Captain America & the Falcon #201

Jack Kirby
September 1976
***
From a pocket dimension, a lunatic fraternity of criminal vagabonds strike—kidnapping the Falcon’s lady! Only Kirby could’ve dreamed up the Night People, a weird fusion of tropes from Dickens & Poe. It’s not formulaic but it’s not quite good either. Kirby may’ve lost his grasp on solo superheroics.
[last issue: Captain America & the Falcon #200]
[next issue: Captain America & the Falcon #202]

Captain America & the Falcon #199

Jack Kirby
July 1976
***
Great as Kirby is (you can feel the heat of the cover’s explosion), his bicentennial arc centering on a royalist conspiracy just isn’t catching fire. The best part’s the Madbomb, an ingenious piece of Kirbytech whose mechanical brain drives men to violent insanity & whose inventor defects to SHIELD.
[last issue: Captain America & the Falcon #198]
[next issue: Captain America & the Falcon #200]

Captain America & the Falcon #198

Jack Kirby
June 1978
****
Kirby modulates his tone for this episode in the Madbomb Affair. Cap helps SHIELD capture the WMD’s inventor by romancing the man’s fatally ill daughter. Lovely scenes in moonlit room & on a secluded beach, plus some delicate emotions & sensitive expressions, imply Kirby’s past in romance comics.
[see also Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles #1 of 1]
[last issue: Captain America & the Falcon #197]
[next issue: Captain America & the Falcon #199]