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Posted by:

MyHeadHurts

Date:

March 12th, 2007 8:54 PM

Header:

The Death of Captain America

Bulletin:

(View this original post in all its glory--ie, with pictures--here: http://decaf.livejournal.com/102788.html)

I've never been much of a Marvel guy.

Over the years, I've read some Marvel comics with some small degree of regularity. I generally return to my favorite few titles every couple of years to see where the characters have gone. Thanks to an assignment I had at Wizard when I was an intern, I had (until 1999) read every appearance of The Punisher ever published. Since then, I keep up with the character pretty regularly, though I will admit to having missed large chunks of the recent runs. When I was 11 or 12, and Venom was one of the most popular characters in comics, I found myself reading the Spider-Man titles regularly.

And then, there's Captain America. He's the guy I've read the most, having started with Mark Gruenwald's Fighting Chance storyline where they "killed" Steve Rogers and replaced him briefly with younger, cooler America-themed heroes, and continuing through the Waid and Jurgens runs on the book. When it became a post-9/11 propaganda tool, I dropped it for a long time, but recently rediscovered it when Ed Brubaker did the unthinkable and brought back Cap's long-dead sidekick Bucky Barnes as a new character called Winter Soldier.

Though I know for a fact that I've read comics much older (and at a younger age), the first comic I very distinctly remember owning and really liking was Captain America #350, in which Steve Rogers fights John Walker for the "title" of Captain America. Rogers had been in the role since World War II and had only recently (at that point) surrendered it to Walker. I can't remember what made him decide he needed the job back, but they had a good, old-fashioned superhero smackdown and in the end, Steve won and became Cap again. Having lost, John Walker planned on surrendering the mask and role in a very public fashion and, in the following issue, was shot by a sniper at a press conference with dozens of people around to witness it (he got better and is currently leading Marvel's new team, "Omega Flight," as U.S. Agent, the identity and costume that Rogers had taken on while Walker was Captain America).

After having lost (to Iron Man) Marvel's recent Civil War event, Steve Rogers very publicly surrendered his mask and Captain America identity, as well as surrendering himself to the police. He was on his way to court, followed by the press and dozens or hundreds of protestors, when he was shot by a sniper.

The latter, which happened in last week's Captain America #25 (yes, I know that 25 is less than 350. Damn relaunches!), has been the subject of just about every comic fan's conversations this week. Marvel managed to do something that's virtually unheard-of in today's comics landscape, which was to keep the Big Secret, well, a secret, almost until the comic shops opened on the comic's release date.

Almost.

Around 9 a.m. on Wednesday, the mainstream press had picked up the story. The New York Daily News had a page 3 story with a big-ass headline about Cap's assassination, and the comics press didn't take long to pick it up either (Newsarama had the story almost immediately). It was a slow news day, and we're in the middle of a war, so a comic book hero with a patriotic theme being assassinated was picked up by everyone from CNN to Stephen Colbert. So that ruined the surprise for most comic fans, but what is probably more notable is that there was still, at that late date, a surprise to be ruined.

Every major storyline in recent years has been revealed by someone. There are a lot of mouths to keep shut, there are a lot of links on the chain, and ultimately "big event" comics are advance-solicited for 3-6 months prior to their release to prepare retailers for the kind of overwhelming demand that occurs once in a blue moon when the mainstream media picks up a comic book story. The solicitations, even when they don't directly state what's going to happen, tend to be so thinly-veiled that they create an air of anticlimax around the entire story. It was with that in mind that Marvel embarked on a media blackout and disinformation campaign regarding Captain America #25, which included everything from advance-soliciting a generic cover (instead of the one with Cap's bloody hand on it that was ultimately the "regular" cover) to flat-out denying in several interviews that Captain America was potentially one of the characters to be killed in Civil War (Marvel's editorial department would point out that they didn't technically lie, since he died after Civil War and the assassination took place in his own book). The impact of nobody knowing about the death of a major character was enormous. The book was sold out EVERYWHERE before noon on the day of its release. Most stores didn't order nearly enough to even scratch the surface of demand or please their most die-hard customers, since Captain America's true cause of death was low circulation. Marvel has assured collectors that they'll be able to get their first prints for cover price thanks to the largest-ever overprint of a comic, which will ship with next week's shipment to most comic book stores, but in the meantime there has been much consternation among the Marvel faithful about not having any kind of forewarning that this thing was rolling down the tracks like a train on fire.

By and large, though, I feel like this has had the desired effect. The comics-reading public has been left shocked and numb by the loss of a revered and beloved character. The sudden, seemingly-arbitrary nature and the lack of warning both are feeding rumors that Quesada's "There ain't gonna be no resurrection" claims might actually have weight. Interest in the character is higher than it has been since Heroes Reborn ended and Mark Waid got the title back. Whether they can make serious hay with this, or it will turn out to be a spectacularly bad idea that helped sales for a few months, only time will tell.

What might be more intriguing than the marketing aspect or fan reaction, though, is the notion that Quesada and (Cap writer Ed) Brubaker both appear to be committed to the notion of leaving Steve Rogers dead for the foreseeable future. While Joey Q won't totally rule out a resurrection, he says that there are no plans for one, and that Rogers will not be swooping in to save the day, for example, during this summer's Big Marvel Event Comic World War Hulk. Brubaker takes it a step further, having told Newsarama last week that while he hasn't given any thought to how he might resurrect Captain America, he has plotted the next two years of the comic. So whoever's going to be the NEW Captain America ostensibly already has two years of stories ahead of them before Steve Rogers can even perceivably return. We'll see about that once sales numbers settle down from the shock of #25.

Publishers have a long history of talking about how dead characters really are dead in comics. Dan Didio said it about Booster Gold when he died in 52, and Gold didn't even remain dead until the end of that series, returning about 20 issues after his "death" and revealing that he'd faked the whole thing. Over the years, characters who were killed and who editors promised were "gone for good" include Captain America (twice before this), the second Robin (Jason Todd), Superman, Bucky, Aunt May, Hal Jordan (twice), Hank Henshaw, Supergirl, Barry Allen and just about any villain you can name. The only person I can think of who's still dead, is Mongul. And he doesn't really count because he's been replaced by a "son" we never knew he had, with an identical costume and near-identical personality. My point here is that it's neither surprising nor binding to hear them say that for Steve Rogers, "dead means dead." What is interesting is that it seems they might mean it.

Years ago, following the success of the first year or two of Brian Michael Bendis' now record-setting run on Marvel's Ultimate Spider-Man, I remember having the conversation with a friend that the "Ultimate" universe was a potential goldmine of new story potential for Marvel. The Ultimate line essentially is a Cliff's Notes version of the Marvel Universe. It features the same popular and well-known characters, but eliminates so much of what makes mainstream comics inaccessible to new readers, namely complex backstories and convoluted continuity. Using many of the same characters and story elements from the "classic" Marvel Universe (known to fans as the "616" universe), Ultimate comics give old characters and stories a new, fresh face. Among the characters who have received the Ultimate treatment over the years have been Spider-Man, The Avengers (Captain America, Giant-Man, Wasp, Thor et. al.), Iron Man, The Fantastic Four and several others who have had miniseries or guest appearances.

The reason that the Ultimate Universe has an impact on the permanence (or perceived permanence) of the Death of Captain America is simple: Marvel no longer has to "revert" the 616 version of a character to "normal" in order to sync up the monthly comics with a movie or TV show when it comes out, or to please the longtime fans with the familiarity they crave. The Ultimate versions of characters are equally as viable, sometimes moreso, from both a story and sales perspective. Many times in the past, both major publishers have tried to create parallel or tangent universes that allowed them to make dramatic changes to their mainstay characters or titles while not actually harming their viability as non-comics "properties," but until the Ultimate Universe came along, nobody had successfully done so. From a marketing standpoint, the death of Steve Rogers could be the best way for Marvel to test the viability of such a strategy. Take a beloved but somewhat stagnant character, introduce radical change, leave change intact. Meanwhile, if a movie comes up and you need Steve Rogers to be his old living, breathing, shield-throwing self again? Introduce a hot creative team on Ultimate Captain America and reset that version of the character to the '40s standard. It would be perceived by the hardcore fans either as a cop-out or as an incredibly ballsy new approach to serial storytelling. Unfortunately for Marvel, it may be impossible to guess which opinion would win out until it's too late for them to change course if they don't like the answer.

For my part, I'm done. I've never been much of a Marvel guy anyway, and now they've killed my favorite character. Civil War was, to me, a disaster. Everyone was written out of character, particularly Stark and Rogers. Tony became a crazed fascist willing to sell out his friends and even kill to keep on the "right" side of a ridiculous law. To most readers, Iron Man and those fighting with him became the Bad Guys, and seeing them win (and their victory being touted as the "new standard" for the Marvel Universe) sent entirely the wrong message to the thousands of readers who were picking up the series because they had seen it on TV or heard about it on the radio and thought that it was an interesting new angle from which to view superheroes. Killing Steve Rogers fits right in with that, though, as I've always thought of Cap as the conscience or soul of the Marvel Universe (you want to know why? Read Alex Ross's terrific maxi-series Earth X). You let the bad guys win, then you destroy the conscience of your universe? What makes these people so damn heroic if they're being paid by the government to do what they do? If they're willing to recruit maniacs like the Green Goblin and Venom as long as it helps them win? Marvel has stepped off a very, very steep cliffside and I don't know whether they've got what it takes to salvage what's left of themselves when they get to the bottom. Maybe they do; maybe they have a plan.

But I, for one, won't be there to find out.

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