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Captain America #452

Jun 1996
Mark Waid, Ron Garney

Captain America #452 cover

Story Name:

Man Without a Country Chapter Three: Plan B


Synopsis

Captain America #452 synopsis by Kevin Hollander
Rating: 5 stars

Sharon Carter has a vivid dream involving her and Steve Rogers taking down a squad of Hydra agents. She then finds herself on a mountaintop with him complaining about the cold. She then snaps awake and realizes that she's falling toward the ground in the co-pilot seat. She is spinning horizontally. Her parachute did not deploy. When she looks up she sees Steve falling toward her in a controlled dive.

Timing the rotation, Rogers grabs the seat when its within reach and forces the parachute to deploy. Before they land, Rogers unbuckles Carter and leap toward some nearby trees. They watch as the chair lands on a frozen lake, breaks the ice, and sinks. Rogers is grateful as this will help cover their tracks.

As it is growing dark, they must find shelter. They soon find an empty cave that will suffice. Without supplies they are unable to start a fire. Steve's suggestion that they sleep side by side to share body warmth is rejected. Sharon's pride gets in the way of survival tactics.

The next morning, they are found by the Moldavian army. Sharon receives a rude awakening and fights back. She is annoyed that Steve is nowhere to be found. Once outside, he meets her with a stolen jeep. She accuses him of abandoning her, which surprises him. He informs her that he knew she could take care of herself while he found transportation. They proceed to the coordinates the F-15's on-board system specified before it was destroyed. When they arrive, Sharon provides a distraction while Steve sneaks in and destroys the Argus with his energy shield. Despite his victory, both he and Sharon are exposed to an incapacitating agent that renders them unconscious. 

When they awaken, they are bound to chairs, face-to-face with Machinesmith. Monitors show news feeds about the meeting between the President and Moldavian delegates at Camp David to prevent an international incident Machinesmith confesses he's impressed Rogers was able to destroy the Argus. Not that it was actually needed for his plan, but he'll have to move up his timetable. His plans hinge on the threat of war.

Rogers asks why he's here. The last thing he knew, he was working for Tony Stark (Iron Man) in a restricted capacity. Machinesmith explains that Stark had a part of his consciousness but it was reclaimed. This was a delaying tactic as Rogers frees himself from his bonds and grabs his captor, demanding to know what he's up to.

Machinesmith then unveils his master plan to Rogers. He was able to convince the Moldavians to let him use their country as a base of operations in exchange for building the Argus cannon. He confirms their suspicions that he did in fact leap into Rogers' brain and extract not only the design specs of the Argus, but also every piece of information he knows. He then digitally encoded this information on a single coin for ready access.

He demonstrates by crippling the SHIELD helicarrier and putting it on a collision course with Mount Hood. While Rogers stares at the monitors, Machinesmith projects his consciousness into one of the robots masquerading as a Moldavian delegate. He then turns to another robot providing a live video feed from Camp David to his stronghold and winks at Rogers


 

Review / Commentaries


Captain America #452 Review by (September 6, 2017)
Comments: Part three of four parts.

Review: So Steve and Sharon take on an army to stop the baddies—and there is a surprising amount of humor. They are both trained agents but their separate plans for pulling off the mission often conflict and this produces a lot of resentment in Sharon which is not helped by her dream that they get back together. So they kiss and then she punches his face. This adds a bit more texture to their “romance” than we ever saw in the old comics, where he was always there to rescue her even though she didn't always need it. And Steve knew that and so often let her take care of herself. I'm no relationship expert but in real life she would end up trying to kill him, and both would be bitter about the breakup for a long time afterwards. Fortunately I am a pop culture expert so I can confidently predict that they will get back together again as soon as some future writer realizes that he liked their relationship from all those years ago. Oh yeah, there's a villain in this story: Machinesmith in his very own Lex Luthor mode, creating a fiendish scheme with a lot of android backup—and it's all him in a multitude of bodies. This is a lot of fun too. Especially when dozens of Machinesmith's duplicates try to hold Cap back from clobbering the big cheese Machinesmith.


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Main/1st Story Full Credits

Ron Garney
Scott Koblish
John Kalisz
Ron Garney (Cover Penciler)




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