« Home | More publicity stunts from Marvel, with Capt. Amer... » | Courier-Journal interviews Scott McCloud » | The "new" WW may contain the same darkness errors ... » | Scripps-Howard's never-ending fluff-coating » | NY Daily News article on the 300 movie » | Dan Buckley sounds like he's parroting DC's excuses » | Deepak Chopra, naive filmmaker » | Jeep corporation and Marvel want to write online c... » | Sixth Comic Book Carnival » | Edgier material may boost publisher's revenue toda... » 

Saturday, March 10, 2007 

Another astute observation on how Capt. America "ended"

I hadn't noted this previously, but in Peter Sanderson's latest op-ed on Quick Stop Entertainment, he makes a good point about how Cap "ended" his career in defeat:
The end of Civil War, in which Captain America decides he is wrong for fighting for the freedom of his fellow superheroes, and an already infamous Civil War: Frontline sequence in which a woman self-righteously denounces the Captain for knowing nothing about America since he doesn’t waste time on YouTube (Say what? I would think Cap keeps himself rather busy continually saving the lives of this woman and other Americans over the course of his career. This woman’s attitude smacks of ageism. This suggests that 21st century Marvel regards the original Captain as a dated character. “‘He hasn't been living in the modern world and the world does move," says Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada.” in the CNN report.

And here I think of Captain America as representing American ideals, which have endured for over two hundred years, just as I believe Lee, Englehart, and Gruenwald did. Just reading the better Captain America stories from the last four decades, such as theirs, demonstrates how the character consistently adapts to changing times. I’d feel better if CNN and the Daily News had quoted Marvel representatives as extolling the greatness of the original Captain America rather than seeing Marvel, in and out of the stories, badmouthing the character as irrelevant to 21st century America.

If Marvel was intent on killing off Captain America, why couldn’t the company have given him a heroic demise, like the one that Stan Lee and John Romita, Sr. gave Captain George Stacy in Amazing Spider-Man #90 (1970) or the one that Chris Claremont and John Byrne gave Phoenix in Uncanny X-Men #137 (1980). Even Mar-Vell’s demise from cancer in Jim Starlin’s The Death of Captain Marvel (1982) showed more courage and dignity than the ignominious killing of Captain America, arrested and handcuffed as a criminal for his role in Civil War.
Exactly. This end-in-defeat approach is something that's been turning up quite a bit lately. 3 years ago, both Identity Crisis and Avengers: Disassembled bore conclusions that showed the DCU and MCU casts as unheroic and incompetant. And to call Cap a "dated" character is also insulting and shows that Quesada and company have no genuine respect for the character. And just what does YouTube and MySpace have to do with any of this?

I thought about some of this before, but hadn't the time to write about it until now. But this too is a serious problem with comics today, that they're shunning heroism in favor of defeatism. Another serious problem that needs to be fixed.

Labels: ,

About me

  • I'm Avi Green
  • From Jerusalem, Israel
  • I was born in Pennsylvania in 1974, and moved to Israel in 1983. I also enjoyed reading a lot of comics when I was young, the first being Fantastic Four. I maintain a strong belief in the public's right to knowledge and accuracy in facts. I like to think of myself as a conservative-style version of Clark Kent. I don't expect to be perfect at the job, but I do my best.
My profile

Archives

Links

  • avigreen2002@yahoo.com
  • Fansites I Created

  • Hawkfan
  • The Greatest Thing on Earth!
  • The Outer Observatory
  • Earth's Mightiest Heroines
  • The Co-Stars Primer
  • Realtime Website Traffic

    Comic book websites (open menu)

    Comic book weblogs (open menu)

    Writers and Artists (open menu)

    Video commentators (open menu)

    Miscellanous links (open menu)

  • W3 Counter stats
  • Bio Link page
  • blog directory Bloggeries Blog Directory View My Stats Blog Directory & Search engine eXTReMe Tracker Locations of visitors to this page  
    Flag Counter Free Hit Counters
    Free Web Counter

    This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

    make money online blogger templates

Older Posts Newer Posts

The Four Color Media Monitor is powered by Blogspot and Gecko & Fly.
No part of the content or the blog may be reproduced without prior written permission.
Join the Google Adsense program and learn how to make money online.