The Home of the Creative Mind

Welcome to PooBahSpiel, the online voice and home of the creative mind of Mark Monlux, Illustrator Extraordinaire. Prepare yourself for an endless regaling of art directly from the hand of this stellar artist. And brace yourself against his mighty wind of pontification. Updates are kinda weekly and show daily sketches, current projects, and other really nifty stuff.

Monday, August 15, 2011

The Comic Critic Reviews Captain America: The First Avenger


I’ve been dismally disappointed with previous Captain America movies. The 1990 version I referred to in the strip wasn’t even the worst of the lot. The 1979 made-for-TV version and the even more atrocious sequel, Captain America II: Death Too Soon, didn’t die quickly enough. That year, I was a foreign exchange student in Japan and might have forever been spared the agony of watching such hackneyed bilge. But some television programmer had the bright idea to use them for a double feature in 1980, and this little fan-boy was completely blindsided by the awful treatments. (Steve Rogers as a Commercial Artist? That’s just salt in the wound.) Thinking back on that evening still makes me a little nauseous. So, while I was excited to see what Marvel would come up with for this part of their carefully constructed Avengers franchise, my expectations were less than high, having received the scorched-earth treatment of disappointment once before. Thus, as I watched Captain America: The First Avenger, I felt grateful, pleasant relief. It’s a respectful treatment complete with top-of-the-line set designs, special effects, choreographed fight sequences, and Easter Eggs up the wazoo that will lure me back again and again to see what I missed.