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Subject: "WTF, Marvel"     Previous Topic | Next Topic
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Gryphonadmin
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22375 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.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
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  Subject     Author     Message Date     ID  
 WTF, Marvel [View All] Terminus Est May-29-16 TOP
   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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