#alice1939

[sineala]

Hi there. I just got interested in 616 Steve and Clint dynamic recently, and I wonder if you can recommend some titles highliting their relationship? Thank you. 🥰

Steve & Clint's friendship is seriously one of my favorite things about Avengers comics. We start out with Clint annoying the fuck out of Steve, and over a period of years we evolve to Clint continuing to annoy the fuck out of Steve except they care deeply about each other now. Clint learned how to be a leader from Steve, is extremely, extremely loyal, and will defend Steve in basically any circumstance. This is not to say that they don't disagree, because man do they ever disagree. But they're good friends. I think Steve likes having friends who aren't afraid to disagree with him.

(I didn't know until I read Young Avengers v1 for the first time last week that Kate became Hawkeye while Clint was dead, because Steve gave her the name, because he was impressed by how she stood up to him. You might have thought Clint would have given her the name after he came back to life, but no. Whoever annoys Steve the most gets to be Hawkeye. Apparently that's the rule. What's really funny is that Steve also does this again to someone else in the current miniseries Avengers Twilight, for the same reason. Who gives him the most shit? You're Hawkeye now! It's great.)

So! A list of Fun Comics About Steve And Clint!

The obvious starting place is the Kooky Quartet era of the Avengers. This begins in Avengers #16 when Clint joins the team. For those of you who don't have this issue memorized, in Avengers #16 Steve is off fighting villains by himself in another country, when the rest of the founding Avengers decide they need a break. So Steve finds out when he gets back that they're all leaving, that he's the new leader, and that his new teammates are Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch, and Hawkeye, none of whom he knows, all of whom are former criminals and/or villains. I don't know when the Kooky Quartet era officially ends, but I can tell you that the team mostly contains Pietro and Wanda until #47, so I suppose that's the end of the Quartet. I read up to #35 relatively recently so I can tell you there's good Steve & Clint stuff up to at least that far, and probably farther. You get to see their relationship evolve into them deciding that maybe they actually like each other.

There are also a lot of retellings of early canon (and newer stories set in the past) that will give you glimpses of the Kooky Quartet era with a more modern sensibility. The thing I'm thinking of here is Avengers #1.1 to #4.1 by Mark Waid, which was a miniseries released in 2017 as part of Mark Waid's Avengers v7. I think the wiki lists it under v7; it was released in trade with the title Avengers Four, which isn't confusing at all. Anyway, it's all Kooky Quartet and it's great. You know how Waid's Man Out of Time series kind of rewrites and expands Avengers #4 to tell a new story? This is like that but for Avengers #16.

You might also consider series that are entirely early-canon retellings like Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes (the miniseries, not the cartoon); I know that definitely goes up to the Quartet and beyond. There are two volumes of this series.

I unfortunately can't tell you what happens in most of v1 off the top of my head, but I can give you a list of Avengers v1 issues in which both Steve and Clint are on the team, because I have a big list of team rosters. After Avengers #62, Clint changes his codename to Goliath for a bit, but he's still there until #111 (mostly with Steve also on the team), then #142-147, then #172-177, then #181-182, then #221-232. This takes you up to the mid-1980s. After that, except for a few scattered issues, Clint and Steve aren't both on the Avengers again until volume 3, in 1998. (You will note that this is also true of Steve and Tony, and in fact it's for the exact same reason -- both Clint and Tony are on the West Coast Avengers, in California, for pretty much the rest of v1. Clint's other Avengers v1 appearances are #305, #309, #313, #397-401. So it's not a lot there.)

But, don't worry, Clint also has several cameo appearances in Captain America v1. Unlike Avengers, I don't have a handy list of these, so you can probably just go through Clint's appearances list on the Marvel wiki and see which ones are in Cap comics. I can tell you the three that stick with me, though! Two of them are Cap #316 and #317, where Clint and Bobbi come back to New York for a visit, and Steve and Bernie break up so that Bernie can go to law school in Wisconsin, and Bernie throws a party on her last night there that Steve is supposed to attend, except Steve fucks off to go superheroing with Clint. They talk about their love lives and Clint gets to use Steve's shield and Steve gets to use Clint's bow. Steve gets back to find out that he has entirely missed the party and Bernie has finally left him. Can't imagine why.

My other pick is Cap #401, which if you are a Steve/Tony fan you will know is the issue after Operation Galactic Storm where Tony finds Steve in a bar to apologize for everything he's ever done. But the reason Steve is in the bar in the first place is that Clint got sick of Steve sulking and came and jumped on his bed until Steve gave in and went out for a drink with Clint.

Clint does then of course make him talk about his feelings. It's a very sweet interlude of Clint cheering Steve up in his own unique way.

Volume 3 is the next time Steve and Clint are together on the Avengers since Clint left for the West Coast -- and, I mean, it's a good read anyway. This is when I set the one Steve/Clint fic I actually wrote, so here we see my biases. Clint starts out on the team right in Avengers v3 #1, and he stays there until #10, which is when he leaves to lead the Thunderbolts. (Note to self: read Thunderbolts.) You'd think at this point that Clint wouldn't be back with Avengers for a while, but he immediately comes back in #12 and brings his new Thunderbolts and gets into a fight with Steve about whether the T-Bolts can be trusted. Clint later pays the team another visit in the Avengers/Thunderbolts crossover "The Nefaria Protocols" (Avengers v3 #32-34, Thunderbolts v1 #43-44 -- but, you know, in more of an interspersed order) which is a lot of fun and I'm not just saying that because I have a 160,000-word Steve/Tony WIP that is set during it. Anyway. Kurt Busiek started out writing both Avengers and Thunderbolts in this era of canon, but by the time this crossover happened, Fabian Nicieza had taken over Thunderbolts.

There is also a second Avengers/Thunderbolts crossover during this timeframe, the 2004 miniseries Avengers/Thunderbolts #1-6, by Busiek and Nicieza. I haven't actually read it because I wanted to read more Thunderbolts first, but I can tell you it does have both Clint and Steve in it, although it's set after Clint has stopped leading the T-Bolts and has returned to the Avengers.

Yes, Clint does actually rejoin the Avengers proper toward the end of v3 -- he's there from #75 right up to #503 (it renumbered to #500 after #84), although I suspect that that's when he actually dies, because that's Avengers Disassembled. The only Steve & Clint interaction in that time period that really sticks in my mind is Avengers v3 #77, in which Clint takes it upon himself to give Steve some romantic advice that Steve definitely isn't asking for.

(If you've seen any of this issue at all, it's probably an out-of-context panel of Steve telling Clint he didn't say he wanted a woman.)

Once again, Clint also makes some cameos in Steve's comics, in Captain America v3. The one that's memorable to me is in the Capmania arc of Cap v3, which is the very first arc, #1-7. The TPB version of this appears to be called To Serve and Protect. Mostly I remember Clint giving Steve shit about Captain America's new, massive popularity (which turns out to be an evil Skrull plan).

So after Avengers Disassembled, Clint is dead until after Civil War, at which point Steve is also dead, so they're, uh, not interacting much. However, even though Steve is dead, you probably want to read Fallen Son (specifically #3), which is the issue where Tony learns that Clint is alive again and then immediately tries to get him to be Captain America because Tony only has the best and healthiest coping mechanisms when Steve is dead. Clint tries out the shield and uniform and then basically tells Tony to go fuck himself. So that's a no from him. While he's running around dressed as Captain America is also when he meets Kate for the first time and finds out that she's Hawkeye. Everyone is very angsty about everything because that's just what Civil War comics are like.

(I guess I should have known after reading this comic how Kate got her name, but, as I said. I hadn't read Young Avengers until last week, so everything the Young Avengers did in this comic didn't really register.)

The next time Steve and Clint are both alive at the same time is Avengers v4. Clint is on the team for the whole run (#1-34). Technically Steve is Commander Rogers of the Secret Avengers up until after Fear Itself, so he doesn't actually rejoin the team until #18, but he spends a lot of the first half of the run hanging around the Avengers anyway for some reason (it's because he's deeply weird about Tony). So you might as well start from the beginning because Steve's there a lot despite technically not being on the team. I can't say that Steve and Clint have any memorable moments in v4 that are coming to mind right now, but they are both there and it's a reasonably fun run.

Speaking of the Secret Avengers, Steve runs the Secret Avengers until #21. Clint runs them from #22 onward (Steve stays for the first couple issues of Clint's tenure, #22 and #23). Don't ask me how Clint can lead the Secret Avengers and be on the regular Avengers at the same time when Steve apparently can't do this, but this seems to be a thing Clint can do. It's probably because Clint's not weird about Tony. Anyway, the issue you actually want to read is Secret Avengers #21.1, where Steve actually hands the Secret Avengers over to Clint and they do some superheroing together, just like old times.

Clint was on the Avengers during Hickman's run, as was Steve, because pretty much everyone was on Hickman's Avengers at some point (seriously, have you seen those team rosters?) but I don't know that Clint and Steve had any really good moments. There was that bit in one of the Original Sin tie-ins (#30) where Future Clint told Steve he should kill Tony but I don't think that was a very good moment. I'm not sure that Steve and Clint have been on a team together since then because I honestly don't think Clint's been on the main team since then, though they've both shown up in events and so on. I guess you could read Avengers Millennium. That had both of them and it had some fun moments for them, by which I mean that one panel where Clint watches Steve punch out a lion.

In terms of Clint's cameo appearances in Cap comics of this era, I know Clint's been in Brubaker's run, although the only moment with Steve I can honestly remember is when he gets mad at Steve for not telling him Bucky was the Winter Soldier, in the Trial arc. And -- not by Brubaker but at the same approximate time -- there's a Captain America & Hawkeye series (#629-632).

It's part of the same series of Cap team-ups that includes One Night In Madripoor (Captain America & Iron Man #633-635), and in fact these are the issues that are right before One Night in Madripoor.

It's fun. Steve gets turned into a dinosaur.

So you might wonder at this point whether Steve appears in any of Clint's solo comics, and sadly I can't really answer that because I haven't read a lot of Clint's solo comics and the ones I did read didn't have a whole lot of Steve that I remember. Mostly I've read Fraction and some of the really early Hawkeye minis. @blossomsinthemist recommends the miniseries Hawkeye: Blindspot (2011), which I have not read but which does have Clint and Steve on the cover, which seems promising in terms of its potential to contain both Steve and Clint.

I looked at the beginning and it appears to be set in early Avengers v4. You see what I mean about Steve just hanging around the team. This is apparently following on from the events of the 2011 miniseries Widowmaker, and it's about Clint going blind. All the angst.

There are probably more Hawkeye solo comics that feature Steve but I don't know what they are.

To recap, in list form, vaguely ordered by Avengers comics in an era and then Cap comics in the same era:

Kooky Quartet: Avengers v1 #16-47

Avengers Four (Avengers v7 #1.1-4.1)

Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes v1 & v2

Avengers v1 #48-111, #142-147, #172-177, #181-182, #221-232, #305, #309, #313, #397-401

Captain America v1 #316-317

Captain America v1 #401

Avengers v3 #1-10, #12

The Nefaria Protocols: Avengers v3 #32-34, Thunderbolts v1 #43-44

Avengers/Thunderbolts (2004) #1-6

Avengers v3 #75-503 (esp. #77)

Captain America v3 #1-7

Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America #3

Avengers v4 #18-34

Secret Avengers v1 #21.1 (and #22 and #23 if you want)

Avengers: Millennium #1-6

Captain America & Hawkeye #629-632

Hawkeye: Blindspot #1-4

I hope that gives you someplace to get started!

#replies #alice1939

[transexualpirate]

10 Fandoms/10 Characters/10 Tags

tysm @peteypiessuperfamily for tagging meee!!

1. Marvel Cinematic Universe: J. Bucky Barnes

2. Supernatural: Castiel

3. Good Omens: Anthony J. Crowley

4. Marvel Comics: Wade W. Wilson

5. Brooklyn Nine Nine: Adrian Pimento

6. Bob's Burgers: Louise Belcher

7. Don't Hug Me I'm Scared: Yellow Guy

8. Criminal Minds: Derek Morgan

9. Sherlock: Jim Moriarty

10. Merlin: Gwaine

10 tags: @acealpaca @pansy-moon @boymagicalgirl @fanatic-artsy-poems @eldritch-gay-frog @alice1939 @saviour-of-lords @once-upon-a-fuckery @thatskeletonbitch @casmick-consequences (i hope this is okay, if you'd rather i untagged you just lmk!!)

#tag game #10 fandoms 10 characters #mine #not to be taken seriously #personal #this was fun

[sineala]

Hi there. Thank you for answering my question last time. This time, I just want to ask something about your opinion. When I scroll through Stony community, it seems like there's some people think that Hickmanvengers has destroyed Stony, and they can never come back to what they used to be. What do you think about that? Also, what do you think about Stony's dynamic recently?

Hi! So you sent me this ask approximately two months ago, and I started writing an answer then, and I wrote what appears to be approximately 50% of an answer and then Life Happened. And I am back but I have literally no idea where I was going with the rest of this answer.

So, here is approximately 50% of an answer to your question! I figured you might prefer having half an answer to zero answer. It's like the "in this essay I will" meme except I attempted to start the essay.

Thanks for the question! I really appreciate getting asks like this.

Has Hickmanvengers destroyed Stony? This is a really interesting question, though admittedly I'm not quite sure how to answer it, both because I think it assumes an amount of… emotional continuity… that I don't think really exists in these comics, and also because in another sense I think it's a question that canon has already answered, although admittedly canon's answer was kind of unsatisfying.

If you'd asked me this in 2015 -- say, right after Avengers #44 had come out -- and I'd just read the very last page of this very long run which ends with Steve and Tony in a fight to the death, I would definitely have had my doubts. I mean, yeah, it's a run that opens with the immediate aftermath of Tony betraying Steve, although we don't know that at the time, and over the course of the run we find out that the Illuminati wiped Steve's mind, that Steve holds Tony personally responsible for this, and that after Steve finds this out, he spends the last third of the run trying to hunt Tony down and murder him. Steve doesn't ever stop or forgive him, and Tony never apologizes. They just beat each other to death (and then get squashed by a falling helicarrier, which kills them first). That's… a lot, you know? It seems reasonable to think that they'd have difficulty coming back from that. I certainly wondered how they were going to come back from that.

I figured Secret Wars was going to do something about that. That didn't end up happening.

But it's also not 2015 anymore, and we have had nine years of canon to decide whether or not Hickmanvengers has destroyed Stony, and the answer seems to be "no, because canon has acted like none of this ever happened." We've seen them. They're friends again. They seem to be doing all right, as friends. And not only are they friends again, they've never mentioned any of this.

So, I have to say, it doesn't look like it destroyed them, otherwise we wouldn't have had things like the team-up miniseries, or that Avengers Annual from a couple years ago, or AXE Judgment Day.

For something like Civil War, we had a bunch of resolution, and while some of it (cough World's Most Wanted) may not have been what fandom would have preferred, we've also had things like Avengers Prime, and then Bendis' subsequent Avengers run, where we see Steve and Tony work through their feelings about Civil War as much as they can, and it's clear that they've dealt with it, at least to some degree, although maybe not as much as we would have wanted. Prior to that, we've had Cap #401, which featured Steve and Tony having a heartfelt conversation and making up in the wake of Armor Wars and Operation Galactic Storm.

For Hickmanvengers? We got nothing. Steve and Tony weren't in Secret Wars, they came back to life afterward, and everything was fine. The only time they have ever mentioned the incursions was in one of the Civil War II tie-ins, Captain America Steve Rogers #6, in which Steve is secretly Hydra Steve and he's trying to put Tony off-balance, and he's asking him why he's on his side now. That's it. And that wasn't even the real Steve. The real Steve's never mentioned it. So as far as we know, they've never talked about it. They've somehow just gotten over it.

Should it have destroyed Steve and Tony? Maybe. I think it depends on how much you feel comics should resemble reality. Because, I mean, obviously, in real life, if your BFF tries to murder you they are definitely not going to be your BFF anymore and also should probably be arrested and you probably don't want to see them again ever in your entire life. So if they were real people, yeah, of course, that would obviously be a dealbreaker right there. Definitely a relationship-ending move.

But comics aren't reality. And I don't just mean that in the same way that any fictional story isn't reality. Comics have had decades to establish their own reality. And that means that totally bizarre things that would never, ever happen in the real world just happen all the time in comics. New York gets routinely destroyed by supervillains and people still live there! Superheroes come back to life every week! The US government keeps building giant robots that will capture, imprison, and usually torture or murder their own citizens if they happen to be mutants! So there's a sense in which you can't expect characters in comics to have the same reactions and attitudes as people in our world, because they're not living in our world. They're living in a world where you can literally be murdered and wake up the next day, 100% fine.

So you're talking about two characters who have tried to murder each other on multiple occasions -- but in a world in which being dead is a very temporary condition. You're talking about two characters who have, at the very least, deeply wounded each other -- but they're also characters who are committing, essentially, state-sanctioned vigilante justice. They solve most of their problems by punching, and what with the mind control and villain AUs and whatnot going around, it's also the case that a lot of superheroes, including Steve and Tony, have just basically hurt each other a lot. These are pretty well-established conventions of superhero comics. They live in a world where the stakes are very, very different than they are here.

I suppose what I'm arguing here is that you can't just straight-up apply our standards of morality from here on Earth-1218 to Earth-616. Obviously the same sorts of things are still wrong, so this was definitely not a great thing to do to a friend and/or loved one, but there's a sense in which it's hard to say that killing a superhero in comics -- or trying to kill them -- has anywhere near the same actual impact as it would in our world, where you don't get to come back to life, period. Which is kind of a problem, because these standards are the ones we would use to judge whether characters have acted in an ethical matter toward each other, and how seriously it is that they've hurt each other.

So how can you actually evaluate, say, how badly Steve and Tony have hurt each other, according to the standards of their world? Well, okay. So Tony wiped Steve's mind. This isn't the first time this has ever happened in comics. This isn't even the first time Tony has done this to Steve; he made Steve forget he was Iron Man in the 1998 Annual. So how bad is mindwiping, as a transgression? And that's kind of interesting, because there's a fair amount of canonical evidence to suggest that the answer is "not very." In the most recent Fall of X comics, Emma Frost mindwipes Kamala Khan's family so they won't remember that she died, so they won't be sad about it. This is presented, in context, as a nice thing to do. A merciful thing. Not, say, a wrong and invasive thing. Here she is offering this at the beginning of the Hellfire Gala:

You wouldn't know this from this Hickmanvengers run, but, historically, Stephen Strange -- who actually did this particular mindwipe -- has a habit of mindwiping people like it's going out of style. It doesn't seem to be a big deal. Not to him, and not even to the people he mindwipes. In the classic arc Avengers/Defenders War, Strange concludes the fight in Avengers #118 by wiping Tony and Thor's knowledge of each other's identities, which they didn't ask for, but which no one seems to be all that fussed about. No one says anything in protest.

Then, as an encore, in Defenders #11, which is the next issue, he mindwipes Nick Fury's knowledge of the Defenders' identities, and then mindwipes the entire world about the same thing, except the Avengers.

For this, Tony calls him honorable. No one is mad. Mindwiping seems… mostly okay, actually?

And even in the 1998 Annual, Steve and Tony make up. Tony makes Steve forget Tony's secret identity. Steve is a little mad about Tony mindwiping him, but he totally forgives him by the end of the issue. They're good. They shake hands. They're friends.

So Hickmanvengers is kind of the odd one out, here. There doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence for "mindwiping someone on Earth-616 is a terrible crime for which the guilty party deserves death." And there is, in fact, evidence that Steve has personally been willing to forgive Tony for this in the past. But here in Hickman's run, for some reason, Steve is much harsher than he or anyone else has been in a comparable situation. So it's very bad within the context of the run, but once you get out of the run and think about it by the standards of the rest of the Avengers comics, it seems like mindwiping Steve… shouldn't be that bad? It should probably at least be forgivable. Steve has previously demonstrated that he can, in fact, forgive Tony for this. It seems reasonable that he could do so again.

Is Steve attempting to hunt down Tony and murder him bad? I mean, yes, but how bad it actually is does kind of depend on how you view death in superhero comics, as above. You'd think that at this point people would suspect that some of these deaths might not permanently stick.

Aaaaand... I think that's all I got. Sorry. I have one more paragraph in my draft: Building on that, the other thing you can do to figure out how bad something is for Steve and Tony is look at how, specifically, the two of them feel about this particular incident. Because that's the thing about superhero comics. The events are unrealistic, larger than life battles that could never happen. But the feelings? The feelings are real.

I have no idea where I was going with this, but maybe I was going to talk about whether Being Really Mad counted for something.

There you go!

#replies #alice1939

[sineala]

Hi there. I don't know if anyone has asked this before, but can you recommend some Captain America/ Iron Man tittle that you find actually good, ones that characterize Steve and Tony right? I just love them both and want to know about them.

Do you mean Steve and Tony together in the same comic, or Steve and Tony separately as individuals? If you mean the two of them together, I have a relatively recent post listing what I feel like are the important Steve/Tony comics.

If you mean the two of them separately... I can recommend that.

I think for Tony, if you want to know about him as a character, I would say you should start at the very beginning and read some of his appearances in Tales of Suspense, starting with #39. You don't have to read all of it, but I think reading at least some of it would give you an idea of who he's intended to be.

The idea behind the character is that he was meant to be a tragic figure -- he's this rich, powerful, brilliant, handsome guy who everyone envies, but he secretly has a heart condition that he's pretty sure is going to kill him, that puts significant limitations on his life and causes him a lot of pain. But he goes to a lot of trouble to make sure everyone he knows thinks he's just this carefree playboy enjoying the good life, and then he goes home alone and usually ends up crawling across the floor while clutching his chest in agony so that he can get to the wall to plug in his chestplate and charge it up so maybe he won't die today.

And, y'know, he's also secretly a superhero, so he's also out there nearly killing himself while trying to save the world, which is a thing that no one knows he's the one doing, but he's just doing it because it's the right thing to do. He's also using his money to save the world in a different way, just helping people, because that's also the right thing to do.

For me, Busiek's Iron Man's run (IM v3 #1-25) is one of the runs that best captures this about Tony. He is a genuinely good human being. He also gets beaten half to death by most of his villains, so it captures that element of the character, but he is a good and kind person who knows how privileged he is and he genuinely wants to help people in any way that he can. The very first issue of the run -- which is generally an issue where the writer wants to establish what they're doing with the character -- features Tony ditching the fancy gala he's at to go do something really important, which is go check out one of the construction projects the Foundation is working on, something that's really going to help people.

Like, that's who Tony is. He's a good guy. He also knows the security guard's name. That wouldn't be a thing you'd expect someone in Tony's position to know, and he absolutely does. He always knows his employees' names. He really does care.

Obviously Tony's characterization has changed over the years, depending on the writer, but this is really who he is, to me. (I also think the current Iron Man run is doing a really good job conveying this about him.)

Steve is a little different, because I think he's often written at either end of a continuum, where they're both still him, but they're him in very different ways. Steve's Captain America, and there's a sense that when he's at his best he's embodying everything about the ideals of an entire country, everything people would want America to be. So a lot of his comics will often feature him earnestly making speeches about liberty and freedom and patriotism and so on, and this is what you'll see him doing in a lot of classic comics.

Like, one of everyone's favorite Cap moments is this speech in What If #44, which is a universe where Steve wakes up much later than he does in canon, only to find that there is a false Captain America turning people against each other. And he makes a speech that convinces everyone he's the real one.

So there are a lot of classic Captain America comics where Steve does and says things like this. Off the top of my head, if you want a quick sampling of classic Cap, I'd recommend the Stern/Byrne Cap run. It's only nine issues (#247-255) and features Steve fighting some classic villains in his usual style, as well as the milestone issue #250, in which he explains that it would be wrong for him to run for president.

More modern Cap runs have often opted to focus on the more human side of Steve Rogers. And while there were certainly a lot of classic Cap comics that focused on Steve's World War II adventures punching fascists, the more modern take is that Steve is a soldier who has definitely Seen Some Things and experienced the horrors of war. The modern run in this vein that is probably the best regarded is Ed Brubaker's run -- Steve is dead for about half of it, but don't let that stop you -- that brings back Bucky and introduces him as the Winter Soldier and generally is a comic that puts Steve through a lot of pain (and then, you know, murders him).

So it's a good run (although in fairness I suppose I should say that I skipped the middle of the run where Sharon got tortured a lot) and I think it's a good characterization of Steve in a way that's maybe a little more realistic as the psychological state of a human being who has lived the life that Steve has, than some of the earlier Cap comics.

But, like, I also like a Steve who looks like he has ever smiled a day in his life, you know?

So for me, personally, I like to split the difference, and I really like Mark Waid's Cap run. Waid wrote the Captain America: Man Out of Time miniseries, as well as a mid-90s Cap run (Cap v1 #444-454, Cap v3 #1-23, Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty v1 #1-12) and then came back after Secret Empire in our hour of greatest need for a little more Cap (#695-704, although I'd recommend stopping at #700). I feel like Waid's Steve is a Steve who can give speeches without sounding corny about it, and when I read his run I understand why people follow him, and he's serious, but also he clearly knows how to lighten up.

This is Steve sacrificing himself to save the world in #700:

(Don't worry, he's fine. Well. Not this version of him. But generally speaking, he's fine.)

But he also seems like he knows how to have a good time and be happy; here, I just grabbed the first fun panel I found, in Cap v3 #2, with Steve talking about how much he loves his shield:

So, yeah, that's my pick.

I think the moral here is that I think 1998 was a good year for Avengers comics. Which is kind of funny, because in 1998 I was actually only reading X-Men.

#replies #alice1939