Is it still hype when it's good?

The much hyped Captain America #600 has come and gone. As a ‘trade waiter’ for Ed Brubaker’s Captain America run, I normally don’t pick up individual issues, but like a good little consumer I took the bait to see what the big deal was about. Hyped by Marvel beyond logic and reason, I found time to sneak a trip to my local comic shop to see if they had bothered getting the issue on it’s early Monday release.

They did not. After all, why pay an extra shipping fee for the twelve issues they would stock?

Still, I found the oversized issue waiting for me in my pile when I returned on Wednesday and happily paid the $4 just to see what startling revelation about the future of the character held.

After all, I’m a comic book fan. I’ve certainly made less worthwhile purchases.

Not surprisingly, this book that was sold on hype and hype alone, did not shake the very foundations of my world. The ‘big reveal’ was not surprising and flies did not take up residence in my opened mouth. Just another chapter in an excellent story.

What was shocking though is that the book kept going after the ‘big reveal’. By about page 50 I’d all but forgotten about it, instead I was enjoying a trip through Captain America’s history. Some of it I was familiar with. A lot of it I wasn’t. Not all the vignettes were great, but $4 for 100 pages it was still the best value for an individual comic purchase I’d made in a long time.