Captain America is dead

This has actually been getting a lot of mainstream press attention. That means Marvel plan on sticking with it for, oh, at least a year. [More seriously, it’s an attempt by the Marvel Comics lads to emulate the legacy hero thing they have going at DC, where they’re on to their fourth or so Flash and Green Lantern by now. It won’t work, even if it’s a serious attempt, because the next group in charge will want to spike sales and will bring Cap back to do so.]
I used to read Captain America. I read it when he gave up his identity because he lost faith in America. And when he lost his job because the government wanted to control him. And when he turned into a werewolf. And when he was drawing his own comic book adventures for Marvel Comics. And when he almost went transgender thanks to a villainous feminizing process. And when he got very sick and, er, died. (He got better.) Once upon a time I would have cared about this. But now? Now I just don’t care.
What is surprising to me is that many other people actually do. I’ve come across lengthy impassioned discussions online where hundreds of people who never read comics weigh in on the horrors of Captain America’s death while Osama bin Laden is still threatening our freedom or whatever. The news made a big deal of it all over the world and the event has the great and the good in pointy-headed comics lit circles talking. (Warren Ellis, Heidi Mac, Dirk Deppey etc over at the Engine, frex.)
How did this get to be a major media event? I mean, Does anyone read superhero comics any more that isn’t already an initiate? Seriously. Anyone? Young folk love superheroes (see the movies – heck, even the Fantastic Four movie was a hit), and they love comics (see the suggess of manga – where the real sequential art action is these days) so why don’t they love superhero comics?
(Well, there are lots of reasons, and they are all boring – price rises, competing media, distribution issues, etc. About a decade ago, Marvel began a surprisingly good attempt to go mainstream, with some cutting-edge creators doing very good work and some solid, if failure-prone, attempts to broaden the market. 2003’s Trouble was a late example of this; intended to recreate the romance comic market for teenage girls, with a story about a girl getting unexpectedly pregnant; unfortunately it was sold in comic shops, so the photos of teen girls in swimsuit on the covers were somewhat recontextualised . It also wasn’t particularly good, by all accounts. Superhero connection – this was how Spider-Man was conceived. Yes, wrap your brain around that True Believer, Marvel released a miniseries about how Spidey’s mum and dad conceived him. This was the death knell of Marvel’s attempt to take supers stuff to the mainstream.)
It just makes me think of Mark Gruenwald. He’s the guy who loved comics so much that when he died, they put his ashes in the printing ink of a collection of his best work and sold it to comics geeks all over the world (not me). He wrote Captain America for 10 years, longer than anyone else. I think he wouldn’t have liked this plot development too much.
I guess there is no point to this blog entry then. I just wanted to write about superhero comics for once and this was an excuse. Go figure.

10 thoughts on “Captain America is dead”

  1. There was a thing on the radio about his death. I learned that he wasn’t super, he just was a regular guy with lots of steroids. Like Barry Bonds. (haha baseball joke for me!)
    I tried making metaphors with Captain America, using “like” or “as,” on how he was America itself. And yes, I know I was making a similie therefore.
    Can you offer some insight into this?

  2. Captain America’s steroids are all right, because he used them to fight Hitler. If Barry Bonds used steroids to punch Hitler in the nose, we would all be cool with it.

  5. It’s hard for me to beleive they would kill off such an iconic character like Captain America. Some serious symbolism there. It looks like the Punisher may take up the mantle though.
    I recently did a story about Cap’s Death over at Highbrid Nation. I wanted to talk about it from the perpective of the Hip Hop community. Check it out if you get a chance.

  6. Interesting! A Mexican Cap would be cool by me 🙂 You know of that miniseries Truth? I never read it but understand it is about a black guy the US military tried out the super serum on first (to see if it was safe before risking it on a white guy). Heavy with the politics.

  7. If only Captain America had taken out the Yankees……
    It’s my ONLY regret in (his) life!

  8. The truly surprising thing about the death of Captain America is the fact that it was actually a good issue that was completely in line with the story that has been building through the titles for the past two years of Brubaker’s run. Cap’s death was something he apparently had planned to do a little down the line, but the opportunity arose to tie it to the end of Civil War. Also, it wasn’t actually conceived to be the media circus it has become. Become sort of weirdly, in my opinion, given the lack of the character’s resonance outside of the States.
    The Punisher thing is basically a gag. Matt Fraction has been writing Punisher War Journal with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Punisher picked up Cap’s mask at the end of Civil War, but I don’t see this Punisher Cap lasting more than a couple of issues. The most likely successor is back-from-the-dead-but-really-wasn’t-dead-all-along Bucky (aka the Winter Soldier). And I’m not being funny, but I give Cap’s death two years tops. Brubaker is a massive fan of Steve Rogers, and no way would he engineer a storyline that saw him permanently, definitively dead.

  9. I have wondered whether this resurgence in comic book movies is to do with the 20-year nostalgia factor that’s been commented on elsewhere. The people making a lot of decisions were “kids” 20 years ago, and we yearn to recapture the magic of those gone days. The same kind of thing happenned in the 90s with stuff from the 70s. I guess I just always saw the real iconic comic stuff, where it became something more than a 2 second thrill, came from the 80s. Things like Watchmen and the Dark Knight returns. You know?

  10. Yeah man, the 2-year gap is absolutely to blame. GI Joe movie in pre-production, Transformers movie almost out – only our generation could think this was a good idea…
    There were wonderful supers comics in the 70s – lots of crazy creative stuff happened then. But in the 80s supers comics actually started interrogating its own mythology (Miracleman and Dark Night Returns and Watchmen being the ur-texts), and that was pretty damn powerful. Literally changed the way we understood supers as an entertainment form.

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