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Terminus Est
Member since Nov-5-04
431 posts
May-29-16, 01:05 AM (EDT)
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"WTF, Marvel"
 
   So, apparently the current writer of the Captain America comic has decided to go absolutely batshit insane, and he's taking Cap with him. I've never been a huge comics person - I can count the number of physical issues I've owned on one finger, and that one was bought for me when I was like... six. And, to be truthful, I'm not the world's biggest Cap fan (Iron Man is much more my flavor of badass). But what this writer is doing is shitting all over the legacy of a character that has almost certainly been around longer than he has.

I... I think I'll take my vitriol elsewhere. I've had to back off entirely too many f-bombs in this post. Just wanted to give other people a place to vent, if they so choose.


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  Subject     Author     Message Date     ID  
  RE: WTF, Marvel Matrix Dragon May-29-16 1
  RE: WTF, Marvel Gryphonadmin May-29-16 2
     RE: WTF, Marvel Terminus Est May-29-16 3
     RE: WTF, Marvel Matrix Dragon May-29-16 4
         RE: WTF, Marvel JFerio May-29-16 5
         RE: WTF, Marvel Mercutio May-29-16 6
             RE: WTF, Marvel Mercutio Jun-30-16 8
     RE: WTF, Marvel BeardedFerret May-30-16 7

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Matrix Dragon
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1655 posts
May-29-16, 01:18 AM (EDT)
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1. "RE: WTF, Marvel"
In response to message #0
 
   Eh, the issue did a pretty good job of setting up that there's some sort of mind control/brainwashing nonsense going on. I'm not gonna bother getting it, as it's a corner of Marvel I haven't been enjoying lately anyway, and the comic's going to be jumping feet first into Civil War 2: Civil Harder. But it's not the DOOM the internet is screaming about.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter


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Gryphonadmin
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17893 posts
May-29-16, 01:35 AM (EDT)
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2. "RE: WTF, Marvel"
In response to message #0
 
   LAST EDITED ON May-29-16 AT 01:37 AM (EDT)
 
>what
>this writer is doing is shitting all over the legacy of a character
>that has almost certainly been around longer than he has.

For those who haven't seen the news items this editorial decision has provoked: In the first issue of the new Captain America series that debuted this week, it was "revealed" (in huge sarcasm quotes) that Steve Rogers, the original World War II Captain America, has been a Nazi-slash-Hydra agent all along.

Now, leaving aside for a moment the fact that this makes no sense (he's been thwarting them at every turn since 1941 because... um... master plan?), I would like to address the larger meta-issue I feel is at the heart of the matter.

Marvel did this with Iron Man back in the '90s—"revealed" that he had been a villain (in that case, an agent of Kang the Conqueror, no less) for his entire career without anyone finding out until the Dramatic Reveal at the climax of a long, unwieldy story arc (Avengers: The Crossing). It was framed a little like that scene at the end of No Way Out where you find out that Kevin Costner was the Soviet agent he'd been hunting for throughout the film. (Um, spoilers.) All this happened shortly before the year-long weird Image-does-Marvel "event", Heroes Reborn (not to be confused with the recent and unrelated TV series of the same name), and when they brought the proper versions of the characters back after Reborn had run its course, they didn't even bother mentioning it in Invincible Iron Man again, which shows you what bullshit even Marvel themselves realized it was.

My point in bringing this up is twofold. One, nihil sub sole novum; and two, that was bullshit and a insult to the character, but this Captain America thing... this is actually spitting in the faces of the character's creators. Simon and Kirby were first-generation Americans whose parents were European Jews. Kirby's father and mother were Austrian. These were men who knew what fascism looked like. They created Captain America specifically to refute the likes of Hitler, who came into power when they were in their twenties. Not for nothing is he shown punching the Führer right in the middle of his face on the cover of his first issue. That may seem funny today, but at the time it was anything but. In March 1941, that was serious business (and a bold stance for a couple of Jewish kids from New York to take, at the height of the America First isolationist movement).

I've seen the right of Marvel to make the move, if not the move itself, defended as a matter of ownership-makes-it-art—"it's not an insult, it's creatives doing what they wish with a character they own"—but, well, my calm and reasoned response to that is more or less, "That's technically true, but hey, you know what? Fuck you." I've also seen people responding with, "Oh, well, they'll undo it soon enough, it's comics," [NOTE: I wrote this bit before I saw Matrix Dragon's post above, so I'm not singling him out here :) --G.] which I concede is also almost certainly true, but irrelevant to the central point of my thesis, which is that this is tasteless bullshit. Cap deserves better. Simon and Kirby deserve better, not because they were among the early gods of comics, but because they were human beings trying to project a little bit of upright decency into a world they must have felt had gone insane, and this development is—intentionally or not—a backhanded slap across the face of their intent.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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Terminus Est
Member since Nov-5-04
431 posts
May-29-16, 01:40 AM (EDT)
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3. "RE: WTF, Marvel"
In response to message #2
 
   Thank you, Gryph. I didn't have the words.


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Matrix Dragon
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1655 posts
May-29-16, 02:37 AM (EDT)
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4. "RE: WTF, Marvel"
In response to message #2
 
  
>I've also seen people responding with, "Oh, well, they'll undo it soon
>enough, it's comics," [NOTE: I wrote this
>bit before I saw Matrix Dragon's post above, so I'm not singling him
>out here :) --G.]

HOW DARE YOU, BLAH BLAH RANT :)

To be fair, my point is less 'they'll undo it soon', and more that I think it's actually a brainwashing plot that happened back during the recent Standoff mini-event, where Cap was turned back to his normal self from the Old Man he's been for the past year or two, while the Red Skull (Who has amazing telepathic powers these days) was watching and giving ominous narration.

This is of course countered by Marvel making big grand statements that Cap has always been a Hydra agent, and nothing will ever be the same again. Because Marvel Comics marketing department is run by drunk baboons.

HOWEVER

>this is tasteless bullshit. Cap deserves better. Simon and
>Kirby
deserve better, not because they were among the early gods
>of comics, but because they were human beings trying to project a
>little bit of upright decency into a world they must have felt had
>gone insane, and this development is—intentionally or not—a
>backhanded slap across the face of their intent.

This is also very true, and a large part of the reason I'm not going to continue buying the comic. I'll vote with my wallet, as I've done with DC for the past few years (As quite a few people have done actually, which led to DCs sales dropping to the point they panicked and tried damage control this week).

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter


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JFerio
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148 posts
May-29-16, 09:48 AM (EDT)
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5. "RE: WTF, Marvel"
In response to message #4
 
   >This is of course countered by Marvel making big grand statements that
>Cap has always been a Hydra agent, and nothing will ever be the same
>again. Because Marvel Comics marketing department is run by drunk
>baboons.

Yeah, I haven't even read the damned thing, and I'm convinced that the Marvel Bullpen is a faint shadow of what it once was. They wouldn't know good writing if Deadpool pointed it out to them from one of his comic pages. :P

>This is also very true, and a large part of the reason I'm not going
>to continue buying the comic. I'll vote with my wallet, as I've done
>with DC for the past few years (As quite a few people have done
>actually, which led to DCs sales dropping to the point they panicked
>and tried damage control this week).

I was firmly in the middle of the storyline playthrough of the first LEGO Marvel game when the news broke. I've finished the storyline mode, and done one or two freeplay elements within it... but I'm finding my enthusiasm for doing more freeplay in that particular game to have waned considerably sooner than most of the LEGO games... and not because the gameplay is lackluster. I'm debating whether or not I'm taking the LEGO Marvel Avengers game off my Steam wishlist, actually, and that's not TT's fault at all.

I'd stop buying their comics, but... that would require I have been purchasing them, and I haven't subscribed to a monthly comic book in almost two decades now. I kind stopped doing that when the owner of Fantasy Works here died, and Mile High Comics took the option to buy his shop out.





Jeffrey 'JFerio' Crouch
'It'll be all right... I think.' - Nene Romanova



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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
736 posts
May-29-16, 06:43 PM (EDT)
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6. "RE: WTF, Marvel"
In response to message #4
 
   >This is of course countered by Marvel making big grand statements that
>Cap has always been a Hydra agent, and nothing will ever be the same
>again. Because Marvel Comics marketing department is run by drunk
>baboons.

And it's worth noting they're lying about this. Marvel has recently started just... straight up lying to people about developments like this. In the past they'd use clever language or just be silent. But during Superior Spider-Man, they trotted out Dan Slott to swear blind that this was the new status quo and there would be no reversion at the same time he was breaking scripts about Peter's comeback.

(Sidebar: I liked Superior Spider-Man. It would have been very bad as the new status quo but since it wasn't, it was very good.)

So yeah, there's gonna be some bullshit retcon on this. I... I try and be patient with stories of this sort, because sometimes they end up being really good, but it is a bad idea for all the reasons Ben and others have said. This idea barely worked a decade ago when they played the "SHIELD is actually part of Hydra" card, because SHIELD, lets face it, has always been sinister as fuck, but even that didn't work if you squinted hard at it (why has Hydra been letting Nick Fury kick their asses for a half-century if they're actually his bosses?) and trying to extend that to Cap is an utter shitshow. The man can lift Mjolnir, for god's sake.

Right now the smart money is that Red Skull is hiding in his head, again, but still.

I would like to point out that blaming Marvel's writers for this may not be entirely fair. Yes, their names are the ones on the comics... but Marvel is exercising tighter-than-ever control over their core properties these days, and refusing an editorial directive from them is a great way to never work for them ever again, especially if you aren't a big name.

It's not for nothing that their biggest creative successes lately, at least in my view, are in peripheral properties where the creative teams aren't in handcuffs because they aren't working on tentpole franchises being run by idiots. Squirrel Girl. The new Patsy Walker book, which is written by Kate Leth and is 100% pure love. Ms. Marvel. Gwenpool. Radioactive Spider-Gwen, which is a book that dared to just say "fuck it, we're giving her a handheld dimensional teleporter so she can be mentored by Jessica Drew."

(Somehow, All-New Avengers is managing to also be great, but I'm waiting for them to fuck it up.)

So I'm trying not to be too hard on Nick Spenser, who does have bills to pay.

-Merc
Keep Rat


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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
736 posts
Jun-30-16, 03:36 AM (EDT)
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8. "RE: WTF, Marvel"
In response to message #6
 
   >>This is of course countered by Marvel making big grand statements that
>>Cap has always been a Hydra agent, and nothing will ever be the same
>>again. Because Marvel Comics marketing department is run by drunk
>>baboons.
>
>And it's worth noting they're lying about this...
>
>Right now the smart money is that Red Skull is hiding in his head,

Called it. Both them lying about what was happening, and this is just more Red Skull initiated Cosmic Cube fuckery.

I mean. This wasn't precisely hard to call. But still.

-Merc
Keep Rat


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BeardedFerret
Member since Apr-21-08
493 posts
May-30-16, 05:41 AM (EDT)
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7. "RE: WTF, Marvel"
In response to message #2
 
   I'm quite fond of Chris Evans' response to this clusterfuck:

https://mobile.twitter.com/chrisevans/status/735696011172012033


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