Doing That Hero Thing: Reviewing ‘Captain America: Symbol Of Truth’ #9

No matter where they are in the world, the mission of Captain America is to save lives and do what is heroic. With White Wolf pulling out every stop to control Mohannda and finish off Captain America and his allies, the heroes are in for quite a bit of a fight.

Through this series so far Tochi Onyebuchi has put Sam Wilson into touch spaces where the decisions he has to make since taking back up the shield and mantle haven’t been easy. Along the way we’ve gotten to see the hero doing the heroic thing, putting politics and other things aside to save lives. We get a lot of that here following the previous issue where Captain America and Nomad butted heads before butting heads with the rebels of the country they rushed into. Watching these characters just do whatever it takes to save others, putting everything aside to do so, is always inspiring, and getting to see Sam do such things always resonates with me.

I’m all for the political things and deeper conversations, that is part of the bag when reading about Captain America, but just watching Cap rush in to save people trapped in a hospital despite knowing it is a trap is the kind of stuff I want to see all the time. Not him saving those people in that situation every time, but just saving lives in whatever situation.

There is a bit of forward movement with the overall plot again as we see White Wolf again for the first time in a few issues and we learn that he has tapped into Arnim Zola’s Dimension Z for his latest soldiers. This is a blast from the past for Ian Rogers/Nomad since he was born and grew up in that realm, and the whole thing about Zola being his father and Steve Rogers his adoptive father. Comic books are just great stuff. When a writer looks back and finds ways to tie in previous characters or stories into the recent stuff it makes me smile, because it makes the shared universe feel deeper and shows respect to what came before without allowing it to be an anchor to their own story.

If one is going to have an issue that is mostly action and big moments, well having R.B. Silva return to the series for this issue is a pretty darn good choice. There is just something about Silva’s artwork that is always epic in scale and appearance, and it takes any issue and takes it from pretty typical and instantly turns it into a blockbuster. Slick dynamic detailed art that is bursting with kinetic energy, every panel, and page feeling like it has movement and is gliding into the next one. Silva’s choices for panels help expand on this because it builds up the anticipation and the movement, creating intriguing ways for the eyes to follow the action and progress things.

Two perfect examples are an early page with Captain America rushing in to save some folks in the hospital and the arrival of the Dimension Z Phrox. The first uses varying-sized rectangle panels on top of a massive panel to show the people in danger, Cap’s shadowy form rushing in and then him catching the people in a perfect heroic pose before moving back to others. On the other hand, the Phrox panel is just a massive, beautiful panel of the soldiers warping in (looking very much like John Romita Jr. drew them originally) with panel insets on top featuring the faces of Nomad and the rebels looking on in anger. It gives us the closeups we need of a reaction as well as the thing they are reacting to all in one glorious space.

With the characters outside the mostly gray bunkers of the last issue, Jesus Aburtov can really bring in a lot of big bright colors to play here. They’re slick and smooth with great weight and shadow elements to them, making the fantastical elements here really stand out as they should. There are still some areas where things are toned down a bit but it’s for effect, like some of the panels where we’re looking in on the action from far away the colors are a bit dimmer than when we’re right up close. I mentioned one above, but I so love the panels where any of the characters are just in silhouette against a bright background, posed in some action way because it just looks pretty damn cool. It also gets so much across without having to say or fully show it.

Yes, there is a lot of action to behold but as noted there is still plot and character progression going on here which means there are still lots of lettering things needed. Which of course Joe Caramagna handles superbly. All the dialogue flows around and hugs the action, following the way the eyes will move across those given pages so that we read the dialogue in the order it should naturally be while also letting the artwork stand clear to us. Oh, and those glorious comic book delicious SFX that dot the pages and make the action echo off the page are found everywhere and are loved.

Captain America: Symbol of Truth #9 is now available from Marvel Comics.