Like Rubbing Salt Into the Wound...

[thironmaden.livejournal.com]

Ok, due to the recent post about Cap's lingering spirit showing up in the new Thor coming out ( Thor #11, I believe), I remembered a certian vid that I had watched about Cap and his death. After watching it, I was irritated. The more I thought about what had been said, the more pissed off I got. And I want to know what you guys think of it.


Not sure if this has been posted here but it's basically Cap's death on the news:

I feel that I could write several pages worth in response to all the things that piss me off in this thing but I will make it short in asking all of you this:

I'm I over-reacting to this?

Am I wrong in being mad at not only the Editor but also these "fans" that basically give Cap the completely short end of the stick?

Am I wrong in being mad that these people try to say it's "ok he's dead" because his death had meaning and he wasn't really relevant any more?

"Not relevant"? A man who did nothing but promote and defend personal liberty and freedom is not relevant? Granted he was a man out of time, but he was a GOOD man. He was even a fucking artist, for God's sake, how many super-heroes are artists?!

His death had meaning? Why? How? Because the present Editor at Marvel demands that his writers make them "meaningful" by being permenant? No. It wasn't meaningful - it was meaningless. Just like when JFK was shot down, just like when so many good, no, great men were shot down. How is a violent death like that "meaningful"? And to make it worse, the blame is put on Tony, Cap's best friend and practically-canonized-exwife. Don't even get me started on the shit-storm that is being hurled at Tony and the complete and utter gang-rape of his character in the recent Marvel storylines, that is a whole other discussion.

Why is it that practically every other character in the Marvel universe gets revived AT LEAST TWICE but Cap gets, basically, jack shit? Oh, just to make this clear, him waking up from the ice DOES NOT COUNT AS A REVIVAL.

I just don't understand this anymore - I really don't.

If this is some sort of ploy to "test" us and see how long we stick around till they bring Cap back it is really shitty of them and even worse writing on their part.


I just want to know that I am not alone in feeling this way. That I am in some way justified in wanting to slap the people in this video and fire the editor at Marvel and every other "edgy" writer involved in the CW, Secret Invasion, and new CA storylines (and any other horrible storylines I am forgetting).

I'm not accepting Bucky as the new Captain America and quite frankly I never will. In my completely biased opinion, he's a goddamn wuss-ass. Cap never carried a gun, he didn't like them, he didn't need them. He was above that. And Bucky toting a gun in the Cap costume is, in my opinion, disrespectful to his memory (especially considering how he died) and to everything he stood for. Cap didn't need a gun, he survived many years and many battles without one. He proved that guns didn't always win a battle.

He was - IS - a good man. A good character. He deserved a hell of a better death than the one he got and a hell of a better send off than the ones in this vid.

I think those are the things that piss me off the most...the video just reinforces it.

Comments

[bethany-cabe.livejournal.com]

This goes over the character limit apparently, so I'll put it in two posts.

Ah, the old 'Cap's death on the news' thing. What a controversy. I'm Welsh, see; over here, unless you can find yourself a good comics shop you're stuck buying the Marvel Panini 'four-issues-in-one' comics that are a good three years behind the current Marvel timeline: we've just finished House of M. Seriously. That's how far behind we are. When Cap was killed, in order to maximise the effectiveness of the stunt it was put on every news station in the world, it seems - including the BBC. As I say, we've just finished House of M here. Civil War is a long, long way into the horizon yet. My housemates and I were all sitting around having tea and biscuits when suddenly our TV was giving us terrible spoilers for our incredibly nerdy past-time that NEVER OTHERWISE GETS TV COVERAGE.

We were less than impressed.

The good news is, we managed to hurl ourselves at the off button before my spoiler-loathing boyfriend strolled in around three seconds later. Nonetheless, I read all of Civil War knowing Cap was going to die and just waiting for it to happen, whilst banning my boyfriend from every website that might mention it. This is no easy feat when that includes the BBC. It's even less easy when it doesn't happen in an actual Civil War comic, so we got to the end of our painstakingly collected TPBs and found that Cap was still alive and well, and the only TPB that actually had the story in it was called... wait for it...

'The Death Of Captain America'.

Precisely how was I meant to read that as a proper story? In what way was Steve's death an awe-inspiring climax to the kind of complex and beautiful narrative that makes you weep for the pure joy of reading it? Once I finally tracked down the relevant issue to read through, I found it sorely anti-climactic. Above and beyond anything else, it was poorly-written. If you're going to kill off a major character you do it at the end of a properly-dedicated story-arc in which the death is the jaw-dropping finale that will have a resounding impact on the readers; you don't do it a third of the way into a comic and then fill the rest with the supporting cast twittering about the place and then wandering vaguely off to find some villains. The whole thing left me sitting staring at the back page wondering if Steve really was dead; not out of shock that they'd killed Captain America, but because they'd done it so blandly. It's a good job I didn't blink at the relevant part, or I'd have completely missed it.

[bethany-cabe.livejournal.com]

And the reason for that is that there was no point in making a big showcase of Steve's death because everyone knew going into it what was going to happen, since it got smeared over international media outlets to let everyone know. If he'd died properly, at the end, everyone would have been twiddling their thumbs waiting for it to happen. But really, what exactly was the point in having the news report it? I can't say how well known Cap is in America, because I'm neither American nor living there. But over here no one knows who he is unless they're regular comics readers. Seriously. No one. Over here everyone has heard of Spider-Man, everyone has heard of the Hulk (bizarrely) and everyone has heard of the X-Men; although not any individual members. No one has heard of the Avengers. Even fewer people have heard of individual members. And if they had, I doubt anyone would care about Cap. He's a man wrapped in a flag calling himself Captain Country. British people in general aren't enamoured of that level of cheese, and I'm Welsh - we definitely aren't impressed (a good point to raise here, therefore, is that in spite of that, I still thought he was a great character. Says a lot, doesn't it?) So the only people who would have paid even the slightest attention to the BBC casually announcing the death of said character are the ones who really didn't want to be loudly told such a massive spoiler over their afternoon tea and biscuits.

It was all a gimic. As far as I'm concerned that's all there is to it. It was a particularly inept way of trying to recreate the shockwaves and subsequent rise in readership that DC got when they killed off Superman, combined with a handy way of burying their heads in the sand in order to not specify whether Steve Rogers votes Republican or Democrat.Otherwise I'm not sure what meaning they imagine they've given his rather untimely demise; granted, he shoved that guard out of the bullet's path, but that hardly qualifies him as dying to save others, which is about the only meaningful death possible. I'm a firm believer that lives have meaning, not deaths. Death just means you can no longer make a difference. Not bringing him back just means Cap will continue to have no meaning for a while.

So runs my opinion anyway. Also, I suspect most of that was a tad incoherent, because we're celebrating Noson Calan Gaeaf at the moment (Welsh thing) so I'm quite drunk. Many apologies to all.