Captain America: To Serve and Protect TPB

I finished reading the Captain America: To Serve and Protect TPB this morning. Man was it awesome!


I got it cheaply too for just $15 bucks at the Gifts for the Geek shop in the Geelong CBD. They've got a huge stock of old comics and TPBs that are for sale and this was one of the gems I uncovered. Not bad for seven issues worth of comics reprinted into one handy TPB! And what's more important is that this was the second of Mark Waid and Ron Garney's famous run on Captain America, after Cap, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four returned from the Heroes Reborn universe.

So why am I blogging about a comic TPB that's nearly ten years old? Well, this comic has the potential to blow out of the water and rise up in value quickly.

Waid introduced some plot points in this trade that have been either developed or re-used by current writers in the Marvel Universe now. The first mention of a civil war was in these issues, though it was more of a civil war between humans who were paranoid and led to believe that one in every twenty human beings on the planet were not humans but of alien origins ready to take over the world.

But more importantly, the MAJOR plot line from this trade that has been reintroduced into the Marvel Universe of late: a Skrull has captured Captain America and is impersonating him!

In the current Marvel Universe, Psylocke killed Elektra, revealing that she was a Skrull in Brian Michael Bendis' New Avengers. That led to several questions being asked: If Elektra was impersonated for such a long period of time, who else has been impersonated? Which of our heroes is a Skrull? How long have they been living among us and using their influence to change the course of history?

Could the deceased Captain America (who was killed in Captain America #25) be a Skrull? If so, where is the REAL Steve Rogers? Could Tony Stark aka Iron Man be a Skrull? After all, he was the one who engineered the Civil War. At least a dozen other characters who've had some sort of dodgy behaviour over the last couple of years could also be revealed as Skrulls...would Spider-man willingly reveal his secret identity to the world? Why would Scarlet Witch just go bonkers all of a sudden and kill her friends and family in The Avengers? Are we so sure that Daredevil hasn't "exposed" himself to the media deliberately because he was a Skrull impersonator?

Stay tuned.