The Legacy of Captain America was an interesting idea, summarizing the history of the many men who've taken the role in the Marvel Universe over the past 70 years, but the execution was ultimately flawed. This wasn't a question of the quality of the material, which was quite good, but rather the quantity. Marvel seemed intent on keeping the book's page count (and by extension its price) relatively low, but the net effect was that some intriguing story-lines were presented in a very disjointed way. In particular, Steve Englehart's mid-70s storyline that culminated in Steve Rogers giving up his Nomad identity to resume his role as Captain America was condensed into about 20 pages of excerpts from various issues. It would have been nice to have at least the final issue presented in its entirety. On the flip side, the section dealing one-time Captain America (and future U.S. Agent John Walker) would have benefited from some excerpts giving the background leading up to Steve Rogers' temporary resignation to go with the full issue where Walker got the job. Ultimately, it ended up being a decent sampler rather than a good collection in its own right.
In contrast, the Thor compilation Ragnarok by Roy Thomas with art by John Buscema and Tom Palmer was much more satisfying.While I wouldn't call this particular story-line ground-breaking, it's a strong example of the classic Marvel style before overly complicated cross-overs and pointless revamps became the norm. That's not to say that the collection isn't suitably epic, befitting its title, just that it works well within its own regular cast of characters without gratuitously dragging in half the Marvel universe. Credit here goes to Roy Thomas who was Marvel's ultimate utility player for many years. As with his long runs writing for the Justice Society and DC's other Golden Age characters, Thomas always understood what makes these characters appealing and found ways to add dimension to the original Lee/Kirby templates without having to trash/reboot everything that came before. If that idea sounds a bit quaint, don't let it dissuade you. If more current Marvel titles took this approach, they'd be a lot more enjoyable to read.
On a similar note, I'm looking forward to reading the 2005 Avengers collection Kang: Time & Time Again. In addition to reprinting some classic Avengers issues by Roy Thomas and some related one-offs with Thor and the Hulk, it contains a three-part storyline from Roger Stern's mid-80s tenure as the Avengers' writer, which ranks up there with those of Thomas, Englehart and Kurt Busiek. Again, I wish more current Marvel titles were this enjoyable. At least they've finally gotten the movie thing figured out.
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