Truth: Red, White and Black #1

Review: Grim, hard-hitting “story behind the story” of Captain America excited a lot of controversy when it was published. The original complaints stemmed from the implication that it would interfere with the established continuity of the familiar tale; these complaints slacked off when Cap (the Steve one) showed up to demonstrate it was a supplement to the well-known version not a revision. Not surprisingly there was debate over the casting of a black man as Captain America, as though this were some PC rewrite of the classic tale. The point of the tale is to show us the “two Americas” that once existed, the black and the white. Racism was a fact; the Super-Soldier Project in the book is based on the real-life Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments, where African American men with the disease were left untreated so they could be used in a longitudinal story—like lab rats. The Red Summer incident (described in issue #3) was also a matter of record. It’s true: black Americans were treated poorly by their own government. With that goal in mind, the project makes sense but the result is flawed. This book overdoes it at times, occasionally depicting America as not much better than Nazi Germany. The characters are often types, with the villains (Merritt and Captain Price) coming across as absurd caricatures. The biggest flaw in the series is Kyle Baker’s art, which is too cartoonish for the seriousness of the subject. But the story has an impact that overcomes its flaws and Steve Rogers Cap is never made a part of the racist cover up. Isaiah Bradley? He ends up a larger-than-life hero, one made a great sacrifice to serve his country—being sacrificed in the name of his country.

Comments: Cover says “Part I of VI;” this was later expanded to VII. Issue includes a three-page preview of UNCANNY X-MEN #416.