Unlikely Suspects

Captain America and the Falcon #159 (March 1973) is the last part of a three-issue story arc I've been reviewing. I choose it in general because the story is the sort of skilled, entertaining storytelling I like to celebrate on this blog and specifically because I remember enjoying this particular story so thoroughly when I was a young but already brilliant child.  Gee whiz, I had good taste.

Written by Steve Englehart and with art by Sal Buscema, this issue picks up with Steve Rogers being held prisoner by the suspended Sgt. Muldoon and another off-duty cop, who are apparently convinced that Steve is the Cowled Commander, the unfortunately-named master criminal who had several cops on his payroll and is unleashing a massive crime wave on New York City.

This is a fun plot twist. It's been established that, aside from cops who were proven to be corrupt, a number of other possibly-innocent cops were implicated in the corruption and had been suspended. Muldoon was one of these. For a man whose life revolves around being a cop, the temptation to employ vigilante tactics to clear himself would have been strong. And Steve, who had recently been working as a cop to solve another case, had (from Muldoon's perspective) constantly vanished from duty without any official consequences. So its reasonable that Steve would be a suspect in his mind.

Of course, the plot twist at the story's end will have us completely re-interpreting Muldoon's motives here, but that's part of what makes it an effective plot twist.

Anyway, Steve still has increased super-strength from the reaction of poison antidote with the Super Soldier serum (that happened last issue), so escaping isn't that difficult.

The above panels make me question whether Sgt. Muldoon would ever make it as a good detective. He and his partner knocked Steve out and tied him to a chair without ever noticing that he apparentlh had a Captain America outfit and a shield under his street clothes. But, to be fair, nobody in a Comic Book Universe ever notices that sort of thing. Frankly, people living in Comic Book Universes aren't always that bright.

The Cowled Commander's crime wave is underway and Cap soon encounters a quartet of B-list super villains. This includes the Eel, the second villain with a snake motif we've met during this story arc. In fact, it'll turn out that Eel and Viper are brothers. The family that slays together, stays together.

During the ensuing battle, Falcon shows up, carrying Viper (whom he captured last issue). And if you are carrying a super villain when attacking other super villains, obviously the thing to do is hit the new bad guys with your prisoner.

When Falcon takes a hit, the bad guys get a chance to run for it. The heroes pursue, but bad luck ensues when a police car crashes through a vine barrier and inadvertently blocks Cap and Falcon from the villains, allowing them to escape.

This allows the story to throw a red herring at us. The police commissioner is in that cop car and apologizes for accidentally allowing the crooks to escape. But is it an accident? Or is the commissioner the Cowled Commander?

It's not a bad red herring, though it comes a little too late in the story to be truly effective. The case is going to be tied up in just a few pages.

Red Wing has been following the villains and leads the heroes to their hideout.  What follows is an effectively illustrated and largely fun series of action scenes, though this section of this otherwise solidly written story has its contrived moments. Cap and Falcon are captured rather quickly when they attack and then tossed into a death trap for the Cowled Commander to finish off. In general, there's nothing wrong with this. But we are approaching the end of the story and the capture of the heroes happens too quickly, making them seem a little inept. And keeping them alive for a death trap doesn't fit the mercenary nature of these particular villains. A week excuse that they must allow their boss to make the final "let's kill 'em now" decision is weak, since they hadn't been hesitating in their attempts to kill the heroes before this. In fact, Viper had been specifically hired to kill Cap in the first issue.

Oh, well. taken for what it is, it's a fun fight scene. Cap uses his new super strength to escape captivity for the second time this issue by ripping a hole in the gas chamber he and Falcon are put in. With Red Wing's help, they finish the costumed villains and then capture the Cowled Commander...

...who turns out to be Muldoon. He'd created the Cowled Commander identity to start a crime wave initially to get the police department to drop all that annoying due process stuff and just come down harshly on crooks, while capturing Steve had been with the intent of torturing him into confessing something to create yet another red herring, thus further masking his identity.

But his criminal empire had taken on a life of its own and soon he was pretty much just a crook for the sake of being a crook and raking in the cash. There's a nice line of dialogue from Falcon that casts doubts on the "purity" of Muldoon's original motive--how much was making money a factor even at the beginning?

It's a perfectly reasonable bad guy motive for a character like Muldoon, with the plot twist made all the more effective because both Captain America and the commissioner had been convinced that Muldoon was honest and had been unjustly suspended.

Thus ends an excellent three-part story, full of great action and some effective characterizations. The final action scenes really did need improvement--an extended fight scene would have worked a lot better than the capture--death trap--escape sequence that didn't fit the personalities of the villains involved (including Muldoon), but Buscema's art looks great anyways and the story as a whole holds up really well.

Next week, we'll visit again with Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin.