This post is Filed Under:
Home page Highlights,
Interviews and Columns
beau Smith: read on, live on, step on.
by beau Smith
Captain America/Steve Rogers is and always has been a member of Hydra. Superman is dead, Batman’s back is broken, and Peter Parker is not Spider-Man. That’s the word in the cornfield, or at least has been at some point.
Broke Back Batman
With Captain America, there is outrage, at least for the moment. There’s always outrage when this sorta thing happens. It wasn’t that long ago there was lots of displeasure when DC Comics did some minor changes to Superman’s costume, and I indicate minor. With the Internet now with its hooks firmly sunk into us all, outrage is 24/7. It’s the way it is.
It’s all a part of what has been happening in the marketing of comic cooks considering that the 1990s when the false collectible/speculative trend of comic books fell through. The marketing and editorial powers have been using the “Ape House” style of marketing ever since. By that I indicate “Throw something against the wall at the readers and see what sticks.”
Sometimes it’s something as basic as a costume change, other times it’s as drastic as a gender change or in this current case, having Captain America be a part of a Nazi based terrorist organization. Some are anxious and mad that ‘their” Captain America is gone. You couldn’t be a lot more wrong.
“The hell With Hitler!”
Your Captain America is alive and well in trade paperbacks, special collected volumes and in back issues. The Captain America you grew up with, no matter what decade that was, is still out there doing what you felt Captain America must be doing.
What is happening with Captain America now will pass or become a footnote in comic book lore soon enough, it always does. The creators that are writing and even drawing what you’re reading now will become older, part ways with the publisher or in some sad cases, be ignored once their shine wears off. You’ve seen it happen time and time and time again. It’s the cycle, the circle, the often sad truth.
Now and then, we are blessed with some really good stories and character changes, a lot of are subtle, the best ones normally are. They are built slowly and gradually as in good storytelling. The Shock and Awe storylines are as fleeting as the wink of a good-looking woman in a bar at closing time.
MY Daredevil!
The characters you love are genuinely made up in your own mind and not so much that of what you read on the printed page. My version of Daredevil and what he stands for and how he acts hasn’t been in the comic book pages considering that 1968, but that hasn’t stopped me from enjoying what mark Waid has made with the character. It’s just not MY Daredevil. Mine lives in the past, and no matter what people might try to tell you, that’s not such a bad thing. The tales of Moby Dick and Frankenstein are still the classics they were lots of decades ago when they were created, even though others have retold their story in lots of different versions considering that then, the same with comic book superheroes.
If you’re like so lots of comic book readers that wait around and continue to get issues of characters that they really don’t like, hoping and thinking that at some point they will return or become the hero they were when you first discovered them, forget it, that’s not going to happen. It really isn’t. like your youth, that time is gone. It’s life, it’s reality, it’s the way it goes.
I’m not being extreme here, I’m just telling you the truth as I see it and have experienced it. It’ll be up to you to decide to listen to your brain and accept that what has come, has also gone.
What I’m suggesting is to embrace the characters you love and enjoy, like Captain America once was, they are frozen in time for you to read and take pleasure in anytime you want. The artists and writers that filled your childhood with wonderment, but have considering that passed on from this physical world, are alive and well drawing your favorite issues of Batman, The Avengers and others in trade paperbacks and hardcover reprints as well as back issues. The same Stan Lee that wrote your favorite issue of The wonderful four is still alive and well on comic book excursions as well as in The wonderful four Omnibus. Jack Kirby is still drawing The thing and The Hulk battling each other and destroying a lot of of new York City, all you have to do is open a book and you’ll join them.
“Oops, I said It Again.”
Captain America uttering the words “Hail Hydra” may be the starting point for some first time comic book reader that will always thank writer, Nick Spencer for giving them this moment. Do you really wanna be the person that tries to erase that moment for them? how would you have felt if someone told you back in your “time” that Superman really doesn’t have a incredibly pet dog named Krypto or Bat-Hound isn’t a part of YOUR Batman history?
Bad little Doggie
Not me.
Read on, live on, and step on.
Your amigo,
Beau Smith
The flying Fist Ranch
www.flyingfistranch.com
“Hail BEAUdra!”
