Issue(s): Captain America #435, Captain America #436, Captain America #437
Cover Date: Jan-Mar 95
Title: Fighting Chance: "Snake, battle, and toll" / "Everybody hurts sometime" / "If I should die before I wake..."
Credits:
Mark Gruenwald - Writer
Dave Hoover - Penciler
Dan Bulanadi - Inker
Joe Andreani - Assistant Editor
Michael Rockwitz - Editor

Review/plot:
Digital review warning.

Jack Flag has passed Cobra's initial test, and now it turns out that Cobra has been auditioning him as a replacement. Jack is dressed in Cobra's costume (the King Cobra version) and has to fight the rest of the Serpent Society as his final exam.

Meanwhile, Cap's network reports a sighting of Cobra in Arizona so he heads there with Free Spirit and Moonhunter. An interlude with Henry Pym and Keith Kincaid reminds us that any physical exertion by Cap could be fatal.

Flag manages to survive his audition. An intruder is then detected on the Serpent grounds. But it's not Cap, it's Mr. Hyde.

Hyde makes it through several Serpents and i'm pleasantly surprised that Hyde doesn't just straight up murder Cobra when they meet.

Cap arrives around the same time. He has Free Spirit wait on the ship with Moonhunter. Cap is first found by Flag.

They fake fight for a bit, then the rest of the Serpents arrive and Cap is taken prisoner. They bring him back to Cobra. There's something fun about Cobra and Hyde chilling by the pool, even if they are apparently in their white underwear.

Pym tries to contact Cap via Moonhunter's Quinjet. Free Spirit convinces Moonhunter to let her go tell Cap that Pym is looking for him. She runs into Coachwhip.

We have now learned that Coachwhip wears a wig so that people don't learn her real hair color, which is the same color as the wig.

Speaking of coloring mistakes, looks like Hyde and Cobra changed out of their underwear into blue bathing suits.

Free Spirit shows up disguised as Coachwhip, and she and Flagg-Cobra defend Cap.

During this fight, the real Cobra activates a drain, flushing Cap out of the swimming pool. Cobra and Hyde follow him down the drain. Cap's armor gets knocked off during the travel, but he manages to stagger the villains get get it back on. And he manages to work in the name of the event into his narration, in case anyone is playing a drinking game.

Even with his increasing sickness, Cap manages to use devices to beat Cobra and Hyde. I'm with Cobra here, this is ridiculous and unfair:

Is Cap then approached by an actual snake (which he hopes will bite him because the venom may be "just what my body needs to jump-start it"). Or maybe that's a hallucination, because next he sees a talking Statue of Liberty, and then Bucky.

Meanwhile, Jack Flagg and Free Spirit escape the other Serpents and take time to get back into their real costumes. Henry Pym arrives in a Quinjet. Pym's latest battle cry has me worried about him.

Pym eventually finds Cap.

Issue #437 is an epilogue to the Fighting Chance storyline. Pym brings Cap back to Stark Enterprises so Tony Stark can help with Cap's condition.

Meanwhile, Pym apparently left Free Spirit and Jack Flagg to fight the Serpents by themselves...

...but luckily after Stark hears about what was going on, he deploys Force Works to help out.

I'm glad about this because it seemed like these Spirit and Flagg n00bs were handling the Serpents a little too easily.

Iron Man manages to bring Cap out of his coma using a cybernetic helmet, but it's said that he's paralyzed and will never walk again.

Meanwhile, we find that the Red Skull is beginning to suffer the same effects as Cap (since he's in a cloned version of Cap's body) so he tasks Arnim Zola with finding a cure.

Probably my favorite thing about this was the reconciliation (of sorts) between Cobra and Hyde, and in general issue #435 is fun due to all the Serpent stuff. The heroes' survival in #436 is too implausible for me (both Spirit and Flag surviving the Serpent Society and Cap beating Cobra and Hyde using little doo-dads from his Liefeld-pouches), and then #437 is full of flashbacks to earlier issues, which only reminds me how much this art sucks in comparison.

Statement of Ownership Total Paid Circulation: Average of Past 12 months = 114,892. Single issue closest to filing date = 114,700.

Quality Rating: D+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: As noted in the last entry, i've allowed for the possibility that Cap left Free Spirit for some other missions (notably in Namor) before returning to her at the beginning of #435. Next issue begins with Cap in some new armor - it's said that "six hours" previously he had been lying on a table, which doesn't necessarily mean that the issue takes place six hours later, only that Cap is tabled between this arc and the next and shouldn't appear elsewhere in between.

References:

• Cap's hallucination in the epilogue includes warped versions of his meeting with the (first) Red Skull from Captain America Comics #1 and the Cosmic Cube battle from Tales of Suspense #80-81. And then an accurate version of Captain America #300.
  
• Captain America told Iron Man about his condition in Iron Man #303 but he's been too busy setting up Force Works to do anything about it.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A