CAPTAIN AMERICA #15 — Chip Zdarsky and Valerio Schiti Bring the Underworld to War
The Red Skull allies with Mephisto, and Captain America must rally an army of free souls from the underworld. Chip Zdarsky and Valerio Schiti turn the cosmic horror of the dead into a battlefield, and it is one of the most intense arcs of the run so far.
There is a specific kind of energy that comes from watching Chip Zdarsky and Valerio Schiti trade off in Captain America. You expect the political intrigue, the gritty street-level tension, and the grounded character work. But when they decide to take Steve Rogers’ shield down into the literal underbelly of the afterlife, everything changes. This isn’t just a comic book fight; it’s a full-scale supernatural siege, and the visual language Schiti brings to the dead is breathtaking.
The premise here is wonderfully chaotic. Mephisto, the devil of Marvel’s universe, has a volatile partner in the Red Skull, and together they are unleashing an army of vengeful spirits. The free souls of the underworld are caught in the crossfire, and Captain America finds himself in a position he never asked for: trying to rally the dead. He needs to form his own spectral legion, just in time to push back against Mephisto’s restless hordes. It’s a high-stakes battle for the very nature of the afterlife, and the Red Skull is at the center of it.
What makes this issue such a compelling read right now is how the creative team balances the cosmic scale with the personal stakes. You can feel the weight of the war in Schiti’s art—the way the spirits move, the way the underworld looks when it’s under siege. It’s not just background noise; it’s a character in itself. And Zdarsky writes Steve Rogers not just as a soldier, but as a leader who has to make impossible choices in a place where death is the only currency. If you love seeing a hero stretched to their absolute limits by forces they can’t punch away, this is the issue to grab.
If you’ve been following the cosmic side of Marvel lately, you know that Mephisto has been a looming presence, but seeing him interact with the Red Skull’s hatred is a fresh and terrifying dynamic. It reminds me of the way Jonathan Hickman handled the cosmic horror in his Avengers run, but with a much more visceral, immediate punch. The Red Skull has always been a villain who refuses to stay down, and giving him the power of hell’s own army is a nightmare we’ve been waiting to see played out.