'Captain America: The First Avengers' Trailer Shot-By-Shot

It's been a big summer for comic book movies but there's still one more to come: Captain America: The First Avenger. This has the potential to be my favorite of the year (behind Thor, Green Lantern, and X-Men: First Class in that order for those of you keeping score) so let's take a look at some of the most memorable scenes from the second trailer that hit the web last week.

Captain America: Dunkin' Donuts Menu

I am originally from the East Coast so I happen to know the true pleasure that is Dunkin' Donuts.

Today I got an email from a Right Coaster to let me know, that the one thing more American than Captain America, is the Dunkin' Donut's Captain America tie in New Menu Items Inspire by Captain America: The First Avenger

I will be making a trip back east soon and at first it was to see family and friends...but now, my only want and need out of the trip is to stop by Dunkin's Donuts and be the proud American they know I am.

Check out the menu here

SDCC '11: Marvel and Paramount May Bring 'Cap' to San Diego

Heat Vision is reporting that there are rumors—while Marvel Studios is not planning any panels—there will be a Captain America: The First Avenger presence at Comic Con in a few weeks. And why not? After all, the film is being released the same weekend and fans will surely be buzzing about the film throughout the harried halls of the convention.

According to the blog, the Cap events could include a military salute featuring the film’s lead Chris Evans, a possible screening of the film at the Con, and Evans might also take part in a signing at the Marvel booth. Marvel Studios and Paramount are working out the details, but my money is on all of plans coming to fruition!

Captain America: The First Avenger hits theaters on July 22^nd.

Captain America on Foreign Soda: Yay Or Nay?

This is NOT what I wanted to see on July 4th as I peruse the isle of my "American" supermarket looking for my American cheese and vanilla ice cream for my apple pie.

This is a wet spit on my American face...we need to march...we need to protest...we need to start a Facebook page.....

JOIN ME MY FELLOW AMERICANS....as we say NO! to allowing our American superheroes being used to sell foreign products.

STAND WITH ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Captain America: Super-Soldier Swirl

 Thanks Baskin Robins....we will join the fight

Cap and His Commandos!

Spoiler Alert!

It looks as though Parallax has almost caught 'ol Cap and his Howling Commandos in this new International Poster for Captain America: The First Avenger. Just kidding! That's not the smokey villain from the new Green Lantern movie—it's the top half of the Red Skull's very ominous looking face. I normally am not a big fan of these types of posters, but man oh man, does that costume look great?

Captain America: The First Avenger hits theaters on July 22nd.

Captain America TV Trailer: Cap On Ice

Spoiler!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This trailer shows where Steve Roger's is found in modern day.

Turn back if you don't want to see.

Captain America: Dunkin Donuts Add

When I see stuff like this I get worried.

Captain America: The First Avenger looks pretty awesome, right?

Well I thought Green Lantern looked as much as well, but as soon as I saw all the 'Subway' adds and the multi featurettes I started to worry.

But perhaps, after spending hundreds of millions on your movie the only way to find the extra $$$ to advertise is to license your movie out to other companies and let them advertise for you.

Let's hope and pray that's the reason.

GO CAP!

Marvel Releases New 'Captain America' Poster

I must say, Marvel has transformed their leads into exactly how I envision their comic book counterparts. In Thor, Chris Hemsworth embodied my idea of the famed Norse God of Thunder. While I was always happy with the casting of Chris Evans as Steve Rogers, because of his natural charm, I wasn't sure if he was what I had always pictured in my head for Cap (I'll post that story as we get closer to the film). Any concerns were quelled when the first pictures of the actor on the set of the Joe Johnston-helmed film appeared. Of course, posters such as this new release seem to further the argument that Evans was born to play Capatin America.

Captain America: The First Avenger flies into theaters on July 22nd.

Captain America Retrospective Part 1: Captain America Comics #1

Well here we are with the first real part of my Captain America Retrospective. Just in case you're just tuning in now, in anticipation of the release of Captain America: The First Avenger on July 22, I am going back and reading some of Cap's greatest adventures of the past 70 years. I'll be sharing my thoughts here on each graphic novel (or in this case single issue), as I go along. You'll find a link to Part 0 at the bottom of this article.

With all that catch-up business out of the way, let's get down to business. If you're going to do a Captain America retrospective, there's really only one place to start: Captain America Comics #1 (pictured above) by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.

Let's just start off with this amazing cover. Nevermind the fact that we never actually get to see this brutal beat-down or the promise of Captain America coming "face to face with Hitler," the cover imagery perfectly sets the tone for what Captain America would come to symbolize for the people of the Marvel Universe and, in times, ourselves. He is the flag-clad, shield wielding, ass kicking super soldier who makes all red-blooded Americans want to proclaim "AMERICA F@%* YEAH!" No publisher could've gotten away with doing something like this in 2002 with Bin Laden in Hitler's place but I can only imagine the visceral reaction this cover gave people during the height of WWII.

I could go on more about the incredible cover but I think it's time to take a look inside. The issue itself contains four separate Captain America adventures (or "45 thrilling pages" as the cover notes) as well as stories featuring Hurricane and Tuk the Cave Boy which I'll ignore for this review. In these four stories we see the origin of Steve Rogers' transformation into Captain America as well as battles with the hypnotic Sando, the extremely eerie Rathcone, and, of course, arch-nemesis Red Skull.

I'm sure everyone's familiar with the origin of Captain America: weakling Steve Rogers is injected with the Super Soldier Serum invented by Professor Erskine turning him into a human in peak physical prowess. However, in this original origin, the name of the professor was Reinstein instead of Erskine. From what I can gather (based on letter columns in future issues I'll be reviewing), when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby went back to re-tell Cap's origin in the '60s, they relied on their memories of the original stories instead of referencing the actual material which probably led to the new name of Erskine (it appears that a retcon was put in place explaining that Joseph Reinstein was a codename that Erskine used at the time).

The other thing that surprised me about this issue is that Steve Rogers had a secret identity. Having only read Cap's modern adventures, I never realized that at one time the identity of Captain America was protected even inside the military. Private Steve Rogers puts on the act of a Clark Kent-like bumbler who's always raising the ire of his commanding officer Sargent Duffy.

With that out of the way, let's talk about the writing and art. I understand that not everyone can tolerate Golden Age (or even Silver Age) storytelling and art but I am not one of those people. Jack Kirby's pencils, though very different from his Silver Age style that I prefer, are stunning. It feels weird to be writing that because it's such a no-brainer but it must be said anyway. As for Simon's writing, I don't find it nearly as campy and overbearing as many of the stories from the Silver Age (and some of those less-favored modern books as well). There's surprisingly little narration throughout the pages and the panels are not too cluttered with dialogue. It's interesting to see the panel layouts Kirby chose at the time; the panels aren't always laid out in an easy-to-follow manner and little arrows are drawn into the page to direct the reader to the next panel in line.

Alright that'll do it for this installment. I definitely did not expect to go on that long about one issue but I hope you enjoyed reading it. I'll be back within the next few days to go over the first part of the Captain America Omnibus Vol.1 (it's over 800 pages so I'll either be cutting into thirds or halves to review).

You can find my intro to this retrospective here.

Max Beckman is a manager at Pulp Fiction in Long Beach, CA and CheapGraphicNovels.com. You can follow him on Twitter @CheapGNsdotcom and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pulpfictioncomics. Pulp Fiction can be found on the web at www.pulpfictiononline.com and at 1742 Clark Ave. Long Beach, CA 90815.

New Captain America:The First Avenger Trailer Is Up

Don't you hate how AWESOME this looks. I mean, couldn't you just bash your brain in.

Captain America hits theaters (with his shield) on July 22nd.

SDCC '11: The Avengers Will Not Assemble in Hall H This Year

Marvel Studios officially announced today that they will not hold a panel in Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con this year to promote The Avengers, reports Geoff Boucher of the LA Times Hero Complex Blog. The studio wowed all in attendance at last year's panel (including yours truly) by assembling the entire cast and director Joss Whedon on stage and together for the first time (pictured above*), but this year the studio "wasn’t prepared to compete with its own past and wild fan expectations."

Despite the lack of Hall H programming, Marvel Studios promises a strong presence throughout the rest of the convention including a booth on the exhibit hall floor as the studio opens Captain America: The First Avenger the Friday of the convention (July 22, 2011). Boucher theorizes that the studio may, however, have a presence at parent company Disney's D23 Expo at the Anaheim Convention Center on August 19-21 and that this may be the reason they bowed out of Hall H.

Marvel fans feeling the lack of Marvel movie presence at SDCC can still look forward to Sony's presentation of their 2012 offering The Amazing Spider-Man starring Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone.

*(Pictured Left to Right: Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man/Tony Stark), Clark Gregg (Agent Phil Coulson), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Chris Evans (Captain America/Steve Rogers), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye/Clint Barton), Mark Ruffalo/Hulk), director Joss Whedon, and President of Marvel Studios Kevin Feige)

Max Beckman is a manager at Pulp Fiction in Long Beach, CA and CheapGraphicNovels.com. You can follow him on Twitter @CheapGNsdotcom and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pulpfictioncomics. Pulp Fiction can be found on the web at www.pulpfictiononline.com and at 1742 Clark Ave. Long Beach, CA 90815.

'Captain America: The First Avenger' Featurette

Artist Paolo Rivera created this fine retro Captain America film poster as a gift to the cast.

Well we’re three movies into our first big comic book movie summer. While I really enjoyed Thor, I was left unimpressed with X-Men: First Class and disappointed by Green Lantern.

So in about four weeks, we get our final entry of the season with the opening of Captain America: The First Avenger. Though I feel I have been burned twice by two movies that I expected to be better, my hopes remain high for a good Cap film. Marvel Studios has been pretty consistent in my eyes (yeah, I liked—not loved—Iron Man 2) so I expect the company to deliver another piece of solid entertainment.

Check out this pretty cool Captain America featurette that lays out the character and features some nice new glimpses of the cast and the action.

Captain America: The First Avenger opens on July 22nd.

Captain America Retrospective Part 0: An Intro

I am a Marvel zombie. Don't get me wrong, I love all comics (at least the good ones) and I am able to criticize Marvel books when it's warranted but my heart belongs to the House of Ideas. That being said, while I have kept up with almost all of the Marvel books for the past six or seven years (actually starting with X-Men, Spider-Man, the Ultimate universe, and a few others almost eleven years ago), my experience reading the past adventures of these heroes (again except the X-Men and Spider-Man) has been, up until this point, very limited. It's because of this that I set out to vastly expand my experience with the rest of the Marvel U this year specifically concerning the characters gracing the silver screen this summer.

Earlier in the year, I read (and in a few cases re-read) about 225 issues of Thor in anticipation of his theatrical debut and now I am doing the same with Captain America. With just a little over one month until Captain America: The First Avenger's release on July 22, I definitely have my work cut out for me. I'll be posting reviews along the way and below I'll include a reading list of the graphic novels comprising my retrospective.

Chronological Reading List:
Captain America Comics #1 70th Anniversary Edition
Captain America Omnibus Vol.01 HC
Captain America & The Falcon: Secret Empire TP
Captain America & The Falcon: Nomad TP
Captain America by Jack Kirby Omnibus HC
Captain Amierca: War and Remembrance HC
Captain America: The Captain TP
Captain America: Scourge of the Underworld TP
Fear Itself: Sin's Past One-Shot
Captain America: The Bloodstone Hunt TP
Captain America: Man & Wolf TP
Captain America: Fighting Chance - Denial TP
Captain America: Fighting Chance - Acceptance TP
Captain America: Operation Rebirth HC
Captain America: To Serve and Protect HC
Captain America: American Nightmare HC
Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty HC
Captain America by Dan Jurgens Vol.01 TP
Captain America: The New Deal HC

Check out CheapGraphicNovels.com for the best prices around on these Captain America books and all your other graphic novel needs (cheap plug I know).

(Note: I have been reading Captain America since Ed Brubaker took over so his run will not be included in the retrospective unless time permits which, from looking at this hefty list, seems pretty unlikely)

Max Beckman is a manager at Pulp Fiction in Long Beach, CA and CheapGraphicNovels.com. You can follow him on Twitter @CheapGNsdotcom and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pulpfictioncomics. Pulp Fiction can be found on the web at www.pulpfictiononline.com and at 1742 Clark Ave. Long Beach, CA 90815.

Captain America: Two Great Pictures Of Him In Costume

Ha, could you imagine if these were the first pictures released.

This Cap's USO costume, and if I do say, he looks damn proud of it.

Captain America: The First Avenger opens everywhere on July 22. Be there or be square.

Why I have a lot in common with Captain America

This is not a normal story/post here, but I thought I would share what I just read.

Captain America is going bald, well Chris Evan is anyway.

Per E .online he told MTV (does that sound weird?)
"I have no problem saying this, but I'm losing my hair,"

Why do I love this? Well it's not because I'm a jerk...its because I am 33 and my hair is getting thinner and thinner everyday.

I like to stay in shape and eat right but there is very little this side of a hair transplant that I can do.

So its awesome to see (or read) that the man playing the superior human has the same problem I do and he's 29.

Oh Cap, we still love you and your movie looks terrific. Just keep working out and let them fix it in post. At least you have that. I have to buzz my head.

Jerry Ahern of Capetown Community

New 'Captain America: The First Avenger' TV Spot

With Green Lantern and X-Men: First Class commercials all over television and on the web, it's time to start making room for July's big release: Captain America: The First Avenger. The latest commercial illustrates that this film is aiming to present a story which doesn't forget that there's a three-dimensional man underneath those red, white and blue fatigues.

Captain America: The First Avenger opens on July 22nd.

New Captain America Photo

You know, we should make a superhero calandar. I think we have enough for 5 years.

Here is a new photo of Steve Rogers: Super Soldier.

Via SHH you can see Chris Evan speaking with MTV about playing Captain America.

Check it out.

Evans and Jackson in Times Square to Film Possible 'Captain America' Scene

Spoiler Warning!

Well I guess we know that Steve Rogers and Nick Fury will be introduced at some point in this summer’s Captain America: The First Avenger. Because principal filming has been completed for months, it’s possible that this could be another after credits scene after Cap wakes up in the present (check out the video below).

Director Joe Johnston was on hand in Times Square this weekend to direct a scene between Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury) and Chris Evans (Steve Rogers), which supports evidence that this scene is for Captain America and not The Avengers (which is expected to begin filming today). I’m just guessing, but this makes me think that Captain America is set almost wholly during World War II and not for only about 80 percent of the film as has been previously rumored.

It’s been stirring around in the old noggin for a while now—just how are the filmmakers going to end the movie on a high note while still displacing Steve Rogers from his own time? It would seem that this necessary scene would leave a sour taste in audiences’ mouths if their hero is suddenly ripped from everything he knows and everyone he loves. We’ve got a few months to see how director Joe Johnston and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely have addressed this.

Captain America: The First Avenger hits theaters of July, 22^nd.

'Captain America' Trailer: Shot-By-Shot

The new Captain America: The First Avenger trailer was released last week and I continue to grow more eager to see this film. The filmmakers to a big chance with presenting a CGI Steve Rogers—it could have been an enormous and expensive mistake, but I’ve found the effect of turning a pre-Super Soldiered Rogers into a 90-pound weakling to be pretty flawless.

Captain America looks like it is going to be a big, fast, fun summer movie.

Let’s breakdown the trailer shall we?