Captain America (4) #1-6 "Enemy" (2002)

Captain America (4) #1-6 "Enemy" (2002)
Writer: John Ney Rieber
Artist John Cassaday
Colorist: Dave Stewart
Letterer: Wes Abbott

Seven months after the attack on the NYC Twin Towers, Fury dispatches Captain America to Centerville, a mid-Western town taken hostage by a self-proclaimed terrorist. Captain America finds that the terrorists are equipped with S.H.I.E.L.D.'s latest CAT-tags, used for tracking the vital signs of whomever wears it. Fury points the way for Cap to fly to Dresden to learn who is arming the terrorists with S.H.I.E.L.D. tech. There Captain America confronts the Al-Tariq, whom he killed in Centerville. There, Cap learns that Tariq plans to equip the armies of the world with the CAT-tags he created and destroy them with it.

Continuity Notes
Appearances by Nick Fury in issues #1-2, 4-5
Similar technology to the CAT-tags has been seen before used by S.H.I.E.L.D., however its been implanted into the agent's body.
Members of the Presidential cabinet do not have authority over Nick Fury..

Review
Politically charged at the time of publication, reading this story in 2004, the story seems rather lackluster in plotting and not as damaging nor reinvigorating to the title character as many claimed. Fury's scenes however are pretty strong and well written. Captain America's comments about Fury getting too caught up with playing with his toys seems an indictment of the way many writers have used Fury in previous years and it's true. Likewise Fury's ordering Captain America on a mission just after Sept 11th seems realistic to what Fury would be doing and exposes the weakness in Riber's take on Captain America. The plot involving the CAT-tags is interesting and its nice to see for once that its NOT a rouge band of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents (see next storyline for that tired old cliche). The connection to Dresden makes for a bit of a missed opportunity as Fury and the Howlers were there during the fire bombings so it would have been interesting to see Cap and Fury together investigating the source of the tags, but then again, the comic ain't called Captain America and Nick Fury. The art is fantastic but not a real essential volume for the Nick Fury library.

Rating