Review- CAPTAIN AMERICA & BUCKY: OLD WOUNDS

CAPTAIN AMERICA & BUCKY: OLD WOUNDS (Marvel, 2012; Hardcover)

Collects Captain America & Bucky Nos. 625-628 and What If...? No. 4 (cover dates February-May, 2012 and August, 1977)

Writer: James Asmus and Ed Brubaker (CA 625-628) and Roy Thomas (WI 4)

Artist: Francesco Francavilla (CA 625-628) and Frank Robbins and Frank Springer (WI 4)

Ed Brubaker took his plot and passed it off baton style to new writer James Asmus. Asmus is no Brubaker. Francavilla's artwork left me cold, as did his coloring. There wasn't much of anything that made me want to turn the page here, and for the first time in a long time I actually put down a book of modern Captain America comics before finishing it. 

The What If...? issue from 1977 was horrible. The artwork by Robbins and Springer was laughable at best. I've never been a fan of either artist, but together they manage to accentuate each others weaknesses. Couple that with Roy Thomas' continuity porn story and you have this issue which was the inspiration for the plot of this arc.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 2 out of 5.

The OCD zone- Typical Marvel Premiere Edition Hardcover, with the same production values, advantages and shortcomings that the format has to offer.

Linework restoration and Color restoration rating for What If...?: 3 out of 5. There are multiple instances of dropped linework and pixelation, albeit very, very slight pixelation. Still, the trained eye can spot these deficiencies and lose sleep over them all the same.

Paper rating: 5 out of 5. Nice thick coated stock with a slight sheen, perfect for modern coloring. It's not quite so good on the What If...? issue, though.

Binding rating: 4 out of 5. It's glued, but it's a thin hardcover, so it's no biggie. It's not like it's going to fall apart or anything. I normally lose sleep over books with glued binding, but not with these Premiere Hardcovers.

Follow my blog on Facebook.

Join my Facebook group, DC Collected Editions Fans Who Want Sewn Binding and Books That Lay Flat, a watchdog organization dedicated to top notch production values in DC's collected editions.