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Credits

• Writer: Ed Brubaker
• Art: Mike Perkins
• Colorist: Frank D'Armata
• Letterer: VC's Joe Caramagna
• Editor: Tom Brevoort

Quick Summary

The story opens with Crossbones narrating over a black-and-white newsreel, verbally articulating his main problem with heroes like Captain America - that they are, essentially, public-relations lies promoted by those in power to keep the masses in line. He praises the Red Skull - and fascism - as more honest and straightfoward, almost heroic in their goals to collect power - so that they can kick the good guys in the teeth.

Crossbones has kidnapped the Red Skull's daughter, Sinthia, from SHIELD, and is trying to break their conditioning. He tells her the story of her birth and early intential abuse, how the Red Skull had AIM scientists artificially age her when he found out he was dying, and how SHIELD had de-aged her to teenage years.

Crossbones is brutal in his treatment of Sinthea - artfully carelessly so. He throws her around, locks her in a lightless cell, makes her re-learn how to throw knives, tries to make her kill an innocent man (and casually shoots him in front of her when she refuses), and drowns her, all the while keeping up a recitation of her history, and how what SHIELD has done to her is nothing but a thin tissue of lies.

At the end, he's successful, and surprised in bed with a blade at his throat - but for Sinthea, thats ust part of foreplay.

Commentary

Mike Perkins is the artist this month, not Steve Epting. While I have loved Epting's run on the title to date, Mike Perkins shows that while he may not be Epting, he has a talent and a style of such calibre that the book does not suffer from the transition. His faces are expressive, his layout and storytelling skills exceptional.

• Although Captain America is only present in his issue via flashbacks and newsreels, his presence haunts the issue like a ghost from a Poe story. This part of the next arc focuses on Crossbones, and what makes Brock Rumlow tick - not because its explicit in the narrative, but because we are shown - not told - the character, in all his dark, fiendish glory. Crossbones is a brutal, straightforward, violent thug, and only holds one absolute - his respect and loyalty to the Red Skull.

• Although this issue has many other excellent character moments for the Red Skull's supporting cast beyond Crossbones. Although assumed dead amongst the casualties of Lukin's campaign, she saves the infant Sinthea when the Red Skull is poised to toss her into the sea. She is given charge of Sinthea (did she name her, one wonders, given the hatred and inattention of the Red Skull?) through her formative years, and clearly relishes the role - plus the promise of a larger role in the Skull's "family" if she succeeds in making Sinthea into a brutal monster. I hope she's not dead - she was one of my favorite femme fatales in the CA mythos.

• Crossbones' methods aren't horribly sophisticated, but apparently effective. They reminded me of the backup story durig the Gruenwald era, when we were shown Brock kidnapping and abusing Diamondback. However, the difference between that sequence and this one are all about the artwork, and how the dark, moody grime makes this a much more effective sequence.

• The most effective page in the book - for me - was the last page, after she's become Sinthea again. The story is told in the face - gone is Erica the SHIELD "good girl" - no more uncertainty, no more doubt... she's now clearly in command of herself, confident... and consciously evil.

  ...and as Crossbones said... "Hot".