2 out of 5

A jive-talkin’ Falcon!  A mysterious evil benefactor!   A bomb explodes!  A costumed theme villain named The Viper!  Cap #157, dated 1972, is absolutely of the era.  While I can get the flavor for golden / silver age comics for sure, it still takes a balanced tongue to pull off the right tinge of popcorn and plotting, and this issue’s ‘regular thugs convinced they can beat up Cap’ and ’empty threats from heroes’ and ‘surely that bomb killed Cap let’s all shed a tear’ ring true of the high melodrama of the era.  Unfortunately, it’s also something of a snooze – Cap is called to a secret meeting with the police commissioner, who says “excuse me I have to take a call” and hustles out of the room ONE PANEL BEFORE A BOMB EXPLODES OMG.  Cue Falcon (this was the era of ‘Captain America and Falcon’ as the book’s title) and Sharon being sad, but Falcy is suspicious that they don’t even find Cap’s shield… so investigating an odd glimmer on a nearby roof he runs afoul of The Viper, who poisons him.  The Viper is a fun bit of 70s villainy, coming out and stating he used to be an ad-man and so ‘advertising’ all of his gadgets and abilities before he uses them, but, again, it’s still a bit of a snooze.  Cap is Marvel’s Superman – the nigh-invincible boyscout – so it takes a bit to make him interesting and the antics here and too normal to qualify.

But, apparently, recent scribe Steve Englehart was a hit with the fans, and the then-new-to-scripting Steve jumped in to help him out for this one issue.  According to the editorial, Steve E. wrote 7.5 pages of the story… so who knows the split, but you can sense Gerb’s burgeoning wordy narratives on some pages.

Not a needed Gerber library addition by any means.