I guess U.S. Agent and Red Guardian are going to be the Thunderbolts movie together? Apparently, somebody at Marvel and I were on the same wavelength, for once! I doubt it’ll ever happen again!
I’ve brought up my beloved West Coast Avengers a time or two before, as one of the guiding lights for the Phil Wrede Marvel Action Figure Comic Universe. I’ve also mentioned some of the earliest comics I remember buying at the grocery store. Well, the first comic I clearly recall buying from a comic book store was Captain America #350, partially because of my somewhat arbitrary deciding that he was my favorite superhero, and because the cover art just drew me in. Cap and… somebody else, in a black Cap costume? Fighting?! What did it ALL mean?? I HAD TO KNOW!!! By the time I was done reading it, I had to read it again, and again, and again. I didn’t like this John Walker guy, who’d had the temerity to put on the Captain America costume, but act so… un-Cap.
In retrospect, I didn’t do a great job of picking out any of the earliest comics I bought, at least from the perspective of picking out comics where I was able to quickly understand what was going on. Even that’s not necessarily true. As overstuffed and unwieldy as it was, Cap #350 did provide a lot of context in the pages after the conclusion of the story. Maybe too much, in the great, grand, Mark Gruenwald-ian tradition. That probably helped to set me down the path I’m walking today, now that I think about it…
Also, in reading Cap #350, I got some important context for who the U.S. Agent in the West Coast Avengers was (Avengers West Coast #74 was another early grocery store comic purchase of mine, which I swear will be relevant for a story I really hope I figure out how to tell, later on).
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