Hi! Hope you are well. I wanted to ask about Cap comics mainly Steve Rogers. My son wants to read Cap comics but we donāt know where to start. He doesnāt want to read Spencerās run. Any suggestions?
My starter rec for pretty much everyone is the miniseries Captain America: Man Out of Time. Itās a modern version of Steveās origin story that shows him being found by the Avengers and getting used to the present. So that way youāll get an idea of who Steve is and where he came from while still reading modern comics. (I mean, I like the original comics too. But they can be very problematic at times and theyāre kind of an acquired taste.)
Other than that, it depends what you like, really. Mark Waid, who wrote Man Out of Time, also had two (two-ish? three?) runs on Captain America, and honestly the way he writes Cap is my favorite and basically the way I see Steve; he gives Steve an earnestness that could be corny but isnāt, and I feel like he does a really good job conveying whatās so inspiring about Steve. Like, you see why people want to follow this guy. Waidās first Cap run was in the mid-late 90s, at the tail end of volume 1, #444-454, and you can read it currently in print in the Epic Collection called Man Without A Country. He continued to write Cap for the first 23 issues of volume 3; I own it in omnibus (which includes the vol 1 issues and an additional miniseries called Sentinel of Liberty) but the individual arcs are (or at least were) available in trade as To Serve And Protect, American Nightmare, Red Glare, and Land of the Free.
If you enjoy Waidās writing but like him better with more modern art, he had a very short recent run (technically vol 1 as this was when everything renumbered very briefly). Itās the run right after Spencerās but I promise you can read it without reading (or liking) Secret Empire. Itās collected in two trades, Home of the Brave and Promised Land, though Iād only recommend the first one because Promised Land... doesnāt really have Steve in it. The first one (which is the Waid/Samnee run) does have Cap #700, which is probably my most favorite recent Cap issue that Iāve read in... I dunno, years? Itās good. So, yeah, definitely check out Home of the Brave.
Ta-Nehisi Coatesā current Cap run (vol 9) is also a very solid and interesting read, with a lot of big and heavy themes, but it has some pacing issues and if youāre specifically looking to avoid any hints of Secret Empire you probably want to avoid it because itās very much about what people think of Steve (and what Steve thinks of himself) in the wake of Secret Empire. It is, however, probably my second favorite current comic Iām reading, so thereās that. (The first is Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.)
Coatesā run is pretty clearly influenced by Ed Brubakerās Cap run (vol 5), which I know a lot of people rate as their favorite Cap run, but Brubakerās Steve is a little too grim and joyless for me. Also, uh, Steve dies in #25 and after that itās all BuckyCap, so if youāre looking for a run where Steve is Captain America it mostly isnāt this one. But a lot of people really love it!
There are also a lot of classic Cap stories and runs that are worth reading! I think if I had to recommend just one arc to start with Iād probably pick the Stern/Byrne run from the early 80s (#247-255), collected in an old trade called War & Remembrance, currently in an Epic Collection called Dawnās Early Light. This is from the era when Steve has just moved to Brooklyn Heights and is starting to be a commercial artist (although not a comic book artist; thatās slightly later). It features the first appearance of Bernie Rosenthal! It hasĀ one of my favorite Batroc the Leaper stories. And it hasĀ #250, where people want Steve to run for president and Steveās response is... well, itās very Captain America.
I hope that gives you somewhere to start!
