Thursday, July 3, 2014

Happy 4th of July with John Cassaday's Captain America

"You were 19 the first time you felt this. This disbelief. This anger."
"You'd had the body almost a year. the training. You had scares."
"You'd been shot at so many times that you laughed when you found yourself staring down the barrel of a gun."


Captain America vol. 4 #4, Sep. 2002
 
On this July 4th I'd like to look at a great comic that has been forgotten;
Captain America vol. 4
by John Ney Rieber and John Cassaday

 
In post 9/11, 2002, Marvel decided that it was time to restart Captain America this time in a more mature tone, one that would incorporate real issues of the time like terrorism. They hired John Ney Rieber, who is most famous for his work on DC Comics Books of Magic,


and John Cassaday who was working on the highly acclaimed though sporadic Planetary with Warren Ellis.


Ney Rieber brought this poetic quality to the writing where the pictures and the words seemed to flow at the same pace while Cassaday brought this hyper realistic, cinematic approach to his work. The combination was pretty breathtaking. Take a look at a passage from Captain America vol. 4, #2, July 2002.








John Cassaday is an amazing illustrator who jumped onto the comics scene with his  Warren Ellis' Planetary. Cassaday later went on to illustrate the hugely popular Astonishing X-Men with Joss "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Whedon.


 

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