Captain America: Castaway in Dimension Z Part 2


By Rick Remender, John Romita Jr., Klaus Janson, Scott Hanna, Thomas Palmer, Dean White & Rachelle Rosenberg (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-534-5

The MarvelNOW! publishing event, which began at the end of 2012, gave the House of Ideas an irresistible opportunity to try a few different things with its vast catalogue of characters: options a tad more imaginative than simply killing somebody off or changing the identity of the hero under the mask…

One of the most visually arresting experiments was Castaway in Dimension Z which explored the Star-Spangled Avenger’s undisclosed early childhood in Depression-eraNew York City whilst simultaneously removing the Sentinel of Liberty from every vestige of his oh-so-familiar milieu and comfort zone.

The stunning, all-action conclusion collecting the fortnightly Captain America volume 7, issues #6-10 (released between April 17th and 28th August 2013) carries on from

What Has Gone Before: Steve Rogers and extremely patient girlfriend Sharon Carter (a lethally competent Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.) were investigating a phantom subway carriage when she temporarily derailed his train of thought. After years of waiting, she impulsively asked the WWII veteran to marry her, only to lose him to a cunningly laid trap which chained, drugged and catapulted Captain America into an impossible other universe…

He awoke strapped to a machine beside a baby in a glass tank. Extreme geneticist and Fascist war-criminal Arnim Zola was responsible, determined to extract the Super-Soldier serum which had kept Steve the world’s most perfect man for nine decades…

At a critical juncture of the procedure the still-groggy champion broke free and battled his way to freedom through an army of genetically reconstructed horrors…

Zola screamed to his prior achievement “daughter” Jet Black that the Avenger had killed her brother, unaware that Steve had rescued the baby.

Trapped in Zola’s pocket dimension the fugitive hero then spent years rearing the boy – whom he named Ian – whilst Zola’s ever-increasing mutant army hunted him. Eventually the ultimate freedom fighter became champion of the indigenous Phrox: people driven to the edge of extinction by Zola’s armies.

The deranged geneticist was determined to exterminate them and repopulate with his ghastly creations. Jet led the monsters; a revenge-fuelled fighting fury intent on killing her brother’s murderer. In the subterranean caverns of the Phrox Steve and Ian found friendship and time to heal in relative security, but the Castaway Avenger was hiding a ghastly secret: Zola had infected him with a virus that was slowly growing a clone of the Nazi’s consciousness inside the hero: a biological Fifth Column furiously fighting for control of their battered body…

Nearly a decade later, Steve, his Phrox allies and combat veteran Ian are in the final stages of the war with Zola and his ever-improving forces. The invaders are inexorably closing in whilst the thing in Steve gained strength until at last his boy saw and heard the infection for himself…

Knowing the end was near Cap gambled everything on breaching Zola’s fortress and trying to get back to Earth for medical assistance and perhaps Avengers reinforcements.

The plan was thwarted when Jet led the mass-produced legion of monsters in an all-out attack on Phrox.

The devastating assault was a total success. However, as she caught her impossibly alive brother and beat Captain America to near-death, Jet began to experiences doubts. If the man she hated all her life had loved and protected her brother and was a valiant, honourable foe, what else might be untrue?

Her hesitation drove Zola to new depths of atrocity, but Steve managed to survive the biologist’s blistering final assault. As Zola ordered the extermination of the Phrox and Ian was taken away for re-indoctrination, in the ruins Steve took a knife and cut Zola’s appalling agent out of his body and made a plan. After 11 years on the defensive and on the run, Captain America was going to bring the war to his hated enemy…

Brutal, bewildering, bewitching and bombastic, Rick Remender & John Romita Jr.’s boldly unconventional, action-packed saga concludes in truly spectacular fashion here as the Sentinel of Liberty invades Zola’s citadel of science and once more faces Jet even as Ian slowly succumbs to the geneticist’s brainwashing.

The timing, as ever, is incredibly fortuitous. The mad scientist’s decades-long scheme is in its final stages and his entire colossal fortress is converting into a flying Battle Station, ready to re-enter Earth’s dimension and infect millions of human beings with the geneticist’s clonal copy virus. Humanity will soon be extinct and only Arnim Zolas will remain.

Jet’s frantic battle with Captain America completes her own moral transformation, but no sooner does she switch sides that the freshly re-programmed Ian – now calling himself Leopold – ambushes his former foster father beside a ghastly twisted monster clone of Steve.

Jet, meanwhile, has freed the last remnants of the nearly extinct Phrox race only to be challenged by her deeply disappointed dad. Many levels above Steve, having crushed his doppelganger, is near to death, unable to withstand the frenzied attack of Ian/Leopold.

The death blow never comes. Sharon Carter arrives in a blaze of light and hope to shoot Captain America’s boy. She has been trying to re-open the dimensional portal for almost thirty minutes…

Relative time differentials notwithstanding, Earth is still in imminent danger of utter disaster and as the three mismatched champions unite to save it the tension mounts to unbearable heights. After the spectacular final conflict only two will return from Dimension Z…

And in what remains of that now unreachable pocket realm, the Phrox start their slow return from extinction’s abyss, safeguarded by a champion they call Nomad…

Epic, cataclysmic and stunningly grandiose, the Homeric ten-year struggle of Captain America under alien skies looks set to impact mightily upon the warm, upbeat and heroically optimistic adventurer but only time will tell…

The breathtaking illustration of John Romita Jr., inkers Klaus Janson, Scott Hanna & Thomas Palmer and colour-renderers Dean White and Rachelle Rosenberg is simply too good to be true, and this visual fest is augmented by a cover-and-variants gallery by Romita Jr., Janson, Paqual Ferry & Alexander Maleev, plus the now as-standard AR icon add-on sections.

This Marvel Augmented Reality App give access to story bonuses once you download the code – for free – from marvel.com onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.

Magnificently reminiscent of the spectacular, innovative 1976-1977 Jack Kirby run on the Star-Spangled Avenger, this bombastic science-fiction epic of freedom fighting fantasy is a delicious, mysterious and mesmerising all-action extravaganza no Fights ‘n’ Tights can afford to ignore.

™ & © 2013 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.