Randon always says: “I think you should read some more Captain America comics. I think you’d like him if you read some of his comics.”

And I say, “Mmmmmmmm, I don’t think so.”

I’m telling you this so that you will understand my bias going into these Captain America comics. I really love to be right. I can acknowledge the possibility that I was hoping not to enjoy Captain America.

Here’s the thing: I did not really enjoy Captain America. (I was right.) Ed Brubaker does some wonderfully insane things in his run, and if you have hung out here very much at all, you will know that I love crazy plot developments. Most insanest in this run is the plotline about the Winter Soldier, a Russian assassin of extraordinary gifts who turns out to be — cue spoilers and dramatic music — none other than Captain America’s young, dead partner of so many years ago, Bucky! One of the few reliably dead comic book characters in the history of comic books! Actually not dead this whole time! Actually was revived and brainwashed by Russians! And brought back to comics by Ed Brubaker’s villains for the sole purpose of screwing with Captain America’s head.

My first and hugest problem is that Captain America is not interesting. The people in his life can say he’s irritating (and they do), but since he’s also the nicest human person and everyone who speaks about him says he is the best person they ever knew, it doesn’t hold much water to call him irritating. Mostly he is tediously virtuous, not in an interesting way.

Before you ask, yes, I could have imagined it was Drew Brees doing all of the Captain America activities, in order to make them more interesting. I did do that, actually! But I got sad to think of Drew Brees being so unhappy and having hallucinations, so I had to stop. I want him always to be happy. He has done so much for New Orleans. Why should he have to relive his terrible memories of watching his young partner being tortured by Nazis?

My second problem is that, in the four trade paperbacks I read — two volumes apiece of  The Winter Soldier and The Red Menace — the villains did an awful lot of not killing Captain America because that would be too kind. You may keep someone alive because you need their super-soldier DNA, or because you are planning to brainwash them into being evil using your super-powerful Cosmic Cube. You may also, upon achieving a victory that leaves their world in ruin, then gaze down at them contemptuously and refuse to kill them because it would be too kind. But if Plan A involves deliberately not neutralizing a person who is a clear threat to your evil plan, then I have a harder time thinking your villainy has teeth.

My third problem is that everything is a trap. Whenever Captain America and his SHIELD liaison, Sharon, get a lead on anything, they go haring off after the lead. Next thing you know, they’re surrounded by enemy combatants and they’re like, “They knew all along that we would come here!” The first time that happens, fine, you can’t win ’em all, the bad guys outsmarted you. After a while, for the love of God, Captain America, can you and Sharon put your heads together and come up with a scheme to get the drop on these guys?

In short, meh. Captain America is not for me.

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The Sunne in Splendour (Amazon, B&N, Book Depository) is about my man Richard III. It has some tics, chief amongst them being the addition of helping verbs where the primary verbs did not truly require extra assistance, and the exclusion of grammatically warranted conjunctions. These things are a bit annoying. But set against those tics are ALL THE SCHEMES, y’all seriously, I can’t overstate how much I love schemes. It was also nice to reacquaint myself with this period in British history. I read a ton of books (nonfiction ones) about Richard III when I was in middle school because I’d just read Daughter of Time (of course), but it’s been ages since I took an active interest. Reading The Sunne in Splendour reminded me what a fascinating and insane time the fifteenth century was in British history. Can anyone recommend a good history of the Wars of the Roses? I won’t read Alison Weir because I think she’s bullshit, but I will take any other suggestions.

In case you do not know or have forgotten, here is the story of Richard III: He was the fourth son of a man who believed that his claim to the throne of England was better than that of the current king of England. Machinations ensued in which Richard’s father and oldest brother were killed, whereupon Richard’s second brother, Edward, began angling to get the throne. There were some battles, Edward was good at armies, and he did indeed become king (Edward IV). He married a widow with a gazillion ghastly relatives and dealt with a number of rebellions and malcontents, including his and Richard’s ridiculous brother George. Richard meanwhile married a woman whose father and first husband were both executed traitors; and they appear to have been happy as clams together so I guess he married for love. Very inconveniently, Edward IV died when his sons were still teenagers. Richard had the sons declared illegitimate (the validity of this declaration is in question) and took over the crown. And then Richard’s son died and then his wife died and then Henry VII showed up and took over the crown and killed Richard in a great big battle.

(Henry VII was not a good guy.)

The end.

As it’s been a while since I engrossed myself in Tudor/Plantagenet history, I kept having minor (but boring) epiphanies while reading this novel. For instance I realized that Thomas Grey (Edward IV’s wife’s son from a previous marriage) was most likely related to the Nine Days’ Queen, Lady Jane Grey, poor dear. I also realized that Robb Stark from Game of Thrones owes quite a bit to Edward IV. Edward’s family were lords in the North; like Robb Stark, Edward IV was a gifted and lucky military commander at a very young age; and also like Robb Stark, he did not marry who he was meant to marry but instead made a catastrophic marriage to a nobody. (Not, like, Red Wedding catastrophic, in Edward IV’s case. But pretty bad.) I was irritated with myself for not noticing this sooner! I knew this about Edward IV, and I also knew that George R.R. Martin was like, Wars of the Roses guy. Stupid stupid Jenny.

I enjoyed The Sunne in Splendour as a Wars-of-the-Roses-story delivery system, and as a supporter of Richard III who I also like and I really don’t think he killed his nephews so there. The prose had, as I said, some tics; and in the end I didn’t finish reading the book because it depressed me too much to read on to the part where Richard III was going to die. I kept being struck by how young he was — he had his first command when he was seventeen, became king at thirty-one, and died at thirty-three. That is too sad, even if he did become king by slightly underhand methods.

(Honestly even if Richard III made up the whole thing about Edward’s children being illegitimate, I still think it was the smart play. You will note that when a different kid called Edward with ambitious maternal relatives became king in 1547, things did not go that well for England.)

So! Recommend me a good history of the Wars of the Roses please! I am curious to read a proper history (not a novel) and see what is known and what is not really known. Litlove I do not mean to put you on the spot but I feel like you will know what book I should read about the Wars of the Roses. I kept going online to check whether things in The Sunne in Splendour were true or not. Like apparently Richard really did find Anne Neville working as a serving woman somewhere (either because she was hiding, or because Richard’s ridiculous brother George was hiding her in order to take her lands) and take her back to to London and marry her. That sounds fake. I am still sort of suspicious about that. But anyway if it is made up, Sharon Kay Penman is not the one who made it up.

Note: The above links to places you can buy this book are affiliate links. If you click on them and then buy a book from that website, I get a very small amount of money. This in no way influences my reviews.

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