Writer Tochi Onyebuchi has been tapped to write a brand-new Captain America book for Marvel, and along for the ride is red-hot artist R.B Silva. What should fans expect? The writer gives a few hints.
By Justina Terhember
Marvel is making room for both Sam Wilson and Steve Rogers. This May, a one-shot issue called Captain America #0 will hit the stands, after which two new on-going comics will come out of it. ‘Captain America: Symbol of Truth’ starts in May, focusing on Sam, written by Tochi Onyebuchi, with art by R.B. Silva, who drew the wildly popular ‘Powers of X’.
The second one, Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty, will debut in June, and will focus on Rogers, written by Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing, with art by Carmen Carnero.
In the Onyebuchi-penned book, there’s a new dynamic in which Wilson will be the public-facing Captain America. “We have basically only touched the surface of his interaction with the Marvel Universe,” says Onyebuchi, in a long piece over at Entertainment Weekly. “There are so many characters that have yet to interact with Sam as Captain America, dynamics we haven’t yet seen. It feels like the world is my oyster. It’s been really cool exploring that with Sam, but also with Joaquín Torres, who is the Falcon in this book.”
Onyebuchi added that while we’ve seen Sam Wilson deal with the legacy of Captain America and race in very inward terms with regards to America, “What does it mean for America to accept a Black Captain America? One of the things I’m teasing in my book is, what does it mean for the rest of the world to accept a Black Captain America? That’s another part of the equation. If Captain America is in many ways a mimesis of America, with all the good and bad pathologies, what does that mean for the way in which America interacts with the rest of the world?”
Onyebuchi confesses to being a huge fan of action thrillers that involve foreign locales. “One of the things that Sam has to do is he has to get to the bottom of a conspiracy. He has to figure out what the truth of the matter is; he has to figure out what’s really going on. When so much of American foreign policy historically has been founded on operating in the shadows, manipulating federal employees or members of another government into enacting regime change for the benefit of various corporate interests, what is it going to look like when Sam runs up against the people who would wish to manipulate him for their own ends in terms of furthering ‘America’s interests’ abroad? What does it mean to be the ‘Symbol of Truth’ in that context?” Onyebuchi’s run is bound to be exciting, following the footsteps of awesome black novelists who have penned the adventures of Captain America in the past, beginning with Ta-Nehisi Coates, and more recently, South African superstar Mohale Mashigo.
