Adam Graham's Blog: Christians and Superheroes - Posts Tagged "american-dream"

American Dream: Beyond Courage by Tom DeFalco

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This volume collects the five issue American Dream series from the MC2 universe and was the third limited edition series launched following the renewal of Spider-girl.

In the story, non-Super Powered Avenger American Dream (i.e. Shannon Carter) stumbling into a host of bad guys most notably Sillikong, a crystal creature in what's supposed to be a solo story. While she's ordered off the case by S.H.I.E.L.D. she stumbled back into it as she's helping a woman find her illegal alien boyfriend.

The action scenes are solid, if the banter's not always great, and I like the character bits. Her story of being inspired by Captain America to go from being seriously injured in a car wreck to being Captain America's successor is downright inspiring. The story isn't bad, but it's not very good either.

At times, it struggles from a lack of focus.`There are things that work in Spider-girl but don't work in a limited series like this. Everything has to be developed in five issues and much of it isn't. There's Shannon's life out of uniform or lack thereof which is really dealt with in a way that's just not satisfactory, nor was her relationship with Thunderstrike. On top of this, DeFalco introduces the hot button topic of immigration which is dealt with in a very superficial and silly way. Some illegals being granted citizenship for cooperation with law enforcement, which shows how little DeFalco understood how things worked or how much he thought he could get away with. I'm not saying politics are always well-handled in comics, but here the handling seems especially superficial.

The villain would be okay once again for a Spider-girl comic or for American Dream if she had a long series. In the limited series, it's just weak. Considering that the previous Avengers Next and Fantastic Five stories had Loki's daughter as their villains, both seeking to take over the world. American Dream gets a one shot villain like Sillikong who would never be seen again. Red Queen was a secondary villain and could have been a great main villain had DeFalco gone that route.

While the book's back cover has a picture that suggests American Dream was branded a traitor, nothing so dramatic happened. She had a warrant issued for her arrest and resigned the Avengers to keep them out of it, but what was mostly going on was Maria Hill acting like an idiot, a role she played in the second Amazing Spider-girl volume. Another pet peeve is that the Avengers took such an active part in this book which almost made it another Avengers Next story.

The result here is mediocre. The final result is better than Avengers Next: Rebirth but worse than Fantastic Five: The Final Doom. If I rated on the decimal system I'd say 2.7 stars. There are some good bits, but nothing great. It could have been better, but once again De Falco failed to create an MC2 series that could last beside Spider-girl, and this would be his last chance, as the rest of the MC2 stories would be Spider-girl stories. And it's a shame because American Dream deserved better.



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