Reborn Issue 3 Recap

[tsukinofaerii.livejournal.com]

Seeing as Reborn issue 4 is due out tomorrow (gods help us all), here's your Issue 3 recap!

I apologize in advance for whatever pain is about to be inflicted upon you all.

Comments

[harmonyangel.livejournal.com]

If you're claiming that this strips the death of any emotional impact, then you have to say that about every single comics character who's been brought back from the dead, including Bucky. Resurrections are a part of comics. But for the readers, and the other characters, Steve's death still happened. The funeral still happened. The grief still happened. The pain still happened. My grandfather died last week, and even if he came back next week, it wouldn't erase the pain my family felt when we stood around his coffin.

But these are comics, and resurrections happen. The important thing is how they're handled. Originally, Ed Brubaker wanted to revive Cap almost immediately, within a few issues of the death. It was never meant to be permanent, and it was only when Marvel decided to make Steve's death into an Event with a capital E that Brubaker was forced to stretch his story out. In the meantime, we got Bucky dealing with his role in this new world. And I'm sure we'll still get that. Bucky isn't going to go back to wearing his WWII costume just because Steve is back. He's still going to be a hero, and he's still going to have to work to define himself, this time in a world where Steve is also there. I'm interested in that story, and I am certain that Brubaker will give us that story.

As for the fact that this is a miniseries -- that's how comics work. That's marketing. This is to catch new readers, and to make an Event out of Steve's life the same way his death was an Event (Fallen Son was a miniseries with Cap's main book in limbo, too). But as far as readers are concerned, this pretty much IS the main Cap book right now; there's no real difference, beyond a title, between this book and what would be happening in the actual Cap book. If you need a Bucky-as-Cap fix, go read New Avengers. But this is what's happening in "the Cap book" right now. And when this arc is over, the story will move back to the main Cap title, and we'll continue.

This is not shoddy storytelling. This is a resurrection that is reviving Cap not just for the Marvel U, but for readers across the country. It's reestablishing his origin and his past, and bringing him back into the light. It doesn't cancel out the past two years of comics, it doesn't cancel out the impact of his death, and it doesn't cancel out Bucky. It's just the next part of the story.

[melisus.livejournal.com]

I disagree at every level with you on this. It's not the idea of Steve coming back itself that causes me to dislike this comic, because yes, resurrections happen all the time and are a part of comics, but this one is still not good storytelling. Compare Reborn to Hal Jordan's return as the Green Lantern - he'd been dead for a good while and then came back in a strong powerful story. And Bucky's resurrection was entirely different. He was BELIEVED dead by everyone but it turned out he was alive all along. What Reborn has done has completely nullified Steve's death - the funeral, the burial, everything because he was never dead to begin with and this is different from Bucky's story because with Steve there originally was a body. Now it's just sort of vanished into some sort of plot wormhole because - and I cannot stress this enough - Steve was apparently shot with a TIME BULLET. Which is shown to be even more of a farce because the idea directly contradicts Steve's spiritual appearance in Thor. If he was never really dead, how could his ghost appear to Thor?

I'd like to know where you got your information on Brubaker though, just as an aside. Because I have in my hands a transcript of an interview where he says it's not his intention on ever bringing Steve back - some other writer will have to do the job. So I'm not so sure about the idea of Marvel forcing him to drag the death out - in fact, this story stinks of just the opposite: pressure to bring him back.

And yeah, Fallen Son was a mini-series, but Steve's death was part of the core comic. His return, and the subsequent issue of "Who will be Cap now?" is being planned strictly for a mini-series when something supposedly as big as this and critical to the main plot of the core series should be part of the main comic. But that's evidently just another issue of companies wanting more money so they can charge more for a mini-series.

I disagree that this is reintroducing Cap to new readers and going over his past. Comics like The Marvels Project are doing just that, or Theatre of War. Captain America: Reborn is a sore excuse for a story and not anywhere near the sort of engaging plot I've come to expect from Brubaker.

And I have to say, I feel you're completely missing the point of my dislike of the comic. This is not an issue of, "Well Steve should stay dead because Bucky's so much more interesting", not at all.

[harmonyangel.livejournal.com]

1.) I hated Hal Jordan's resurrection story, so we'll have to chalk that up to a matter of taste. I'd much rather be reintroduced to the streamlined history of a character than have some half-assed moral thrust onto me about how fear is EVIL and blind courage is the most noble thing ever.

2.) J. Michael Straczynski has never really had any intention of working with the rest of Marvel continuity, if his hissy fit over Spider-Man: One More Day and his decision to leave Thor because Marvel wanted to use him in a crossover are any indication. It doesn't surprise me in the least that he would use a ghostly Steve without regard to what anyone else was going to do with the character. However, having read that issue, I don't think it's ever completely clear that Steve is a ghost -- and if Steve is bouncing around through time, stuck in limbo, how do we know it wasn't just an astral projection of that?

3.) I got this information from Brubaker himself, at a panel at HeroesCon in Charlotte last June. I'm pretty sure he's also said the same thing in interviews online, which I'm sure you can google. Brubaker pitched his story (which he'd been planning for quite awhile, but which was sped up by Civil War), and Jeph Loeb said, "Wait, you're killing off Cap and you're not making a big deal about it? That's crazy!" Marvel agreed, Fallen Son was planned (by Loeb), and Brubaker was asked to leave Cap dead for awhile. Brubaker then saw the opportunity to have Bucky in the cowl, so he agreed, and stretched out his story. If he said he wasn't bringing Cap back before, it was because writers are told to pretend upcoming events aren't happening until they're officially announced. That happens all the time. They don't want to spoil future plots. But now that Cap is being resurrected, Brubaker is free to tell the whole story, and I highly doubt he would have concocted a story from scratch about Jeph Loeb having ideas at a Marvel summit.

3.) Since the core comic isn't happening right now, what's really the difference? This is replacing the comic for a few months. It's still the same stories, just with a different logo on the cover. Yes, it's an attempt to sell more comics -- but Marvel is a business, and that's what they do. If you have a problem with the financial side of it, and that's completely valid, blame Marvel -- not Brubaker. The story is the story, however it's marketed, and I'm sure Brubaker would be just as content to tell this story in the main book.

4.) Cap is going to have a movie in a few years. They're doing this strategically. And Brubaker has said that he enjoys doing this because it allows him to put his stamp on Steve's history. In the past, comics would retell a hero's origin almost every other year. This isn't new. The Marvels Project, while great, isn't going to bring new readers into Captain America because it isn't called Captain America. And the Theatre of War issues barely sell at all, and have been almost universally terrible, and rarely about Steve himself.

5.) I never said that was your reasoning. I was just saying that I don't see how this is different than Bucky's resurrection. If you really have a problem with sci-fi plot devices and reveals that characters were never dead even when we saw a body, comics may not be the medium for you.

[melisus.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid we're just going to have to chalk this one up to personal taste and conclude that we will continue to disagree, because I don't see any point continuing this argument. I don't want things to get hostile, and I'm beginning to get frustrated by your continuing generalizations (like how I apparently hate science-fiction plots). How do we know The Marvels Project won't bring in new readers? We haven't gotten to Captain America's story yet, but it's all about the first heros and Cap WAS one of the first. And I have to fervently disagree about how Theatre of War is terrible because I think they are terrific comics about Cap in war time, and yeah they're not just all about Cap but that's because wars are never fought by an army of one even if that one person is a super soldier. The relationship between Cap and the other soldiers featured in the stories are what really shines.

And because this is entirely different from Bucky's resurrection and I'm not sure how I can explain that any clearer to you.

[harmonyangel.livejournal.com]

Most of Theatre of War was written by the man who had Sally Floyd excoriate Steve Rogers for not knowing about MySpace. I have a hard time taking his work with the character seriously. And while some of the stories about the soldiers have been well-written, they haven't been Captain America stories, so I don't see how they can have the same effect as Cap: Reborn in terms of bringing in new readers to the character.

Since you seem intent on being snotty about everything, however, including doubting my ability to have learned anything about the creation of this comic, I'll have to bow out as well. I apologized if I deviated from my usual internet politeness, or generalized about your feelings.