Captain America: Winter Soldier

Captain America is a man out of his time. A young man before the Second World War, Steve Rogers has remained young and in perfect physical condition thanks to the Super-Soldier serum he was given to become his country's perfect fighting man. But now the effects of his long life are catching up to him.

He's having to deal with the deaths of the people he loves who are aging and dying as he stays forever young. He also has to deal with the new morality of America that he is definitely not in line with. Plus, all his old foes are still out there, like the Red Skull, juat waiting to bring him down.

In particular, the Red Skull once had an object called the Cosmic Cube, that could literally rewrite reality at the holder's whim. Don't like the way the world is? You can change everything about it, as long as you are the holder of the cube. Fortunately for the world, the cube was broken, rendering it non-operational. But now the Red Skull has retrieved the pieces and is ready to kill thousands of people to power it up again.

All until the Red Skull is killed, and Cap, because of his long and well-known history of being at odds with the Skull, is one of the suspects in his killing. Too, something odd is happening to Captain America. He's been recieving strange dreams or visions that seem like memories, but which don't really conform to the memories he knows are true. And someone else is killing or damaging items in Cap's past, from the tombstones of two heroes that took up the role of Captain America when the real one was incapacitated, to killing one of Cap's former sidekicks, known as Bucky, but not the one that died in World War II.

Or is he dead? Bucky II has his own problems. Long ago, he took a version of Cap's Super Soldier serum, but something in it was incompatible with his body chemistry and it was driving him crazy. Put in cold storage and revived by S.H.I.E.L.D. when they had a cure for the madness, Bucky is now dying as the Super serum degrades his immune system. He finds one last foe to fight in a drug dealer preying on kids, but is this person really a drug dealer?

Finally, Cap must find who it is who stole the Cosmic Cube and killed the Red Skull, and must find them before they continue the Red Skull's plan to kill numerous people to re-power the cosmic cube. But with bombs set to go off in three major cities around the world, can Cap stop them in time?

This graphic novel points out that, even as a super-powered, super-effective soldier for the American government (and the American ideal), Captain America is still only human, and that the powers he has are only as good as his mind and morale. If Cap's mind can be broken, he'd be no better off than an ordinary man in that situation. The same if he can be distracted, as he is by these strange dream/memories.

We also see this in Bucky II. Bucky is dying, and tries to make one last stand as what he sees against the forces of darkness targeting kids. But in reality, the man is an icecream truck man, rendering Bucky's battles sad and pointless. Since he was being driven crazy by the super-soldier serum beforehand, seeing enemies where there actually were none, you have to wonder if it is happening all over again now. And then he gets killed before he learns the truth.

A sad book that leaves uncomfortable feelings behind, where the heroes fail against the bad guys despite their best efforts.