They Killed Cap!

[Cthulhudrew]

I saw Cap hanging out with Elvis.

 

[Vigilance]

Well, as a subscriber, I got a notice this month that my subscription would continue with the 5-issue mini "Fallen Son", which is about the reactions of the Marvel Universe to Cap's "death", with each issue being one of the stages of grief, so issue #1 is "denial".

Sigh.

But again, he wasn't even shown to have "died" in Issue #25. Though I guess it's not a "big media event" if they don't milk it.

I mean, how long was Superman "dead"... bout a year? This *might* last that long, though I doubt it. Brubaker is on record in an interview I read stating that "Issue 25 will be the biggest single issue I write with Cap and will set up my next year on the book".

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Brubaker is on record in an interview I read stating that "Issue 25 will be the biggest single issue I write with Cap and will set up my next year on the book".

He's also said he has that entire year planned out WITHOUT Cap.

Brubaker has said he was planning to kill Cap during his run anyway, just the Civil War events worked well with things and he pushed it forward. So, for the forseeable future, Cap is, indeed, dead.

 

[Vigilance]

He's also said he has that entire year planned out WITHOUT Cap.

Brubaker has said he was planning to kill Cap during his run anyway, just the Civil War events worked well with things and he pushed it forward. So, for the forseeable future, Cap is, indeed, dead.

Uh-huh.

Brubaker has also said that you have to sell a comic death to make it seem as real as possible, citing the fact that he "killed" the Red Skull and "killed" Foggy Nelson as proof that you can sell a totally fake death.

Again, color me skeptical. Ive read comics before.

He might stay dead a whole year. I might buy that.

I mean, Superman was dead about a year.

But they are not going to kill him. They just aren't. Anymore than DC is going to kill superman.

 

[Nuclear Platypus]

He's also said he has that entire year planned out WITHOUT Cap.

Brubaker has said he was planning to kill Cap during his run anyway, just the Civil War events worked well with things and he pushed it forward. So, for the forseeable future, Cap is, indeed, dead.

Like Superman at the hands of the nigh unstoppable Doomsday.

Naturally its a publicity stunt but in the Marvel comics, Tony Stark and his side might use the death to break the spirits of those who resist the registration. "See what happens? My best friend died!" or some other equally absurd excuse milked for the sympathy vote. Nevermind that Tony and Steve didn't see eye to eye on lots of things like the Vault attack during the Armor Wars.

Was there a body? Was it really him and not an LMD, a clone, someone plastic surgeried to look like Cap or even a Skrull?

Somehow it'd be something like Dr Strange cast a spell to make everyone think Cap died and zapped him away in some weird 'second gunman on the grass knoll' conspiracy. I'm sure he's not dead but when he comes back, I don't think he'll be all that happy.

C'mon Hulk! Make Stark pay for killing off your old foe Gremlin!

 

[Vigilance]

Was there a body? Was it really him and not an LMD, a clone, someone plastic surgeried to look like Cap or even a Skrull?

His eyes are still open at the end of Cap #25 lol.

The last panel is a close-up of his hand dropping off the bed.

Also, at the time he was shot, Nick Fury was about to launch a plan to see to it Cap never spent a day in jail.

Though the assassination attempt was not part of his plan.

Again, by comic standards this is as fuzzy as it gets.

Now the book goes on a hiatus while we do the "Fallen Son" mini, in which different characters ponder on what Cap MEANS to the Marvel U.

Ok, ho-hum.

 

[Nuclear Platypus]

I got it!

Cap is laying low and when the Dems and Reps declare their candidates for the '08 election, Steve Rogers jumps in as the third party and wins like Lex Luthor did in DC. One of his first acts of office: pardon all those involved in Civil War aka ctrl-alt-del everything.

Yeah, and Donald Trump will let his head get shaved too.

But it might not be so bad. Stephen Colbert got Cap's shield.

 

[Ranger REG]

Except that Cap isn't dead. The only mention of him even BEING dead in Cap #25 comes from a news anchor. On Marvel.com it's reported by the Daily Bugle.

I say again: Marvel relaunched Cap's title; they put an A-List writer and A-list artist on it; it became a top seller; Cap starred in the big event crossover of 2006; Cap finally, for maybe the first time in a few decades, matters again in the Marvel U.

Kill him now?

Has NO ONE on these boards read a freaking comic before? This is the start of a big Cap run that they wanted max publicity for.

That is all.

Cap is not dead. CNN can stop drawing their lame political parallels and making 94 year old Cap co-creator Joe Simon cry any second now.

He is not dead.

So, we're going to have a reality game show called, Who Wants to be Captain America?

I better send in my audition tape.

 

[Vigilance]

So, we're going to have a reality game show called, Who Wants to be Captain America?

I better send in my audition tape.

No, I'm saying there is absolutely no way in hell that Steve Rogers is dead.

Look, if you follow Marvel closely like I do, when Quesada took over as EIC the company was basically in shambles, not only sales-wise but creatively. According to things I've read, he thought job #1 was getting Spider-Man and the X-books back on their feet.

Then what the company set their sights to was fixing the Avengers books, both the team title but also the solo components, particularly Iron Man and Cap.

Now they've finally DONE that. This strategy was part of the reason Cap and Iron Man have both been relaunched recently (within the last couple years or so), the reason the Avengers was blown up and relaunched, and the reason Cap and Iron Man were the stars of the big event book of last year.

So all this has worked. Cap and Iron Man are hot again. Their books are edgy. The last time you could say that about Iron Man was what, the 80's? Demon in a Bottle maybe?

Captain America you have to go back to the 70's. Probably when Steranko was drawing the book.

So for the first time in 20-30 years two of their icons are back on top.

Just strictly from a business sense, I will not buy that they kill Steve Rogers now. Folks have said they might want Cap to be "edgier". Well Brubaker's already accomplished that.

There's no upside in killing him.

There *IS* upside in a "Death of Superman" type arc where you take the character away just long enough for folks to miss him. That I might buy.

But from a business standpoint there's no way this happens.

From a creative standpoint, I have heard Brubaker go on and on about how much he loves Steve Rogers and Captain America.

I mean hell, Brubaker has the freaking INVADERS in this book. He isn't a guy who want to blow up the book and start over.

And then strictly from a comics standpoint, there is absolutely no way this counts even as a comics death (which of course are nearly always reversed anyway).

 

[Felon]

I'm surprised there's all this emphasis on Steve Rogers being alive.

How about Steve Rogers is dead, long live Captain America? The man dies, but the dream lives on? You know, Cap was born in the Great Depression, something some of our grandfathers can't even say. For a character that's supposed to quintessentially human, that's just getting harder to buy into. A new reader comes into comics and says something like "so, Captain America, he's like immortal or something?", to which the veteran has to explain, "nah, he's human, but he's been bobbing around in an iceberg for the last...(mentally calculates) fifty years now, I guess".

Maybe it's just time for the mantle to pass on. Humans are mortal. They have to pass on their legacies for them to endure. Maybe instead of a walking piece of nostalgia from a war that's history to most of us, we now get a Cap that's actually a part of this century: a fireman who survived the World Trade Center attack, a soldier that served in Iraq, and so forth.

(sure hope my mere mentioning of events that happened in the real-world doesn't constitute "political discussion" by some bizarre twist of logic...)