rehashed a zillion times. So armed with that foreknowledge it was pretty awesome to see something refreshing come out of it.

The issue itself is fairly standard and straightforward, the heroes meet up, there’s a mystery afoot and when they seek answers they end up with more questions. Unlike some more…controversial choices in adding layers to Captain America’s origins, this one feels very organic and yet not “too safe”. Ethan Sacks does a great job creating something new out of something familiar and holds your attention from start to finish. Again there’s not some massive retcon that comes outta left field but at the same time it touches on new territory. Sacks answers the question “what if someone who didn’t deserve the power of Captain America was in control of it en masse?” Keeping this spoiler free this aspect of it is what makes it stand out. People love seeing dark reflections of their favorite heroes especially when they are done well. Sacks does this beautifully, introducing a new villain who’s believable, somewhat relatable while also clearly a threat that makes sense to need both Cap and Jimmy Howlett to combat it. That last note is something people tend to forget because what we don’t need is another “just cuz” team up of characters with a loose association to each other.