Captain America Leaps Past Rooftops Under a Full Moon — Print & Oil Painting

We are on the ground in an alley looking up, and the two red gloves are almost in our faces. The artist has foreshortened both arms until the forearms vanish and the hands become the largest objects in the picture, fingers spread, seams and creases drawn in with a fine ink line. Everything else recedes from them.

The figure behind those hands is coming down and forward, knees folded, the blue scale mail catching hard white edge light along every ridge. The mask carries a white A on the brow, the eyes are narrowed, and the mouth is a flat line. This is the crisp ink and flat colour language of a comic cover: black contours everywhere, no soft edges, hatching used for shadow.

The shield is not in his hands. It hangs in the air above and behind his head, seen at a steep angle so that the rings turn into an ellipse, with white streaks trailing off its rim to indicate spin. He has already let go of it, which is the detail the whole composition depends on.

Behind him a full moon sits dead centre, pale grey and cratered, large enough to halo the head. Buildings rise on both sides with fire escapes, cornices and lit windows drawn in receding perspective, power lines cross the upper left, and a scatter of small debris hangs in the air. Radial white speed lines run outward from the middle of the frame.

Letting go of it is the whole trick with this weapon. The alloy it is made from swallows impact instead of passing it on, so the disc keeps almost everything it is given and can be bounced off a wall, a wall behind that and a target after them, then arrive back where it started. A picture that shows the shield unattached and the hands empty is showing the part of the throw nobody else could make work. Part of our Marvel collection, next to the shield caught in the middle of a throw and the same disc strapped to his back as he lunges.