Captain America Goes Sci-fi

Remender dishes on his story for the Sentiel of Liberty.

by Joshua Yehl

Today’s Marvel NOW! Next Big Thing press call featured writer Rick Remender, artist John Romita Jr, and Executive Editor Tom Brevoort discussing the upcoming Captain America series. While Uncanny Avengers picks up in the aftermath of Avengers vs. X-Men on Earth, Remender’s Cap follows Captain America to another place entirely. In order to distance his take from the World War II aspects of Ed Brubaker’s run, Remender will be taking Cap to Dimension Z.

“The core of it is the core character of Steve Rogers. It’s something we’ve put a lot of time and energy into to try and make sure that, even though tonally you can expect a bit of a shift, the character is still the same and still shines through. Looking into the fiber and the heart of Steve Rogers, Captain America is the focus of all good Captain America stories. The tone, we are taking a drift into something that’s a little more high-adventure science-fiction. It’s still hard-boiled, it still gets pretty rough, but visually it’s going to be pretty crazy,” Remender said.

Remender noted how his run will detail Cap’s origin in flashbacks that occur before World War II during the Depression Era. “While it’s a very large step away from the espionage spy stuff that Ed has been doing, it’s still the same core character and we’re just putting him into some very crazy action situations,” he said.

Romita added that they “are in a different ballgame. As far away from what I expected from Cap as you can get. I’m really enjoying it.” As for the craziest thing Romita has seen out of Remender’s script, the artist said it was villain Arnim Zola’s lab that he described as “a 1960s movie of gore. Bodies hanging, experimental combinations of animals and humans. It ended up looking the way I did it because of almost fear of getting carried away because of the Kick-Ass stuff I do, which is complete gore. This is supposed to be mainstream, clean family stuff, and it’s just like Mark Millar’s script.” To be succinct, the general reaction from the editors was, “Ooo, creepy!”

Continuing to talk about the villain, Remender said, “When you see what Johnny has done with Zola in issue one, that design, so cool. It’s classic Kirby updated. It’s such an exciting looking villain now. [Colorist] Dean White’s gone in there and done some crazy things. I think we’re going to elevate Zola and people are going to be excited about this.”

Romita and Remender went back and forth discussing how they updated Zola’s design to make him less silly, primarily concerning the TV on his chest showing his face. “I’m just imagining it like a hologram. Zola’s brain is stored within that armor and that face can, as John’s drawing it, that hologram image can stretch out like goo, and it’s looking around corners. It’s super creepy,” Remender said.

Brevoort compared what Remender is doing with Cap to what Frank Miller did with Daredevil in Born Again in that he’s taking away everything that makes him who he is as a hero, getting to the core of the character, and then building him up again. “We’re picking Cap up, thrusting him into an adventure, and throwing him down to a place where he is completely out of his element, to a place where even the idea of America has no relevance. Nobody understands it. We’re basically stranding him on, metaphorically, this desert island in the new situation and getting down to the crux and the core of who he is, what drives this character, and we’re going to learn one really interesting thing about him that hasn’t really been touched on yet that’s going to be a springboard for the next year or two’s worth of stories,” Brevoort said.

While the Dimension Z story goes on in the present, the story will flashback to Cap living as part of a poor family in the Depression Era in order to showcase exactly what experiences made him into the man he is today. “That was something that was important. To show him earn the tenacity and earn the fiber and earn the heart. I don’t think that people are born with that. That very basic core foundation might be there, but I know that the decisions you make and what you learn from your parents and people around you definitely informs that. We’re going to show the choices that Steve makes and how his upbringing and how his mother informed the decisions that he makes, but then helps define who he becomes and earns that giant heart. You have to earn that because there’s no way you are born heroic,” Remender said.
As for villains, Remender emphasized how he wanted to keep the story squarely focused on Zola without filling the book with a lot of other bad guys, namely because the economy of the book only allowed for so much with Cap’s adventure into Dimension Z, the flashback’s to Cap’s youth, and Zola’s own development taking up a majority of the content.
The call ended with the press going through a rapid fire question segment where a few interesting bits of information were dropped. Cap mainstays like Bucky and Falcon will have little to do with this series, if anything at all. The subject of Cap’s romance with Sharon Carter will be dealt with early on. Hank Pym will act as Cap’s Q, giving him new gadgets to fight enemies. Several new characters will debut and remain a part of the book for a long time. Twenty-four issues have been plotted out so far.