365 Comics...184: Captain America and the Falcon #10 (2005)

Just by sheer randomness the last three books on 365 Comics all featured Captain America and MODOK.  I honestly didn't realize that these two characters were so entwined.  I picked up these books this past weekend from a huge 3/$1 bin sale.  Captain America and the Falcon #10 is part of my attempt to catch up on Christopher Priest-written books, Marvel Two-In-One #82 was a natural since it is probably my favourite childhood Marvel book, despite only having a couple issues (and one of those giant Essential collections.. easy and affordable, but it's just not the same in black and white and without colour and the ads), and then the Captain America #315 was a little something for my wife, a longtime Cap fan.  My 4-year-old was with me and dug out some Masters of the Universe comics as well as took a shining to a half-dozen Power Pack issues.

Seriously, though, it's kind of fun seeing MODOK through the years, with the 80's, 90's and 00's versions all represented here.  The 80's version was really charcoal grey, which was either a limitation of the era's colour reproduction or a choice to try and make him less, I dunno, vibrant and cartoony.  The 90's MODOK, well, as I noted two entries back, was dead and naked on a slab in a coroner's office, so really, he looked like I've never seen him before.  MODOK here, in the mid-aughts version, is, well, decidedly over-rendered and creepily re-designed to be thinner by Joe Bennett.  Extreme MODOK everybody!

But then again, this MODOK isn't quite MODOK apparently.  I don't know, this issue is the third part of four, and frankly, out of context, makes little sense at all (I'm hopeful it makes more sense as a part of the whole).  Cap is in plainclothes fighting MODOK with... someone from SHIELD (Hill?) yelling in his ear.  Meanwhile Falcon is taking on a cartel with some other Cap (Anti-Cap) in tow but I was never clear to what end.  Really, it's just not a stand-alone read, and fair enough.

Oh, I forgot another MODOK turns up on the final page, only a regular-sized dude in a blue suit... his cranium is a bit bigger than an average person (but not Leader or Hector Hammond big) and he levitates and creates that crackling bad-news energy around him.  The caption underneath: "Next
: I, MODOK"