Customer Reviews

Captain America: Operation Rebirth TPB

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

With the Super-Soldier Serum wearing off, Captain America's body decays, and begins to die. Left alone in his death throes, Cap is spirited away, and revived by his old enemy, the Red Skull. Working with Cap's old flame, Sharon Carter, the Skull needs Cap's help to defeat a common enemy. Can Captain America trust the Red Skull? No. But, to save the free world, he might have to work with him.

It is great to see Captain America again, and this comic novel carries him forward as the great hero we remember. The story is very good, and the illustrations are nothing short of excellent. I bought this book for my son, who liked it a lot, but I just had to steal it away and read it for myself. It's a great book, and my son and I both highly recommend it to you!

The "Operation Rebirth" storyline was a major factor in reintroducing Captain America to a new generation in the late 90s. After Cap suffered a terrible run in the late 80s-early 90s (D-Man, anyone?), Waid was able to re-invigorate the character and give him something to fight for and against. The story is taut and tense; the art is crisp and clean. And the Red Skull is there as well. What more could you ask out of a Captain America story?

While Waid and Garney's relaunching of the Captain America title and franchise didn't last beyond a handful of issues, this story still stands as one of the strongest ever. Read and enjoy.

When Waid and Garney took over Cap, I was thrilled. Waid had made some wonderful stories for the Flash, and he did not disappoint with Operation Rebirth.
As a longtime Captain America fan, I was thrilled to read this short run by Waid and Garney. The stories were great: Cap was re-invigorated; Sharon Carter was brought back in a way classic readers never expected; Shield was right there in your face; and of course, Cap's nemesis, the Red Skull has a leading part.
The artwork on this comic is just beautiful. It was way ahead of all of it's counterparts at the time.
Marvel made the disastrous decision of doing the Heroes Reborn re-launch of many Marvel comics, which ended this run by Waid and Garney.
After having read the best Cap that I had ever read, I ended up cancelling comic book subscription to Cap when the Inferior 'Heroes Reborn' Captain America took the place of this run by Waid and Garney.
I have never been so thrilled to read a comic as much as I was for Captain America in this era.
If you like Captain America, this is a MUST READ!

For the realists, this is a great explanation of why Cap was thawed out in the '60's, but hasn't aged 30 years today. The only story better than this is the follow-up "Man Without A Country".

Death is a relative thing in the comics, heroes and villains "die" on a regular basis, only to come back to either save or menace the world. Sometimes the hero comes back as a menace and the menace comes back as a hero. Captain America was born in the World War II era, with his primary purpose being to battle the Germans and Italians. When the war ended, he lost a great deal of his relevance and was lost and presumed dead. Years later the Avengers found him frozen in ice and revived him. The super soldier now was a battler of super villains of all types alongside his super comrades in arms.
This story is based on another death and rebirth of Captain America; in the first part of the story his body fails him as the super serum expires, rendering him just another aged man. However, after his death his body is taken and reprocessed so that he can fight once again. In this case, he has some rather strange allies, although the menace he battles with them is an old one.
To operate effectively, the comic's world must exist in a reality distortion field, where even the comic reality is sometimes distorted. The key is always the quality of the story, artwork and dialog. In this case, all three work well, it is a tense story with a lot of fighting action and even though there are some disparate threads, it is logically consistent.

Blame it all on Mark Waid. He was the one who got me to actually like Captain America.

Now, mind you, I was a kid who grew up in the glorious 1980s and saw the episodes of the Cap cartoon on TV. I could even sing the theme song - "When Captain America throws his mighty shield..." But I never liked Cap when I was growing up. Well, Avengers was my favourite book but I was really in it for characters like Thor, Hercules and even the Wasp. Of course, it didn't hurt that John Buscema and Tom Palmer were the artists on the book when I was growing up. I did pick up some of the Gruenwald Cap issues but never felt any real attachments to them.

Then Mark Waid and Ron Garney got on the book in the mid-1990s. I heard everyone and their grandmothers talking about the book but I still did not pick it up. Then came the Rob Liefeld run and I actually picked up several issues of that! Finally, we had the return of Waid and Garney to the book and I followed that second run religiously all the way through. I even picked up the issue where Bob Harras got some stooge to rewrite Waid's script (on the Red Skull's origin) and effectively pissing off Waid so much that he left the book.

Anyway, one of biggest regrets was never having the chance to read the original Waid/Garney run from 1995-96. The two TPBs reprinting the run were more difficult to locate in these parts than the Holy Grail.

You can imagine by elation when I finally picked up the "Captain America: Operation Rebirth" TPB yesterday at 20% off cover price at my local comicshop.

It was about 10:30pm. I had a long day studying for my Criminal Law exams and teaching an English Lit. class. I just had my dinner and the only thing I looked forward to was a good night's rest. But I made the mistake of flipping through the copy of the Waid/Garney TPB that I just bought.

Big mistake.

I couldn't put it down until I finished the whole damned thing.

10 glorious issues - 2 story arcs with two single issues as prologue and epilogue to the whole thing.

Rarely does a "run" on a title feel so complete... so self-contained. This was Waid and Garney at the top of their game. Their second run after the "Heroes Reborn" thingy got me to like Cap. This original first run blew my love for the Star-Spangled Avenger into the stratosphere.

If you're getting tired of Ed Brubaker's super-serious espionage stuff and you're looking for portrayals of Captain America as the ultimate action hero, you'll find no better example than in this book. More than everything, Waid's and Garney's take on the book is a lot of fun. It was the Clinton Era and in a way, ol' Bill (pre-Kenneth Starr) was the real villain in the book! It wasn't a time for deeply introspective examination of the American identity. It was a time when people were rich and comfortable enough to simply kick off their shoes for some good, clean, action-packed fun.

So we get the Red Skull and Adolf Hitler in the first arc ("Operation Rebirth") and Machinesmith and Bill Clinton in the second arc ("Man Without A Country"). We get the cosmic cube in the first arc and all of America's nukes in the second arc. Impossible odds? Tell that to the man who simply won't give up unless he put the baddies to sleep and keep the world safe again - even at the price of his citizenship!

Another plus is the inclusion of Sharon Carter in the title (she was thought dead prior to this). In fact, it wouldn't be wrong to say that Waid was the one who brought Sharon back into the limelight again and allowed later writers such as Brubaker to continue fleshing out her character. Of course, that also led to manufacturers sculpting oversexed statues of the beloved S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.

Finally, who can forget the one-liners? My favourite is the one from the final few pages where Cap tells Sharon to lead the fugitives to safety while he "holds off the army". And he does. Single-handedly. Cap is possibly the only non-powered hero to be able to say that with a straight face.

That was pre-911, pre-Afghanistan, pre-Iraq. Time was, kids my generation grew up with "Rambo" and "Commando" and "Independence Day". We were conditioned to believe that the army hasn't been assembled that America cannot confidently hold off. We believed that one strong man of ideals could turn the tide of an entire war - even holding off an army single-handedly. In fact, we even believed that American Presidents should be men-of-war and cheered Bill Pullman in "Independence Day" when he piloted the fighter jet to kill aliens. That was before Bush Jr. came along and made the American War President the stench of the world. That was before Obama came along and showed us that being President really means grappling with tiresome health policies and the economy all the time.

All in all, it was a fun time to live in. We could afford anything. We could even afford to be stupid. Even Rob Liefeld could afford to model for a jeans commercial one day and convince himself that he could be the artist to relaunch Captain America the next day. It was 1995.

I got hooked on Captain America at the start of Ed Brubaker's run on the series and Civil War just made me love him even more, so for the last few years i've been picking up every Cap trade i can find and after reading just about every Cap trade out there, i've had a hard time finding some great Cap stories that really get me hooked like the newer ones, so with that being said, Operation Rebirth is one of the better reads i've come across. The story is well written and the art is great. If you're one of those that just recently got hooked on Cap and are looking for some other great Cap stories then i highly recommend this book along with "War and Remembrance".

Mark Waid and Ron Garney re-invigorated the man and put him back on track. I especially liked that both Operation Rebirth and it's follow-up story arc Man Without A Country were included in this collection, as I tend to view these as "part 1" and "part 2". If you were ever interested in who Captain America is (and really, who he SHOULD be for all you aspiring writers), start here.

Make no mistake. This is a must read.

What can be said about that more the acts? The act of a 16 year old guy crying by the end of a comic book? All i can say is: thank you a lot Mark. Ron. Anyone can make a story for a super hero, but few can make stories for a symbol.