REVIEW CORNER: Super Soldiers # 1

Writers: Michael W. Bennett & Lee Stevens

Penciller: Andrew Currie

Inker: Rodney Ramos

Colorist: Steve Whitaker

Letterer: Bambos Georgiou

Cover Date: April 1993

Rating:

So for this week’s installment, I’ll take a look at Super Soldiers # 1 which was one of the many titles that helped launched Marvel UK, an imprint that saw a lot of popularity back in the 1970s & 80’s due to the reprints of numerous Avengers and Spider-Man stories as well as producing new Captain Britain and Hulk stories for the UK market and while most of them focused on Sci-Fi and Magic, Super Soldier took more of a brutal and extreme approach to connect readers as it took the concept of Captain America, mixed in elements of “Universal Soldier” (What can you say other than that was used to reach an audience of comic book fans who wanted guns and mayhem in their stories)

What I liked about this issue was how Captain Hauer wakes from his suspended animation (Sounds Familiar!?) and that the super-soldiers were created with biotechnology that made Nuke, the soldier from the classic “Born Again” arc from Daredevil who popped a lot of pills to enhance his abilities. Houser suddenly goes to war with the Supersoldier program and the government agency that’s backing them, then quickly meets a journalist named Sarah Wilde and the two of them quickly form an alliance.

After reading this, I know some comic book fans will get nostalgic about the guns and explosives (This was the 90s) that accompany this story, you do feel like Marvel UK were trying to make Hauer the new and “In your face” version of Captain America without the sensibility and grace that most of us

know about the iconic character so what we got here is nothing but mindless violence all while the readers are left trying to find some likeability in Captain Hauer.

And to spoil one big thing here, The U.S. Agent doesn’t meet Hauer in this first issue (They meet in the third issue); And it seems like the Agent is the perfect fit to match up with Hauer’s intensity but as the series progresses, I strongly felt like writers Bennent & Stevens didn’t know how to write U.S. Agent as he comes off as a psychotic and somewhat misogynistic, so this is a definite miss on the part of the writers. And Andrew Currie’s artwork comes off very well, but then you get to the pages where it just looks like he put in a rush job for the sole purpose of meeting his deadline.

While this story could have progressed more if it had a longer shelf life (It got canceled after Marvel UK ceased publication after flooding the market with too many titles) I have to say that Super Soldiers does a great job of delivering a big-budget action movie concept that many will enjoy, but at the same time falls short due to the series itself living in the shadow of Captain America and refusing to move out of it. Too bad… because with some creative retooling, the writers could have made this a comic that would have had a massive cult following instead of being in limbo in a local dollar bin of any comic shop.

Well, that’s it for me. I’ll be back next week with another review so thanks for sticking around and I will see you all next time,