Captain America: Symbol of Truth is a series for fans who like to read about superheroes punching villains in the face. These chapters are not issues so much as they are rounds in a boxing match. And like a really good championship fight, Captain America: Symbol of Truth #11 finds a way to escalate the action.
At the center of this bout are combatants Captain America and the White Wolf. Writer Tochi Onyebuchi, artist R.B. Silva, color artist Jesus Aburtov, and letterer Joe Caramagna feel less like creators than they do recorders, capturing a heated bout. Literally everything is on fire here.
The bout between Sam and Hunter is electric, with neither character using their full arsenal of talents, seeking out a more pugilistic approach to their combat to resolve the emotions of the story. Sam is fighting out of rage, Hunter out of arrogance and pain. Aburtov and Silva do a fantastic job rendering the fight, there’s movement and dimension to every blow, and the choreography means that no beat feels repeated.
Onyebuchi’s writing really shines here. Like many great fights, the championship rounds reveal truths about the fighters, and it’s in Captain America: Symbol of Truth #11 that readers finally learn Hunter’s motivations.
Previous issues featured other characters stating why the White Wolf took the actions he did, but Tochi Onyebuchi reveals that things aren’t quite what they seem. Without getting into spoilers, Hunter’s motivations and the themes behind them tie directly into his original use in Priest’s run, though in ways that are challenging and may evoke skepticism for longtime fans (for my part, I think a reckoning between Hunter and his stepmother Ramonda is in order). Onyebuchi delicately weaves this reveal into the fight itself, which makes it less of a monologue but also means the brevity of the explanation leaves some room for interpretation. Given Hunter’s involvement in the upcoming Cold War crossover, more depth may be added there.
The Cold War crossover is probably the thing that hurts the developments in this issue the most. Things hardly ever feel fully resolved at the end of a superhero arc, but the transition from the end of the fight to the close of the arc feels abrupt and incomplete. Yes, readers know Cold War is coming, but it’s hard not to read this issue and feel like something’s missing. Championship fights have twelve rounds, not eleven.
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