Captain America Epic Collection: Streets of Poison (Captain America (1968-1996))

Some kid in Wales wrote in to the Captain America comic and suggested to the editors that Cap should be confronted by a junkie, who argues that Cap's Super Soldier serum is no different to his own drug use. That scenario is presented in this action-packed tale and handled rather well, to the satisfaction of the Welsh kid (me!). Mark Gruenwald is much-missed - he had a solid take on Cap and his place in the world and pushed the character into new places. Ron Lim's art is cartoony but effective. It lacks the realism of more recent Cap adventures, but avoids some of the excess of other '90s contemporaries. A solid read, and a great example of this classic run.

This is Volume 16 of the eventual complete collection of Captain America's adventures, covering the years 1990-1991 (volumes 1, 9 and 12 are already available). It's another typically chunky and well-collected release from the Epic Collection series.The book opens and closes with annuals containing a variety of stories, but the majority of the volume - Cap's regular title - is written by Mark Gruenwald and drawn by Ron Lim. This run is dominated by three main storylines - the first, titular story sees Cap find himself in the middle of a drug war between the Kingpin and the Red Skull (and their respective lieutenants Bullseye and Crossbones), a situation complicated by the hero being exposed to drugs himself, leaving him in an uncontrollable rage. It's a unique situation - an unsympathetic Captain America - that allows his supporting cast to shine as they try to stop/help him.The second major story arc involves Cap's semi-girlfriend Diamondback being put on trial by her former villainous employers, the Serpent Society. There are some great fights with the Captain's longtime ophidian foes, as the star-spangled Avenger battles to save his paramour without alienating her forever.The final arc is the shortest, and sees Cap tangling with moral guardians-gone-bad, the Watchdogs. In between these longer stories, the hero battles an ice worm in the Arctic and teams up with fellow Avenger Quasar to save a supervillain, amongst other adventures. Each issue also has a short backup story as well, focusing on Diamondback or fellow patriotic supers USAgent and Battlestar. As well as being fun tales in their own right, they also feature art by then up-and-coming artist Mark Bagley, shortly before his celebrated run on Amazing Spider-Man.The annuals that bookend the volume have a variety of stories, both with Cap and with more of the supporting cast such as Nomad. Both annuals actually form parts of crossovers with other titles, but work perfectly fine as standalone stories, and there are short text explanations of the events of the absent parts.This is a good, solid run of classic Captain America action; the late Gruenwald shows his mastery of continuity as well as of character, and Lim provides fine, detailed and dynamic art. Together with original art and magazine articles, including interviews with Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, as extras, this is a quality collection worthy of a place on any Cap-fan's shelf.

triffic

Collecting Captain America #372-386 plus annuals #9-10, 'Streets of Poison' is yet another of the many great tales told by the late Mark Gruenwald during his incredible ten year stint on the title during the 1980's and 90's. Gruenwald had never backed away from exploring important social and political issues through the medium of his characters, and this story would be no different as he examined the world of drug addiction through the eyes of Captain America.In the mid to late 80's metamphetamine - easy to manufacture, cheap to purchase, and frighteningly addictive - was the drug of choice on the streets of America, with many people fearing an epidemic of addiction and crime would follow, and it was this drug going by its street name of 'Ice' that Gruenwald chose as the backdrop on which to base his story.The book opens with Captain America busting up a drugs lab having been investigating a drugs war between The Kingpin: Wilson Fisk, and the Red Skull. During the fight one of the villains detonates an explosive device which ignites the highly flammable contents of the lab creating a huge explosion that Cap barely escapes from intact. However, as a result of the explosion Cap is exposed to the drugs thats were being cooked in the lab, initially being overcome with feelings of confidence and euphoria, but soon descending into paranoia, suffering hallucinations, and becoming increasingly violent and savage in the manner in which he deals with criminals.Caps increasingly erratic behavior brings him into conflict with Daredevil, and ultimately leads to Caps friends and allies the Black Widow and on-again-off-again girlfriend Diamondback having to team up in order to stop him. This in turn results in Cap having to have a full blood transfusion when fellow Avenger Hank Pym descovers that the drugs he had inhaled have combined with the super soldier serum in his bloodstream at a molecular level.Now seemingly devoid of the super soldier serum that gave him his peak-human level performance, Captain America is forced to consider whether he will still be able to act as a hero without those abilities - and indeed considers whether the super soldier serum he had relied on all these years had ever been anything other than a performance enhancing drug itself. Reduced to the physical level of a normal person - although an incredibly well trained one - he leaves to put an end to the Kingpin and Red Skulls turf war determined to discover for himself what truely makes Captain America - the drug or the man?Streets of Poison is clearly an anti-drug tale of the sort that comics were occasionally prone to throwing fans in the 1980's, and whilst it loses points for the quaint manner in which it tackles the issue, it stops short of being preachy or lecturing the reader on the dangers of drugs. Even ignoring the quite intentional message of 'Just say No', you are still left with a very good action-orientated tale with a slew of villains and heroes guest appearing and a whole host of titanic battles including Cap v's Daredevil, Cap v's Black widow and Diamondback, Cap v's Crossbones, Crossbones v's Bullseye and Kingpin v's Red Skull, which makes it worth the price of purchase alone.The story is also importantly the very first time that a writer had addressed the source of Captain Americas abilities and questioned - at a time when the existance of 'performance enhancing' drugs in sports were becoming ever more common and grabbing media attention - whether Captain America was really any different, or as a character in one of Marvels recent movies suggestion - was it really the case that everything special about Cap 'came out of a bottle'? Writer Gruenwald had already previously explored whether Captain America needed his name, costume or shield to be a hero back in the epic 'The Captain' storyline (#332-350). Now he was going to explore whether Captain America was defined by his abilities or by his character.Rounding off this volume are a series of shorter tales unrelated to the primary story, including an attempt by Cap and Diamondback to enjoy a night on the town that becomes ill-fated when Diamondbacks former team mates in the Serpent Society show up, and one of my personal favourite short stories in which Cap teams up with the cantankerous USAgent (completely against his will of course!) in order to take down right-wing paramilitaries 'The Watch Dogs', with the USAgent having murder on his mind due to the Watch Dogs involvement in the slaying of his parents.Overall however this volume represents 500 pages of Mark Gruenwalds peak period on the Captain America book, as well as an important part of Caps overall mythology, and comes highly recommended!

The first annual has part 1 of 'The Terminus Factor' and there's a handy explanation of what happened in parts 2-5 at the end. Its Gruenwald and Lim for the most part on the majority of the book and the 'Streets of Poison' arc which also features DD, The Kingpin, Black Widow, Bullseye and Crossbones. It also features 5 page back-up strips with some characters which weren't that familiar to me like Battlestar, Diamondback and U.S. Agent by Gruenwald and Bagley.#383 is the fiftieth anniversary edition which feels like an annual. The second annual is part 3 of 'The Von Strucker Gambit' and a handy recap leads into it. Enjoyed the Larry Alexander art on the Nomad story. For extras there's a nice Year in Review article and Marvel Age interviews about Cap with Jack Kirby and Joe Simon. I really enjoyed this collection.