Issue Review: Captain Midnight 1

During World War II, genius inventor Jim Albright was too valuable to the U.S. war effort to allow him to risk his life on the front lines.  Unwilling to sit out the battle against the Nazis, he disguised himself as Captain Midnight, and joined the fray.    As the story opens, Midnight's team attacks the North Pole base of Ivan Shark, a German leader.  Shark sends his daughter Fury away, and faces Midnight himself.  He dies when Midnight knocks him over the wall and he is killed by polar bears.  In the present day, Charlotte Ryan is sent by her grandmother, Captain Midnight's girlfriend Joyce, to find him.  Midnight vanished late in the war, but he resurfaced in the present day, flying out of the Bermuda Triangle.  The FBI captured him, but he escaped.  Joyce wants Charlotte to help him.  So Charlotte climbs to the base of the old Secret Squadron, where she encounters FBI agents and her ex-husband Rick.  As they look for Captain Midnight, Fury Shark, still young looking and rumored to be immortal, hears of Midnight's return and sends assassins to kill him.  When Rick and Charlotte conclude that Midnight is still in the Secret Squadron's base, half their team turns on them, and starts shooting the other half -- they turn out to be green-faced villains working for Fury Shark.  Captain Midnight shows up and takes down the green-skulls, and then offers his services to the surviving Feds.


This is an interesting reintroduction of a classic pulp-hero character.  The World War II era is called the "Golden Age" of comic-books, and I always enjoy stories set in that era.  Although this one really is not set in World War II (except for the flash-backs), it has its roots in those Golden Age stories, and it does a decent job of updating them to fit the present day.  The time travel motif is starting to get a little worn (in addition to this series, time travel figures prominently in opening arcs of the new Miss Fury series and Thor, God of Thunder), even for comics, but this one is handled fairly well. There isn't any back-and-forth, and there is no going back in time to mess with the past. Instead, this is more of a "Captain America" style time travel -- the classic World War II hero vanishes from the end of the War and shows up in modern times.  Since traveling forward in time (and staying there) presents few paradoxes, I like it better than traveling backward (or worse, back-and-forth, which both Thor and Miss Fury do).

The main villain of the piece, Fury Shark, is interesting.  Fury so far seems like a typical Femme Fatal -- gorgeous, secretive, and ruthless.  She clearly has either aged slowly, or is (as rumored) immortal, given how young she looks in 2013 (after being at least in her late teens 70 years earlier).  She's in charge of a high-powered tech company, Sharkbytes, and is inches away from securing a big government contract.  She's described by the federal agents as "untouchable," so it will be interesting to see how Captain Midnight deals with her.

One thing that surprises me, and I'm not sure I like it, is the ruthlessness of Captain Midnight.  I know he is a solider, and in his mind is still fighting a war.  But snapping people's necks or throwing them to the polar bears is rather brutal even for modern heroes, and especially so for Golden Age ones.  It's not that I have a huge problem with violence (although I freely admit that I don't love the over-the-top violence in today's comics), but  I'm not sure what the point is of having a Golden Age character come back to the comics world, only to have him act just like the Wolverines of today.

On the other hand, the characterization in this comic is fairly good. I like Charlotte a good deal already, and Captain Midnight, although he was not in the story much for a character whose name is on the book, is definitely interesting. Fury Shark has potential, although there is the risk that she could come off as a cliche' if Williamson is not careful.  The art is quite good, and I particularly like how Dagnino inks his own work.

Overall, this was a solid comic that was worth a read and had a lot going for it.  There are definitely some issues, and I'm not sure that I will keep on reading it for the long term, but it was definitely good enough that I will pick up the next couple of issues and see where it goes.

My Score: 8/10