Comic Review: Captain America Annual #1 “Infinite Destinies”

Written by: Gerry Dugan | Artwork by: Marco Castillo

So Marvel Comics is once again releasing Annuals, which are larger-sized comics that are usually released in the summer months. The story is not usually a part of a title’s current continuity, but it crosses over into Annuals of other titles.

Captain America Annual #1 re-introduces is to the Infinity Stones, which are back in play. Apparently, Adam Warlock had removed the stones from the gauntlet which they were placed and split them up in an attempt to keep them far away from each other. In this story, the focus is on a man named Bautista, an inmate on death row who comes in contact with the time stone, which allows him to bust out of prison.

Captain America and Black Widow are hot on Bautista’s trail. Bautista now calls himself ‘Overtime’. The whole issue is Black Widow and Cap getting so close to capturing Overtime and bringing him in to atone for his crimes since breaking out of prison, only for Overtime to use his power to stop time and get away.

One thing I can say is that it doesn’t matter who writes for Captain America, because all you have to do is keep alluding to the fact that Cap is a ‘man out of time’. Keep Cap talking like it’s 1941 and you’re golden. Of course with Black Widow, she just wants to shoot stuff and be done with it, but Cap ain’t having it.

The art is nice. I felt as if the shadows on characters’ faces were a little weird, a little too jagged or something. There’s A LOT of cross hatching on some of the male characters’ faces and it looked a little too out of place for me.

In rating this issue I would give it a 3 out of 5. The narrative was easy enough to follow but for me the artwork, while good, I had to spend a little more time trying to figure out what some of the characters were doing.

The story continues in Black Cat Annual #1.

There’s a bonus mini-story included titled ‘Infinite Fury’ part 2 of 8. Cap meets up with Nick Fury, they talk while they have a sparring match. The end. Written by Jed Mackay with art by Juan Ferreira. There’s not much to say here other than it’s just a side story for Cap to tell Fury about what the reader just read. Art was okay but I didn’t care for the colors used in the panels.

Thanks for reading!
Jeff