Book Review - Marvel Studios' Captain America: Brave New World - The Art of the Movie
- The Artbook Collector
- Jul 3
- 7 min read
July 3rd 2025
Marvel Studios are back with another artbook, this time based the big screen debut of Sam Wilson’s Captain America, after stepping into the mantle in back in 2021. The movie brought back old faces, but also introduced new alter egos into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which always makes for an interesting collection of concept art.
Marvel Studios' Captain America: Brave New World - The Art of the Movie is now here, offering a look at that art, with a release date of July 8th. I received a copy of the book and can now give my thoughts on the latest entry in the long running artbook series. As always, I will cover the 5 points you need to know about before buying; build quality, content, credits, use of space and value. You’ll see throughout the review that this one is a mixed bag, much more so than usual.
Build Quality
This book comes with a slipcase, now part of the newer format, and lithograph prints. The slipcase comes in at 30cm x 27cm and is a good quality too, strong and protective, not just decorative. It’s always nice when they are made like this, as it does give it a premium feel.
The book itself is a 29cm x 24.5cm hardcover like before, even matching the previous books that were sold without a slipcase. The binding is strong as expected, although the paper quality isn’t as high as what you get in most artbooks. It’s not bad by any means, it’s just not as thick as what you will find elsewhere. Unfortunately, like the previous release Marvel Televisions’ Agatha All Along: The Art of the Series, the cover art on the book is not good. It’s not even art, it’s simply made to look like a folder for documents. This is a real shame, as previously these would feature an image from one of the studios’ artists and comes across as low effort. You can see this in the images below.
Also like the last entries with this format, the prints are simply not good. Again, the images on them are dark and don’t take up the full space. They feel like filler to justify the price hike from $60 to $100, because a slipcase alone couldn’t do it. But they feel neither good in quality, nor something you would want to display, becoming a wasted opportunity when lithographs for other books on the market are much better.
Content
This is where things get interesting, because this book has some great content, things I’ve wanted to see return for a while, but is again plagued by previous problems that I struggle to overlook.
Up front, the art here is superb, Marvel Studios continues to showcase the work of their talented team throughout. Although it is subjective and I don’t critique the art itself, if you liked the previous books or have seen art online, you will find more to pore over here. Ian Joyner, Jana Schirmer, Keith Christensen and the always fantastic Ryan Meinerding, who has his own Marvel artbook, are just some of the wonderful artists featured throughout.
Marvel Studios' Captain America: Brave New World - The Art of the Movie features a look at the art for the characters, costumes, weapons, key frames and locations, what we have grown accustomed to with these books. However, there is more, as storyboards make their return which is a great inclusion, but more interestingly, colour scripts too.
The storyboards are done in two ways, traditional sketches and 3D models, with the later being rarer for the series. Storyboards were a common feature in books for the Infinity Saga, but were left out of more recent releases, so seeing them here for the scenes with Sam and Red Hulk, especially with the use of simple 3D models, gives further insight into the creation process.
The colour script is a most welcome addition, usually seen in artbooks based on animated movies, though in those cases it is often one spread, but here there are five. As mentioned in the commentary, they aren’t used much for live-action movies, making it a nice unique inclusion for this movie and artbook.
It’s no secret that Brave New World underwent changes throughout its production, so I was curious to see what they would feature from before these shifts. I’m happy to say you get a lot of very different designs that never made it to the screen. Of course, you get the costume design for Captain America and the Falcon, along with location art and costumes for other characters, but seeing what could have been is the best part.
The Serpent Society is the biggest inclusion of unused art, as it depicts the team with various abilities through technology infused with their bodies. This includes Cobra’s body stretching like a snake and Asp extending her jaw. It's fascinating to see what they removed and the willingness to share it is appreciated.
Of course, the big one people will likely want to see the most is concept art for The Leader. As mentioned in my article highlighting his unused concepts, there is a lot of weird and wonderful art to enjoy, from comic accurate depictions, to body horror takes on his look.
There is a lot for fans to explore and I could talk for a long time about the stuff shared, but I have to move onto an all too common problem with these books… print quality. Yet again, some of the images are too dark to see the detail in. Why this has continued to happen is bewildering, as it comes across as if they are sent to print without being checked. As always, the problem comes with dark clothing on a dark background, because it all smears together. Even black on black clothing hides any real detail and it feels like a disservice to the artists work. I don’t doubt it looks better on screen and we know from the Titan Books’ releases for the earlier artbooks that this can be improved greatly. Some pages here feel wasted, taken up by costume comparisons you can’t see clearly. Fortunately, there aren't as many like this as in previous books, but examples can be seen below.
The commentary throughout from the creative team and artists offer insights about intent and ideas, making for an engaging read that adds a lot to the book. Marvel have always been very good with this, making sure the art takes centre stage, but having informative interviews that make you not want to skip past them.
The problem again is that this book gets in its own way with the presentation, because the text is not the most clear to read. The font used is not consistent in its line weight, meaning that some parts of the letters are thicker than others. It’s often not too bad, but on some of the coloured backgrounds, it doesn’t look great. It’s a very strange decision that has never been an issue before and is the second instance of the designers seemingly not checking the visual clarity of the content. The third is coming shortly too.
Credits
This is always short and sweet for a Marvel artbook, as every image is credited on the page with a surname, with a full list of the artists in the back that notes each page they are featured on. It’s a great approach to doing this, one they have always done, so another brilliant job in this regard.
Use of Space
Marvel Studios' Captain America: Brave New World - The Art of the Movie is another solid example on how to fill the pages of a book. Every page has a clear layout and makes good use of the space to fit in as much as possible. Wasted space is a pet hate of mine, but I never worry about this with Marvel.
But now we come to the third case of the presentation getting in the way of the work that went into the book, because there is image loss in the centre fold. There are pieces of art that cross the centre, some as entire double page spreads, and you lose a good chunk of the image here early on in the book. It is pretty common issue in artbooks, but some are worse than others, with some doing a great job at minimising or avoiding it completely. At the back of this one it is much less of a problem, so not a consistent issue, but one that is highly frustrating. It's confusing not just for this book specifically, but artbooks in general and should have been resolved a long time ago by publishers.
You can see an example below, who knows if Sam is even in the picture, because a part of the image is swallowed up in the fold.
Value
A big sticking points for the new releases with a slipcase is the price. An RRP price of $100/ £89.99 is simply unacceptable in my opinion. For a 224 page book with thinner paper, continued dark print problems, and the low quality lithographs, it’s just too much, even if the slipcase is better than most. This is going to be the problem with the series in all of my reviews, because it never needed to be this way. When you can pre-order 2 artbooks based on video games or movies with a higher page count and thicker gloss paper for the same price as this book, it’s hard to justify.
There is a silver lining to this though, as it looks like some retailers are in agreement about the price, with some dropping it pre-emptively. I use Amazon to stay consistent and have seen that at the time of writing this, before the books official release, it’s 7% off in the US and a surprising 25% off in the UK. Of course, the drop in America isn’t huge, but the Agatha artbook is already 27% off after releasing just a month ago. Bargain hunting or waiting out might be the way to go if you are looking to add this to your collection and don't have $100 to burn.
Verdict
Marvel Studios' Captain America: Brave New World - The Art of the Movie is a book full of incredible art and insights, but some of its presentation lets it down. If you are able to see beyond the affected pages though, it has some of the most interesting early looks and unused ideas of the recent releases in the series. Fans will no doubt love these inclusions, but as an overall package, it is hard to recommend unless you find a good discount.
If you are interested though, you can order the book here;
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