This issue is really a prelude to the big, game-changing Winter Soldier story. 1980s Captain America nerds (like me) all remember Jack Monroe, who took on the role of Nomad and partnered with Cap during that time period.
Well, he was killed in the last story. This issue is his memorial, with guest art by the great John Paul Leon. It walks us through his past via a series of flashbacks while revealing the main story. But for these brief sequences, Captain America isn’t even in this issue—foreshadowing that Brubaker intends to prove that he can write a whole Captain America series that doesn’t have Steve Rogers.
We learn that he has nanites in his blood—put there by SHIELD—which are killing him. (The medical care comes from Dr. Jane Foster, by the way. Nice touch.) Knowing death is coming, he tracks down his daughter, Julia Winters, and beats up some drug dealers at her school. Gradually, his sanity is failing due to the nanite infiltration. The big reveal is that the “drug dealers” were actually selling ice cream and, in the final pages, he is killed by someone dressed like Bucky.
Of course, that was really Winter Soldier and he wasn’t dressed like Bucky—that’s part of Monroe’s delusion. But it’s a perfect way to end: Monroe attempted to replace Bucky Barnes, and in the end he is slain by him.
The story is titled, “The Lonesome Death of Jack Monroe,” a play on the name of a Bob Dylan song.