Captain America #17

A telling indicator of the depth of distrust in government is how it is depicted in the pages of Marvel Comics. Invariably the forces of malignancy have co-opted the USG, and it is the role of the superhero to beat it back.

It is a tall order. And no superhero has a tougher pull than Captain America, the putative representative of an increasingly discredited global behemoth. The American Dream is now generally regarded as no longer operative. Income inequality (brought front and center thanks to the Occupy Wall Street movement) and a lack of remunerative employment are the new normal. Hand in hand with the economic stagnation of the Great Recession goes a commitment to perpetual war. This is on display currently with our Nobel Peace Prize winning president relaunching the Cold War and actively planning for another lengthy conflict in the Middle East.

But the latest run of Captain America could not be in finer hands. Writer Rick Remender is a true subversive. Marvel has the good sense to realize that the only way to keep Captain America alive is not to avoid reality. Below are seven scans of Captain America #17. The art is by Nic Klein; the colors, Dean White.

Captain America #17 opens with Nuke, a pill-popping Vietnam-era Super Soldier Program knockoff of the original Cap, reduced to a pile of charred meat as Dr. Mindbubble, a super-villain who owes his origin to a combination of self-administered LSD and Super Soldier serum, burbles soothingly to him:

There, there. A beautiful dream to help the passing. 

You should have been the prototype of the next species. But they twisted you up, old friend. And you let them. Let them take your beauty and burn it in effigy to a world ruled by religious and institutional fascism. 

Taught to lay your life on the line for their stubborn warfare  . . .

. . . Instead of interacting harmoniously with this joyful world. All just as I warned you, Nuke.

 But your test is over now, good spirit. I wish you a peaceful journey to whatever reward you've selected. 

Captain America #17 also features the anti-capitalist villain Ran Shen, The Iron Nail. The Iron Nail and Dr. Mindbubble, quite persuasively, break down the current deep state of our permanent government:

And what do we have here? A glittering dragon slithering from the sky.

Hello, Horace.

Ran Shen. What madness. I never imagined our paths to cross again.

I made you a promise.

That you did. How long had I been in there?

Fifty years.

Fifty years falling inward. It was a strange gift, Ran. I discovered complete tranquility within the core of my being.

While the world without fell to the fascist control of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Well, sure. Only possible outcome. A band of humans with so much power, and so little oversight, is destined to grow into a living organism -- with its own goals -- its own greed.

The more a thing grows, the more convinced it becomes that it is right. Why else would it have such success? And at a certain size, no one can control it -- no one can tell the swollen beast it is wrong!

And it falls on us to liberate humanity from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secret dictatorship. What do you say, old friend? Up for a little civil disobedience? 

Let's open their eyes.

In the final three scans, Steve Rogers, a.k.a., Captain America, and his new sidekick Jet Black mix it up with the Shaolin Scientist Squad: