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Bloodstone’s Imaginary Friends.

Published 2011

This reading order is hilarious. They basically said “yeah, I mean technically all the WW2 comics are canon, but what really even happened during those?” So instead of using any of them, they threw together a few recap issues that give you the idea of each of the important characters from that time period.

The puzzling part is, which element of this is required knowledge for later?
Is it the secret society? The Covenant???

Ulysses Bloodstone:	Monster Hunter
Wyatt Crowley:	Sorcerer
Jefferson Chambers:	Dimension-Hopper
Menace:	Magic-Batman
Vanessa Baker:	GOAT-Detective
Murderous Lion:	Healing Factor

I checked, 5 of these 6 only exist to be in this club.
This club appears ONE OTHER TIME in a 4-issue Wolverine story.
And they had the gall to take Ulysses Bloodstone, a character that’s been around since the 30s (and that I admittedly found out about through Werewolf by Night on Disney+), and use him to make these rabble-rousers seem legit.

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So it’s not “The Covenant” that makes this issue important.
Namor characterization?
He acts mostly the same here as he does in everything, a bit dick-ish. He does explicitly say why he’s helping with the war though.

He also chooses to destroy an all-powerful Atlantean artifact instead of using it to win the war because it would make his people sad to see it. Seems like too small of potatoes to add this whole issue though.

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Cap characterization? There was one novel idea in this, where he is very awkward in his delivery of the “Inspiring Captain America!“ battle-speeches, but he tries anyway because he realizes that Captain America can galvanize troops.

But he also recognizes that he wouldn’t make it in talkies, so he inspires with actions too… even if he’s not a big fan of the things he comes up with.

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So as far as I can tell, there’s really no reason to include this issue other than giving Cap and Namor some direct interaction in WW2. But we don’t get that with Android Human Torch, so I doubt its even that.