Captain America: Living Legend


By Andy Diggle, Adi Granov, Agustin Allessio & Eddie Robson (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-573-4

The Star-Spangled Avenger was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby at the end of 1940 and confidently launched in his own title (Captain America Comics, #1 cover-dated March 1941) with overwhelming success. He was the absolute and undisputed star of Timely Comics’ (Marvel’s early predecessor) “Big Three” – the other two being the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner – and one of the first to fall from popularity at the end of the Golden Age.

With the Korean War and Communist aggression dominating the Republic’s psyche, in 1953 he was briefly revived – as were Sub-Mariner and the Torch – before sinking once more into obscurity until a resurgent Marvel Comics called him back to duty in Avengers #4. It was March 1964 and the Vietnam conflict was just beginning to pervade the minds of the American public…

Everything changed for a little company called Marvel when the assembled heroes recovered the body of US Army Private Steve Rogers floating in a block of ice and consequently resurrected World War II’s Sentinel of Liberty.

With this act bridging the years from Timely/Atlas Comics (which had in fact begun with Sub-Mariner’s return in Fantastic Four #4 rather than the creation of Johnny Storm as a new kid Torch in #1), Marvel acquired a comforting longevity and potential-packed pre-history: lending an enticing sense of mythic continuance to the fledgling company that instantly gave it the same cachet and enduring grandeur of market leader National/DC.

This time Cap stuck around: taking over the Avengers, winning his own series and eventually a solo title. He waxed and waned through the most turbulent period of social change in US history, always struggling to find an ideological place and stable footing in the modern world. In 2006, whilst another morally suspect war raged in the real world, during the Marvel event known as Civil War he became a rebel and was assassinated on the steps of a Federal Courthouse.

Even more has happened in the last decade or so and, since the movies finally made him a Star-Spangled Star, the patriotic powerhouse has emerged with a solid, unassailably resolute presence no fan of modern Fights ‘n’ Tights fiction would dream of trifling with.

It also helps to have really excellent creators willing to try something a bit different with the venerable character and add contemporary gloss to the mix…

Such is certainly the case with Captain America: Living Legend: a 4-issue miniseries by Andy Diggle, Adi Granov, Agustin Allessio & Eddie Robson, released between December 2013 and February 2014 and now available as a short, sharp and shocking example of contemporary Cold War Terror.

Spanning the hero’s entire career, the adventure opens in the Bavarian Alps in April 1945 where Russian and US commando squads compete to capture German rocket scientists. The “Ivans”, wastefully led by ambitious patriotic fanatic Vladimir Illyich Volkov, are succumbing to stiff Nazi resistance until Captain America intervenes, but even the coolly competent crusader is unable to prevent the impetuous and arrogant Volkov from being shot in his moment of triumph…

Siberia, 1968: whilst the Sentinel of liberty slumbered in deep freeze, Cosmonaut Volkov led a secret mission to land a Soviet on the Moon before the Americans, and again deliver a crushing propaganda blow to the West. Unfortunately the lunar explorer encountered something alien and uncanny on its first Dark Side orbit and the mission was erased from Russian history…

Low Earth Orbit, Today: pacifist energy scientist Lauren Fox initiates her Dark Energy Utilisation System and lets something cruel and black and utterly inimical into our reality. The D.E.U.S. satellite smashes to Earth in Siberia, and within hours Sharon Carter of S.H.I.E.L.D. has despatched Captain America to investigate why the plunge seemed controlled – and stop the Russians getting hold of whatever caused the disaster as well as Fox’s D.E.U.S tech…

In the frozen north Colonel Gridenko is already leading a contingent of troops through a vast rugged barricade. It was built forty years ago to keep something alien and deadly from escaping…

When he finds the perimeter guards all dead at each other’s hands, he fears the latest space-borne visitation is proof that the original horror is still alive…

Captain America parachutes into the arctic hostile territory, tracking D.E.U.S’ trajectory and soon finds Dr. Fox. When he learns what happened on her space station he knows the Russians are not the real problem…

After Volkov’s capsule landed in Siberia in 1968, the cosmonaut was found to have been bizarrely altered by his experience. By 1973 the science city he was taken to had become a vast necropolis. As young Gridenko led the pitifully few survivors out, he witnessed The State sealing the site and start erasing all mention of the monstrous events…

As Captain America and Dr. Fox head towards the abandoned complex they are attacked by appalling alien predators: ghastly amalgamations of human and machine, possessed by a hunger to kill. Fighting onwards they soon link up with the remainder of the grizzled Russian Colonel’s expeditionary force – those that haven’t become man-machine marauders…

Reluctant allies, East and West must unite to brave Gridenko’s lair and destroy the unknown monstrosities it holds, but their foe still has many surprises and perils in store for his old rival and the rest of humanity…

Fast, furious and ferocious, Captain America: Living Legend is a gripping and spooky riff on classic alien infiltration horror movies which offers plenty of classy thrills, spills and chills that will delight superhero and fear fans alike. This slim tome also includes a huge cover-&-variants gallery by Granov, Neal Adams, Ulises Farinas, Daniel Brereton, Michael D. Allred,  Sal Buscema, Francesco Francavilla, Walt Simonson, John Cassaday & Jim Starlin, and boasts a wealth of digital extra content for consumers using the AR icons accessed via a free digital code and the Marvel Comics app for iPhone®, iPad®, iPad Touch® & Android devices at Marvel’s Digital Comics Shop.
™ & © 2013 and 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.