Captain America Corps #5

While I enjoyed this series overall, the conclusion is a bit too filled with cosmic mumbo jumbo.

The book opens with another neat shift in reality where we see the Beast mutate to his furry form and Ulysses Bloodstone turn into a skeleton (time to re-read Bloodstone Hunt!). I'm not sure the narration boxes were entirely necessary, surely most readers could get the reality shift idea without that level of explanation?

I'm also a bit confused why Roger Stern included Hank Pym and the Tony Stark brain elements of the story. The two characters never really do much, and everything wraps up quite nicely without them ever justifying their page count. Was this supposed to be a six issue series and it got cut?

The story really ends when Cap allows himself to be merged with one of the alternate Caps kidnapped earlier in the series. It seems they've been stored in a cosmic cube, and all Cap needed to do was let himself merge with one to restore all the alternate Caps to their own realities. Uhh, what?

I love the idea of a Cap Corps, but what did the group really accomplish by the end of this series? Too bad these guys aren't contemporaries in the Marvel U, because the group works well together. American Dream in particular would be a fun character to keep around.

Phil Briones' art has tightened up as the series went on. By the time this issue wraps up, he's almost looking Rik Levins-ish, giving the whole project a nice "classic Cap" feel.

Average