Issue(s): Captain America #349
Cover Date: Jan 89
Title: "Icecap"
Credits:
Mark Gruenwald - Writer
Kieron Dwyer - Penciler
Al Milgrom - Inker
Gregory Wright - Assistant Editor
Ralph Macchio - Editor

Review/plot:
It's a little weird, but Captain America has allowed the Beast to drop him off on the US coastline somewhere instead of directly on Hydrobase, so that Beast can drop off the other reservists. I don't know where Yellowjacket lives, or why the Avengers are ok dropping her off anywhere instead of arresting her, but both the Beast and Falcon are based in New York. So it doesn't seem like anyone is so far away that Cap is saving anyone a lot of time by offering to swim the three miles to Hydrobase. But that's what he does. When he gets to the still defunct Avengers base, he first encounters D-Man, who had been waiting for him. And he makes D-Man an Avenger.

Then Battlestar shows up with news about Flag-Smasher's capture of the John Walker Captain America and his demand to speak to the original Cap. The Captain has to decide if he's going to respond with that or go back to Manhattan to deal with Inferno. He also seems to judge Battlestar in a positive light for originally having called himself Bucky, as long as it meant that he was honoring his old partner.

Up in the Arctic, Flag-Smasher berates himself for being such an "idealist" that he would take money from anyone without investigating them, which is what has led to the current infiltration of ULTIMATUM (more details to come), and he wonders where the heck Captain America is. He's then attacked by ULTIMATUM troops.

Cap, D-Man, and Battlestar show up in time to help out.

Cap fights his way into the base and meets up with Flag-Smasher, who tells him that it's the Red Skull that has infiltrated ULTIMATUM, and he's activated a Doomsday Machine. Flag-Smasher doesn't know or care if it's the "real" Red Skull

Battlestar is left behind to take care of John Walker while the rest fight there way out to go to where the Doomsday Machine is.

Flag-Smasher has Walker's shield (i.e. Cap's original round shield), and Cap asks to switch.

Flag-Smasher's original naive and idealistic idea was to use the device to force the countries of the world to unite against a common predicament of being blasted back into a pre-industrial age. But he doesn't want to help a Nazi. What's funny is that Flag-Smasher has no idea how to stop the machine, and that's why he called Cap. But why Cap and not, say, Reed Richards? Cap's "idiot" is priceless.

But i guess the idea is that Cap has earned Flag-Smasher's trust and that's why he hasn't told anyone else (e.g. Battlestar or the US government) about the Red Skull's infiltration or asked for more generalized help.

Since Cap has no expertise in disarming Doomsday Machines, he tells D-Man to ram the building with the Quinjet. D-Man is supposed to jump clear first, but the ULTIMATUM troops keep landing on the hull and planting bombs, and one of them gets caught on the ship. So D-Man remains on the Quinjet as it crashes. It does stop the Doomsday Machine, but Cap is unable to find D-Man and he's presumed dead.

So that's D-Man's short stint as an Avenger. He will eventually resurface, but in a very different way. His days as a pure hero are over. The character will actually become a joke, and while that's deserved in part thanks to his ridiculous costume, it's worth noting that he had a long period as an earnest and competent partner of Steve Rogers.

Beyond that this is a fun adventure. For one thing it has the Walker/Rogers threads closing in, and it's nice to see Battlestar teaming up with Cap. I imagine some people reading this might have imagined after seeing Cap make D-Man an Avenger that Cap would make Battlestar one too, but of course by the end of the issue we're in a different scenario. Flag-Smasher continues to be too "idealistic" to take seriously as a challenge to Cap's ideology, but he still makes for a fun quasi-ally here. If nothing else, when he appears we know we get to see those awesome ski jets. And now that the return of the Red Skull is out in the open, we have a lot to look forward to for next issue.

Quality Rating: B-

Historical Significance Rating: 2 - D-Man becomes an Avenger and is then seemingly killed

Chronological Placement Considerations: The Captain was dropped off by the Beast in the Quinjet directly prior to the beginning of this issue, and the Beast is now giving the Falcon and Yellowjacket (i guess they're giving her a pass for helping them?) a ride home. So this takes place directly after Avengers annual #17 (but i'm not listing Beast, Falcon, or YJ as Characters Appearing since they're gone before the issue starts). Steve Rogers appears as the Captain in Avengers #299-300 (which are Inferno crossovers) before becoming Captain America again in Captain America #350.

References:

• Cap is dropped off after Avengers annual #17 (incorrectly footnoted as #18).
  
• The Avengers fell apart between Avengers #291 and Avengers #297.
  
• In his head, Cap briefly sort-of criticizes the Avengers for abandoning the team (he doesn't know what happened) and then realizes that he himself could be criticized for abandoning the role of Captain America in Captain America #332.
  
• D-Man recognizes Battlestar as the guy he fought during the Serpent Riot in Captain America #344, and therefore attacks him on sight.
  
• It's not explicitly footnoted but Captain America learned about the weird goings-on in Manhattan in Avengers #298 and has to weigh the merits of going back there to help out vs. responding to the Flag-Smasher problem.
  
• Battlestar changed his name from Bucky in Captain America #341.
  
• It still "churns" him up that the Captain had to kill an ULTIMATUM troop in Captain America #321-322.
  
• Battlestar wonders if the Captain knows that he was one of the BUCkies that attacked him in Captain America #323 and tries to show off fighting the ULTIMATUM troops hoping that Cap will see how much he's improved, but Cap is busy doing his own fighting.
  
• The Red Skull was thought dead as of Captain America #300.
  
• D-Man has been wanting to prove himself ever since he ducked away from Titania in Captain America #340.
  
• When D-Man seemingly dies, Cap has a flashback to the death of Bucky, for which i'll link to Avengers #4.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Here the Skull is ready to use a doomsday device to send the world back to the pre-industrial era, but just a couple of years from now (real time) the Skull will balk at a scheme by the Viper to blind everyone watching TV at a certain time. There's a lot I like about Gruenwald's Skull, but there are some glaring inconsistencies about the Skull's overall MO and goals. We get a mission statement of sorts next issue, but it seems to be forgotten almost as soon as it's uttered.

Just something very cool about Flag-smasher, wielding his morning star and cap's shield, while flying on ski-jets.

I was one of those people hoping that Battlestar was going to be a new member of the Avengers. At the very least, I thought maybe he'd be Captain America's (Steve Rogers) new partner.

Very few backgrounds, tons of word balloons. I like this story but I don't like this storytelling.

Flag-Smasher was always written as a foolish buffoon after his very first appearance. A shame.

I have to wonder if the "idiot" scene is a backhanded reference to Ozymandias' Giant Alien Squid in Watchmen.

D-Man, in spite of his terrible costume, was written as a fairly interesting character in this book. I can't imagine though that Avengers readers would have been willing to accept him on the team, so it was kind of the right move to kill him off at this point.

Yeah, Flag-smasger's "original" idea wasn't that original (and even Alan Moore had to change the structure of the world to make the idea "work").

Luis, the man travels by ski-jet. He was never going to be seen as anything but. (Although he's still seen as a lot less "foolish" than other "radicals" like Quentin Quire.)