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Captain America #325: Review

Jan 1987
Mark Gruenwald, Paul Neary

Story Name:

Slugfest

Review & Comments

Rating:
3 stars

Captain America #325 Review by (September 6, 2015)
Comments: Part two of two parts. First full appearance of the Slug (gross!); he returns in WEB OF SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #4. First appearance of Priscilla Lyons, the future Vagabond. Steve’s new Marvel editor is Don Daley.

Review: Oh, gross! That’s my reaction to the Slug. That should be everyone’s reaction to the Slug. He is ridiculously designed—as drawn he looks like he must be twelve feet high and twenty feet across—an impossible size and shape for a man, even by the standards of an overly-enthusiastic artist. Then there’s the fact that he isn’t at all interesting. His disgusting size is the only thing that makes him more than the usual gangster stereotype—and even that is on the clichéd “punishing a bungling minion” trope. The other big “revelation” is that Nomad is a meaner crime fighter than Cap, willing to kill the mobster, though it isn’t clear what makes the Slug any worse than other criminals he’s fought. Eventually this bit of characterization would be recalled when Nomad gets his own series a few years down the road and he is recast as a grim ‘n’ gritty offshoot of Captain America’s. The issue is competently done but the story lacks the special quality most of this recent run has had. And that opening scene of Cap as a major screw-up! That is probably the best part of the issue, humanizing an already humbled hero.




 

Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Captain America #325 Synopsis by Peter Silvestro

Captain America busts up a big drug deal only to discover the buyers were undercover cops and he just ruined a major operation. Embarrassed, he stops off at the Brooklyn garage where he keeps his motorcycle and takes off….

Meanwhile, Nomad (Jack Monroe) is in Miami, undercover as a waiter on a luxury yacht belonging to the gangster known as the Slug. He is there, we learn, on behalf of a woman named Priscilla Lyons, who wants Nomad to rescue her brother from the Slug’s gang. That evening, at a huge party he is throwing, Slug has the Jacuzzi filled with real slugs and an unsuccessful minion tormented by being dunked into the slimy creatures. Jack meets Priscilla’s brother and delivers the message that he should come home; Phil Lyons reveals he is there willingly and threatens to expose Jack. That night, Jack is trapped, injected with heroin, and tossed overboard….

At home, Priscilla is worried, not having heard from Nomad for days, so she calls Captain America’s hotline to get him to investigate. Steve gets the message and hops a flight to Florida, arriving the next morning. There, searching the harbor in a boat he discovers Nomad, semi-conscious but alive, having inflated his pants as a makeshift floatation device….

That night Captain America and Jack steal aboard the Slug’s yacht; Jack heads to his room to don his Nomad outfit and then to the kitchen to start a major grease fire. Nomad heads to the main room where he takes out the mobster’s bodyguards with his throwing discs then confronts the Slug. Cap, meanwhile, is ensuring that the passengers and crew get safely off the burning ship, and then goes in search of Nomad. He finds his partner brutally beating the grotesquely obese bad guy, and restrains him from killing the Slug with his bare hands. Nomad runs off to save the unconscious goons leaving Cap to try to move the Slug to a place of safety. The ship explodes, and Nomad and Cap link up in the water. Cap believes the Slug is dead with him sinking like a stone in his mechanized wheelchair. The reader knows the truth: Slug was able to inflate a huge raft and is floating free….



Paul Neary
John Beatty
Ken Feduniewicz
Mike Zeck (Cover Penciler)
John Beatty (Cover Inker)
? (Cover Colorist)


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