the Assassination of Captain America as an Extreme Downhill Skateboard Race


 


My big question is: if Marvel Comics doesn't want Captain America any more, does Joe Simon get to have him?
With Marvel Comics, in a blinding stroke of unoriginality, garnering big media headlines by killing off one of their main characters, might that discarded character then be returned to the man who co-created that character, and who sued to get him back ?
It's an interesting question: does a company who buys (extorts, steals) a character from a creator have the right to destroy that property? Is it in the spirit or the letter of the copyright law that copyright ownership be given in order, not to exploit a property, but to suppress it?
I don't know about you, but I'd be really interested to see what would happen, if, after Marvel killing Captain America, Joe Simon were to publish a Captain America comic.

Of course, this could be, rather than a abandonment of a lucrative franchise, a cheap way of getting some publicity, fully intending to use one of the myriad comic book ploys to return a character from the 'dead'.
Ya think?
In this case, my second question is, what in Sam Hill (to coin a phrase) were they thinking? Publicity, yes--and maybe that's as far as their underpants-gnome-like brains would take them. But beneficial publicity?
Would this event, and the publicity it generated, get anybody to start buying Marvel Comics who isn't at present?
There would be people who don't read comics any more, but who had a sentimental fondness for Cap, who would get pissed of at Marvel, and confirm themselves in their decision not to read that stuff.
There would be people who would go 'big deal. Real people are dying in Iraq, and we're talking about the death of a comic book character."
There would be people who would say, "Big Deal. They're sales are in the toilet, so they're trying to pull a Death of Superman. They'll try to milk his death, and then, wow! a year or so later, they'll try to milk his 'rebirth'!"
There would not be people who would say "Wow! What a gutsy move! Maybe I've been wrong about Marvel! Maybe I should start buying their books!"
Because, like the Urban Spaceman , they don't exist.

People have been asking me to comment on this death, both because a) I wrote a bunch of Captain America stories, including some that folks still remember . Also because killing off comic book characters (and the meaninglessness thereof) prompted me to create Strikeforce Morituri, one of my better known efforts. My friend Peter Sanderson pointed me towards this reprint of a very depressing scene from the Civil War mega-comics-event and the commentary on it. Not having followed the series, ant not knowing whether the writer intended for the journalists to be assholes or not, I can't really comment on it --except to make two points: 1)learning that the writer is a Brit makes absolute sense, because nobody actually inside American culture would bracket MySpace and Nascar (and high cholesterol? WTF?) and 2) This collision between the fantasy foreground and the contemporary background is something I've blogged on before : and I'll repeat that it's a fundamental disconnect to think that a world with teleportation, undersea races, mutant nations, and gangs of superheroes would still have Paris Hilton as a celebrity focus. In fact, people living on a consistent Marvel Earth would have a culture almost unrecognizable to us: Instead of being the Crown of Creation, they'd be living with the knowledge that we're a not-very-evolved backwater planet with a sorry excuse for technology--and that immortal Gods exist and periodically tear things up. The supernatural would be a certainty, as would the afterlife--and America would have no sense of security at all, with giant robots marching through the countryside. If I were to actually craft a backgrount that jibed with the Marvel Universe foreground, America would far more resemble Mughal India than our world of high cholesterol and YouTube.
Hell, I'll say a third thing: between Dinesh D'Souza's odious book and this gratuitous first-act closer, I think I have proof positive that we as a nation are over 9/11. The fact that D'Souza can publically proclaim that the cultural objections of Islamic terrorists are justified because our liberal, porn-soaked, MySpace American Idol way of life is the work of Shaitan dovetails quite nicely with a company as culturally weaselly as Marvel killing off a patriotic icon In Time of War.
Clearly, the terrurists have won. Or lost. Whatever.

But I also want to make a larger point. Captain America was never one of my favorite characters as a fan. You'd have to get past Thor and Dr. Strange and the Sub-Mariner (and Adam Strange and Green Lantern, if we're not confined to Marvel). But he quickly became one of my favorite characters to write, and I found that puzzling.
But thinking about Captain America in the hour of his death (ora pro nobis) I made this realization, that Marvel had two spiritual characters: Dr. Strange and Captain America. Stephen Strange was Imagination, and Steve Rogers was Belief. The others were just heroic people. (I also came to the conclusion that there are two Marvel characters of the Psyche: Spider-Man as Neurosis, and the Hulk as Psychosis, but that's for later.) All the challenges to Dr. Strange were challenges to the Imagination, while all of Cap's challenges were challenges to Belief.
The contrast to Superman and Batman is instructive: both DC icons are inward-turning, while Marvel's turn outward. Superman and Dr. Strange are, arguably, the most powerful heroes, while Batman and Captain America are without powers--but the most formidable ordinary humans. But Superman's power is self contained, and says nothing about the rest of the universe--while Dr. Strange is inextricably embedded in the larger mysteries. Superman is the negation of theology, while Strange is nothing but.
Similarly, Batman's fire is all about himself. His trauma, his obsession, him, him, him. Captain America became a hero because the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Batman is a complete negation of polity, while Cap is nothing but. Neither Superman nor Strange are certain, Bats and Cap are completely certain--but for opposite reasons.
And that's the thing about Cap: You could do a Captain America story about trade policy or bankruptcy legislation: you could have Cap fight the Red Skull over Plessy versus Ferguson. In the same way, you could do a Dr. Strange story about Schopenhauer or Leibniz: you could have Strange trapped in the hellish region between noumenon and phenomenon. Both are open to the world--which, i think, is why I gravitated to them, even against my previous tastes.
Captain America embodies something: not America, or national pride, but something deeper: thanks to inspired folks like Stan Lee, and perceptive folks like Steve Englehart and Marc deMatteis, he embodies something even deeper than Justice: the belief that it is possible to live rightly in the world. Captain America, alone of the grab bag of American funny book tight wearers, could take the never-ending struggle higher than the Law and the Flag. (When Denny O'Neil tried the same thing--successfully--in the seventies, he needed two characters, Green Lantern and Green Arrow--to work it out. Captain America by his lonesome would have sufficed.)

So if the Death of Captain America is just a stunt--and I think it is--then shame on them. Pretty tawdry. If, however, they think that Captain America is a worn out character and best to be put out to pasture--and worse, if they actually believe the shallow superficial Brit codswallop embodied in that interview scene, then I think they should hand it back to Joe Simon and let him see if he can make him relevant.

Hey Joe: I volunteer...

Posted: Tuesday - March 13, 2007 at 06:43 PM        

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