THE UNBOXING - SEPTEMBER 2014

Wow! Talk about a light month -- I received one single item this time, the CAPTAIN AMERICA EPIC COLLECTION: SOCIETY OF SERPENTS. This volume includes CAPTAIN AMERICA issues 302 - 317, marking the beginning of the late Mark Gruenwald's long run on the title.

I have a huge affinity for Gruenwald's Cap, as I think I've mentioned before. As far as I'm concerned, this is the definitive Captain America: no secret identity to get in the way, no civilian supporting cast members to bog him down. Steve Rogers is Captain America 24/7, and he only associates with SHIELD agents and other superheroes. Some characters need large supporting casts and melodramatic soap operatics. Captain America is not one of these.

Anyway -- a decent chunk of Gruenwald's Cap is collected, but there's still a large amount waiting for a nice home. This run isn't the stuff of which Omnibuses are made, so hopefully, given time, the Epic Collection format will see Gruenwald's entire tenure on the character (issues 307 - 443) on my bookcase. And then, someday, I'll review the whole run issue by issue here.