Captain America, Secret Empire, or How I Made Mine !Marvel
Posted 04/25/2017 at 16:45 by malakim2099
So, as I'm sure a lot of people who know me are aware, I'm pretty much beyond disgusted with the current storyline that is the Marvel Comicsverse. Specifically the fact that they made Captain America the very thing he likes most to punch, a Nazi.
*** WARNING: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS IN THIS POST SO STOP READING NOW IF THAT BOTHERS YOU ***
Anyway, I'm going to address the various reasons I've had friends tell me, "Dude, it's just a comic, it shouldn't make you this angry." And then I'm going to lay into why this is a horrible story, Spencer is a horrible hack, and Marvel is a horrible company for publishing this horrible hackery. Note that this is a venting post, so I might get rambly.
First, the Six Months of Continuity. As in, they'll just reset everything back to normal and there's no lasting effects. Okay, first off, it's going to be about two years of NaziCap before we get any sort of relief or changeback for it. This is an image of Captain America that REAL Nazis have co-opted and made into their own, so now Nazi Cap is totally a RL thing, even if he might not technically be one in the comics.
By the way, considering HYDRA is herding Inhumans and others into camps in Secret Empire? And Cap was working with the Axis all along in WW2? Cap is now a ####ing Nazi, and you need to own that. Spare me the "HYDRA has existed for thousands of years" BS.
And in doubling down on the Nazi imagery, the last page of Secret Empire FCBD edition has NaziCap holding Mjolnir aloft as lightning strikes all around him, as he is suddenly Worthy. Which not only is BS from the perspective of now Nazis are suddenly worthy to wield Mjolnir, but who he took it from (Jane Foster). For those unaware, far-right/neo-Nazi muttonheads were frothing at the mouth over the fact that Thor was replaced by a woman a few years ago. The fact that Marvel has NaziCap not only defeat her, but take her hammer away? To say it's a bad look is a YUGE understatement, especially when the modern Nazi movement takes a lot of imagery from the Norse Pantheon as it is.
Oh, and while we're talking bad looks, kudos to WizKids for revealing the NaziCap chase on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Look, I know you have to make the figure, I get that. But THAT day? Really? You don't have ONE PR guy going, "Um, maybe we should wait a few days?"
Anyway, to sum up the continuity issues, a lot of people have said, "Well, they'll just use a Cube/MacGuffin to turn him back to normal." Yeah, they will, and the damage will have been done, both in the comics and in RL, though I'm more worried about the latter. You can't take the "Steve as a Nazi" out of all the Nazi imagery that's already there and that's going to come, because it happened. Even if comics retcon it, we're going to have propaganda fires of Captain America thinking fascism is a-ok. And that's a serious problem. Which, considering this was a creation of two Jewish comic book artists to fight against the rise of Nazis in Europe... well, the irony is pretty cruel.
And next, Steve apparently recruits Magneto to the cause, which is somehow even more asinine. Unless there's another cosmic cube that lets Steve twist Magneto into the complete opposite of himself, the only reason Magneto should join HYDRA at all is a chance to murder Steve when he gets his first opportunity. I mean, that was why Mags did the whole Acts of Vengeance in the first place, so I could see him doing a similar stunt here. But the Cosmic Cube is worth a mention because of this...
NONE OF THIS EVEN MATTERS! Which I realize is used as a defense, but here's the thing, it DOES matter IRL. We can't point at Steve as being the ethical bedrock of the Marvel universe anymore. Which really stinks, because he is! It's why Civil War was so bad in the comics, because you know there's two valid sides, but if you go up against Captain America in a debate about ethics, you really should rethink your position. It's one of the solid foundations of the Marvel Universe. Or at least, it was until this story.
And sure, people will say he's been mind controlled before. And yes, he has. But he was clearly mind controlled for a short series of issues. He wasn't altered for the span of almost two years to be the antithesis of all he stood for in that time. But now, even in the comics, no one is going to trust Steve again. Why would they? Hell, why trust anyone when the person you thought was great is just one Cosmic Cube away from turning into your greatest nemesis? Which is the problem with a MacGuffin of this magnitude. Once you start using them, it's impossible to stop as they just effortlessly fix things back to the status quo. But the damage to the readers, and to the people hurt by empowering Nazis, is done.
For example, Thanos could have used his Gauntlet and just turned every hero on Earth into his willing servants in the infamous Infinity Gauntlet comic story. Considering that he had the power of all the stones, and he easily wiped out half the universe with a literal snap of his fingers, he could have done that easily. Why didn't he? Well, probably because Starlin and the other writers/editors realized that would generate a lot of complications, among other reasons, and they didn't want to deal with the MacGuffin wrecking their plot as they'd need another MacGuffin to reverse it. And that's where we're at now, waiting for another deus ex machina to fix the previous one.
I'm sure there's stuff I missed, but mainly I just needed to vent all this out in one place. And yes, I stopped buying Marvel comics because of these more recent developments. On the other hand, if you want a good plot, the Batman/Flash "The Button" crossover (involving the Watchmen) had a pretty good opening. And I know Geoff Johns can plot a pretty decent story, all things considered.
*** WARNING: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS IN THIS POST SO STOP READING NOW IF THAT BOTHERS YOU ***
Anyway, I'm going to address the various reasons I've had friends tell me, "Dude, it's just a comic, it shouldn't make you this angry." And then I'm going to lay into why this is a horrible story, Spencer is a horrible hack, and Marvel is a horrible company for publishing this horrible hackery. Note that this is a venting post, so I might get rambly.
First, the Six Months of Continuity. As in, they'll just reset everything back to normal and there's no lasting effects. Okay, first off, it's going to be about two years of NaziCap before we get any sort of relief or changeback for it. This is an image of Captain America that REAL Nazis have co-opted and made into their own, so now Nazi Cap is totally a RL thing, even if he might not technically be one in the comics.
By the way, considering HYDRA is herding Inhumans and others into camps in Secret Empire? And Cap was working with the Axis all along in WW2? Cap is now a ####ing Nazi, and you need to own that. Spare me the "HYDRA has existed for thousands of years" BS.
And in doubling down on the Nazi imagery, the last page of Secret Empire FCBD edition has NaziCap holding Mjolnir aloft as lightning strikes all around him, as he is suddenly Worthy. Which not only is BS from the perspective of now Nazis are suddenly worthy to wield Mjolnir, but who he took it from (Jane Foster). For those unaware, far-right/neo-Nazi muttonheads were frothing at the mouth over the fact that Thor was replaced by a woman a few years ago. The fact that Marvel has NaziCap not only defeat her, but take her hammer away? To say it's a bad look is a YUGE understatement, especially when the modern Nazi movement takes a lot of imagery from the Norse Pantheon as it is.
Oh, and while we're talking bad looks, kudos to WizKids for revealing the NaziCap chase on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Look, I know you have to make the figure, I get that. But THAT day? Really? You don't have ONE PR guy going, "Um, maybe we should wait a few days?"
Anyway, to sum up the continuity issues, a lot of people have said, "Well, they'll just use a Cube/MacGuffin to turn him back to normal." Yeah, they will, and the damage will have been done, both in the comics and in RL, though I'm more worried about the latter. You can't take the "Steve as a Nazi" out of all the Nazi imagery that's already there and that's going to come, because it happened. Even if comics retcon it, we're going to have propaganda fires of Captain America thinking fascism is a-ok. And that's a serious problem. Which, considering this was a creation of two Jewish comic book artists to fight against the rise of Nazis in Europe... well, the irony is pretty cruel.
And next, Steve apparently recruits Magneto to the cause, which is somehow even more asinine. Unless there's another cosmic cube that lets Steve twist Magneto into the complete opposite of himself, the only reason Magneto should join HYDRA at all is a chance to murder Steve when he gets his first opportunity. I mean, that was why Mags did the whole Acts of Vengeance in the first place, so I could see him doing a similar stunt here. But the Cosmic Cube is worth a mention because of this...
NONE OF THIS EVEN MATTERS! Which I realize is used as a defense, but here's the thing, it DOES matter IRL. We can't point at Steve as being the ethical bedrock of the Marvel universe anymore. Which really stinks, because he is! It's why Civil War was so bad in the comics, because you know there's two valid sides, but if you go up against Captain America in a debate about ethics, you really should rethink your position. It's one of the solid foundations of the Marvel Universe. Or at least, it was until this story.
And sure, people will say he's been mind controlled before. And yes, he has. But he was clearly mind controlled for a short series of issues. He wasn't altered for the span of almost two years to be the antithesis of all he stood for in that time. But now, even in the comics, no one is going to trust Steve again. Why would they? Hell, why trust anyone when the person you thought was great is just one Cosmic Cube away from turning into your greatest nemesis? Which is the problem with a MacGuffin of this magnitude. Once you start using them, it's impossible to stop as they just effortlessly fix things back to the status quo. But the damage to the readers, and to the people hurt by empowering Nazis, is done.
For example, Thanos could have used his Gauntlet and just turned every hero on Earth into his willing servants in the infamous Infinity Gauntlet comic story. Considering that he had the power of all the stones, and he easily wiped out half the universe with a literal snap of his fingers, he could have done that easily. Why didn't he? Well, probably because Starlin and the other writers/editors realized that would generate a lot of complications, among other reasons, and they didn't want to deal with the MacGuffin wrecking their plot as they'd need another MacGuffin to reverse it. And that's where we're at now, waiting for another deus ex machina to fix the previous one.
I'm sure there's stuff I missed, but mainly I just needed to vent all this out in one place. And yes, I stopped buying Marvel comics because of these more recent developments. On the other hand, if you want a good plot, the Batman/Flash "The Button" crossover (involving the Watchmen) had a pretty good opening. And I know Geoff Johns can plot a pretty decent story, all things considered.
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