{"id":508,"date":"2007-03-15T12:33:58","date_gmt":"2007-03-15T12:33:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=508"},"modified":"2007-03-15T12:33:58","modified_gmt":"2007-03-15T12:33:58","slug":"captain-america-is-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=508","title":{"rendered":"Captain America is dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.]
\nI 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.
\nWhat 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.)
\nHow 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?
\n(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<\/i> 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.)
\nIt just makes me think of Mark Gruenwald<\/a>. 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.
\nI 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading Captain America is dead<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-8c","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}