Books of 2024: Week 34 - Captain America: The Great Gold Steal

A favorite character, not a favorite book.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE GREAT GOLD STEAL by Ted White

After teaming with author Otto Binder and Bantam Books for the kid-friendly novel The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker and with author William Johnston and Whitman Publishing for the even more kid-friendly “Big Little Book” Fantastic Four in The House of Horrors, Marvel Comics got a second book out of their Bantam deal when author Ted White (no, not the legendary stuntman who played hockey-masked slasher Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter) wrote Captain America: The Great Gold Steal... which is an odd one, as it was still presumably aimed at younger readers, and yet most of its chapters read like your average pulp crime novel, just with shield-wielding super soldier Captain America in the lead character slot that would usually be filled by a hard-boiled detective.

Like Reservoir Dogs would, decades later, have a group of criminals using color-based codenames attempting to pull off a heist together, The Great Gold Steal has a group of criminals using bird-based codenames attempting to pull off a heist – and, as the title indicates, this is a big one. They’re digging tunnels to bust into the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City so they can haul out gold bars in trucks – and if that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s quite similar to what happens in Die Hard with a Vengeance. Which is, again, a movie that came along decades later.

If you’re looking for a good action story about stealing gold from the Federal Reserve Bank, you’re better off sticking with Die Hard with a Vengeance, because White didn’t manage to work much good action into his story. The Captain America character is largely wasted. He isn’t given much opportunity to fight or sling his shield around. He isn’t given much to do other than get caught in an explosion, get knocked out, get taken captive... If this book was someone’s first exposure to Captain America, it’s not likely they were impressed by him. Readers of his comic book adventures were probably disappointed to see how underwhelming he is in The Great Gold Steal – and also disappointed that White wastes a few chapters going over Captain America’s superhero origin in great detail, when that’s a story that could have been told in a few paragraphs so we can get to the new story quicker.

It’s a shame that The Great Gold Steal mostly has Captain America get in small scuffles with street thugs because, like comic books, novels are a medium where the story is only limited by the author’s imagination. There’s no budget, it doesn’t take any extra money to have massive action sequences. White could have had Captain America doing some really cool stuff... but apparently he didn’t have much of an imagination when it came to this character or this story.

I went into Captain America: The Great Gold Steal with high hopes, as Captain America is one of my favorite Marvel characters, but found the book to be a letdown.