What is Cred Forums's overall impressions of the ANAD run through for Captain America: Sam Wilson and Captain America:...

Boring. Really fucking boring.

>is it a lot of race-baiting
It is race-baiting: the comic. And no subtly.

I mean everyone hates Sam and it definitely has a political stance. I think the narrative is pretty solid and I haven't thought of it as race-baiting, unless dealing with heavily politicized issues at all is considered race-baiting.

>Making Cap a hydra agent seemed like a cheap shock tactic at first, what do they do that's interesting with it?

It's sets up an arc where evil Cap is and Red Skull compete over who gets to rule Hydra.

Rage's role in Samerica is hilarious, given what went down in one of his biggest stories.

Dude's grandmother was murdered by a villain. During a later battle, the baddie's tech was trashed and he was reduced to trying to attack rage with a piece of shrapnel, which did nothing since Rage is superhumanly strong and durable. But he took it as a chance to snap the guy's neck in revenge, and then claim self-defense.

And then Night Trasher (who was aware of what happened) stops Rage from turning himself when he starts feeling too guilty about the killing and perjury and whatnot, and convinces the DA to just drop the whole investigation.

The HyrdaCap revelation has made Steve Rogers a pretty engaging espionage thriller so I've been on board. Sam Wilson has been overtly political from the get-go so your opinion of it depends on how you feel about that kind of story. I'm generally on the fence about it but the writing's been solid in terms of how Sam's been handling the conflicts he's faced. Also, the latest issue has an interesting twist that'll make the next several issues really interesting.

This arc just made me want Spencer writing a USAgent book instead. He was great here and great in Avengers World.

I mean shit, you can do all the liberal pandering you want in the other books, just give me a book about USAgent kicking ISIS heads in over in the middle east and I'll be happy.

Needs more Bucky vs evil Cap.

Contentious politics and shock gimmicks aside the run just isn't very interesting

samcap keeps being kinda boring imo which i'm really disappointed by bc i was hype.

hydra cap has been fantastic spy stuff. loving it

Steve Rogers has been fairly engaging, but Sam Wilson is boring. His costume also sucks.

>inevitable 'muh race'

As far as I could tell from reading this, the book isn't about Sam proving to be some kind of super-awesome 'BEST CAPTAIN AMERICA EVER BETTER THAN ROGERS' It was more about him coming to grips with everyone's expectations and constant second guessing.

It's not like he's new to superheroing. He's pretty much doing exactly what he's always done -- fight bad guys... but now with added cultural baggage.
Cred Forumsack racists do a lot of strawmanning when they go after this book.

Is it the best comic book ever? Of course not. But I don't think says the things that some aspies imagine it does.

It feels like they're doing the same thing with Sam that they did with Whor, half the comic seems to be a message to the fans rather than actual story. "Steve gave me the shield I'm Captain America and you gotta DEAL WITH IT!" But for some reason it doesn't annoy me as much as when Whor does it.

It helps that Sam has been Steve's active super-hero sidekick for a long ass time so it feels more earned than Jane!Thor.

That said I think the general problem with Sam's book is that Spencer very obviously wants to write what he believes is profound political commentary, but he lacks the writing chops to do that well. So he basically just ends up repeating the same thematic notes every issue in a way that does not really move anything forward. I think in retrospect this was in part because the Sam book is tied to the greater Hydra plot so until Spencer got started on that, Sam's on-going was doomed to spinning wheels in general. It definitely improved with USAgent appearance, though.

Steve's book suffers from a similiar problem where it just feels like one long ass prologue and set-up for the next big event.

For what it's worth, the "gimmick" is that everyone hates Sam... but not because he's a black guy or because he's not Steve, but because he's outspoken about his political views instead of "staying above it", which I think is a pretty natural place to take the character.
It's generally pretty liberal, but, frankly, that's who Sam Wilson is. There's a political vibe but it's generally fairly inoffensive stuff, like "border crossers shouldn't be left to die of dehydration in the desert" and "villain who's a capitalist taken to a humorously ridiculous degree". If you're a Cred Forumstard you'll hate it, obviously, but the politics hasn't really bothered me.
I like SWCA in general, really. Not the fastest-paced or best comic, but it's enjoyable and I like Sam.
I haven't checked out Steve's comic yet.

>There's a political vibe but it's generally fairly inoffensive stuff, like "border crossers shouldn't be left to die of dehydration in the desert" and "villain who's a capitalist taken to a humorously ridiculous degree"

Spencer hilarious brought up people getting mad as fuck about the Serpents but never hearing anything about Green Skull

Oh, and it manages to be pretty fair when USAgent shows up. Like, he's obviously a Trump-tier conservative who supports border walls, but he's also shown to be an honest, intelligent and reasonable guy who just has a difference of opinion to Sam.

I like Sam Cap, the humor is light and the story telling is fun to follow. The villains are cartoonishly evil and Cred Forumstards and even Fox News takes them too seriously. It's political satire, but Sam himself is fairly moderate for being an outspoken liberal when you put him next to Rage. Even USAgent is written fairly despite being a more conservative character. But people wanting a Captain America comic to be devoid of political issues at all is ridiculous.

Hydra Cap is still a little too soon to tell, but I've enjoyed it so far. It's what I expected coming out of Standoff, and the latest issue revealing how much he's been doing behind the scenes is intriguing. I know a lot of people claimed that Spencer backed off the Hydra Cap plot after the backlash of the #1, but that's bullshit as you see it's even more ingrained beyond his own story. I've been reading Thunderbolts as well just as a supplement (the book isn't great) for when the two stories come to an inevitable clash.

>Rick Jones
>Sharon Carter
>Jack Flag
>cosmic cubes
>Zemo
>USAgent
>D-man
>CAPWOLF
>Serpent Society and Diamondback (although he really didn't do justice to either)
I think it's great and the best contemporary homage to Gruenwald's run. It has all the huge cast back again with lots of ongoing plots and an entire spy/mystery thing with HydraCap, while the writing on SWCA can go to gritty to stupidly camp in one page. Not to mention that Standoff was his brainchild and turned out great for an event. Kobik is a fucking great idea.
I also think he writes a great Sam Wilson and very faithful to character.

Thing is, even the first arc felt a big lacking in having Sam struggling with Captain America as a symbol. I'm not complaining, but it feels like, while Brubaker's run as a whole had "Captain America is bigger than one person" as a recurring theme and Remender very much showed Sam trying to deal with filling those shoes, Spencer has him already solid in the role but tormented by the conflict between the mantle and his conscience. It's a different direction but I feel like a dose of good ol' Remender-suffering would've helped him keep grounded.

I think it's not that they want it to be devoid of politics, and more that it's a lot more liberal than your average Cap book, which I'd argue is the point. It's partisan, but not any more than I'd expect upon seeing the title "Sam Wilson: Captain America".

Steve himself has always seemed fairly liberal. He's the son of immigrants and has always been pro-immigration and anti-xenophobic. He had a gay best friend growing up and helped rescue his partner. Sam being introduced as his equal and a partner more than a sidekick was even a pretty liberal move for his book given the time period. His early comics were extremely New Deal, progressive, and anti-fascist. I just think what was considered fairly liberal and progressive back during a lot of Steve's time is just generally accepted and not controversial statements these days.

But Arnie Roth was the first openly gay comic book character and Sam Wilson was the first African-American super hero. Those were pretty political at the time.

Political satire is all well and good but do they EVER make fun of liberal policies or democrats? Seems unfair to only focus on the right so much when the left are just as questionable.

Rage chews Sam out for selling out to the white man, if that counts. And MexiFalcon gets disillusioned with him when he can't arrest a group of corrupt businessmen because it'd risk tanking the economy and putting thousands out of work. Sam's basically Obama.
Idea seems to be "make fun of the right, point out that extreme left views are pretty much unsustainable in the system we have at present". As I said before: it's ~Sam Wilson~ as ~Captain America~. This is about as much nuance as you can expect.

Read the first 7 issues of SamCap and while they weren't outright bad, I found them pretty boring.

I'm enjoying Steve Rogers so far. The "Make Hydra Great Again" premise is interesting to me and I'm waiting to see what's gonna happen. I liked Spencer's Pleasant Hill, so I'm glad to see this is continuing the loli cube plotpoint.

>Sam Wilson was the first African-American super hero
I thought it was Black Panther?

Black Panther isn't American.

>Black Panther
>American

Come again?

I missed the AMERICAN part of that. Sorry.

No worries, I've seen plenty of confusion over the distinction. It doesn't really matter much. Just that we don't think of their existence as very progressive now since we're constantly getting new black characters these days, but back then having Cap's partner be an equal and a black man was a pretty big deal. And if Cred Forums was around back then there'd be just as much bitching about political agendas and being too liberal as there is now.

Marvel comics has always been liberal. Deal with it.

Cap's first issue had him punching out Hitler.

>Marvel comics has always been liberal. Deal with it.
>Cap's first issue had him punching out Hitler.

Are you implying Republicans supported Hitler in 1941?

Public support for joining the war only came after Pearl Harbor, not for love of the Jews or what was being done to them. Steve was against Hitler for social justice reasons, not solely patriotic ones. A lot more Americans were pro-Hitler and anti-Jew back then than the narrative likes to tell us now, but we like to retroactively like to claim we were on the right side for altruistic reasons all along.