Captain America (SPOILERS through #41)

[Hermiod]

Well, the best comic storyline published today appears to be nearing a conclusion.

I'm still trying to figure out what the Skull's (I nearly typed "Skrulls" there) plan is. The clues I can think of are:

- He seems very interested in keeping the Grand Director alive and under his control.

- Sharon Carter's miscarriage seems to have put a large crimp in his plans.

- He is trying to get his mind controlled puppet Senator Wright elected President, going so far as to use his control over Kronas to damage the American economy and to fake an assassination attempt - a plan Bucky has foiled.

- Zola is building two devices for him. The first, a device to separate him from Aleksander Lukin as their shared conciousness is driving them both mad.

- The second is more interesting. He has acquired some sort of time travel device from Doctor Doom and is having Zola reverse engineer it. Doom specifically designed so it could only be used once.

His plans have been affected by Faustus betraying him, allowing Sharon to escape and removing his mental control over her. His daughter, Sin, also tried to betray him by attempting to kill Senator Wright instead of just wounding him, although she was prevented from doing so by Bucky.

Next month's issue is the final part of this epic "Death of Captain America" storyline. Wrapping this all up in one issue is going to be hard.

 

[DarKush]

I've really been enjoying this run more than I thought. Bucky works pretty well as Cap.

What I don't understand is Faustus's betrayal. It seemed too contrived. Of course I don't really know much about Faustus so maybe his actions have some explanation. If so, could someone fill me in.

His timely turn lessened the story for me. But for the most part, it's been pretty awesome and it turned me into a regular buyer of Captain America.

 

[Hermiod]

I imagine there will be some explanation for Faustus' sudden turn. The Red Skull being the Red Skull it's possible Faustus just betrayed him before the Red Skull could do it to him.

 

[Gojirob]

I imagine there will be some explanation for Faustus' sudden turn. The Red Skull being the Red Skull it's possible Faustus just betrayed him before the Red Skull could do it to him.

My thoughts exactly. Looking back, a turning point would have been Faustus seeing the Skull *not* vowing vengeance when BuckCap shot Sin and Crossbones. Like Azula said in Avatar, Faustus is a people person, and it wouldn't be too hard to reason out that if the man's child and most loyal henchman being shot had no resonance with the Skull, then Faustus' own value might end rather abruptly as well.

 

[CaptainCanada]

The Skull's been threatening Faustus' life since literally his first appearance in #22 ("She had better be, Faustus...or it'll be your fat head on the block"), and given that more or less every setback Team Skull has suffered has been on Faustus' end (Sharon, Bucky, Evil 50s Cap), it's not surprising he decided to bow out.

I'll be fascinated to learn what the heck is going on with Doom's device (and Sharon, the "constant").

Incredible Herc had usurped this book's place as my #1 title in the last little while, but this issue brought it roaring back.

 

[TheBrew]

I'm sort of hoping that Steve never comes back.

 

[Nedersong]

But he will. Fans can't have that happening now, can they.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Um. Steve is already back in the page of Invaders vs. Avengers.

I felt the miscarriage was choking the donkey. Why all the set up if there's just some rug pulling at the last moment.

The Skull is probably going to Freejack Hitler's brain again.

I mean sure, he trapped Hitler's consciousness in an empty Cosmic Cube back in the 70s once he started to realize how much he had outgrown Hitler as a bastard, that it just wasn't so cool to bow and scrape to someone that small minded... But maybe the Skull can just assure himself that even though Old Hitler was a let down, he just needed to find a young Hitler more closer to the root of his pure evilness to get his jollies pumping.

I can't believe how many times I just typed "Hitler" in that one paragraph.

 

[Thespeckledkiwi]

I think that Marvel is doing a little better with their run of Secret Invasion than DC is doing with Final Crisis. I've tried, tried, and tried to read the events leading up to Final Crisis but my God! Is it muddled or what? Countdown to 52, 52...ugh! It's so utterly confusing. Secret Invasion does a good job of presenting a story without getting too muddled in the lore of the past. Final Crisis can't.

BTW I think that Thor is the best run right now for Marvel, personally. I haven't read Captain America but...Thor has been superb.

 

[grabmygoblin]

Next month's issue is the final part of this epic "Death of Captain America" storyline. Wrapping this all up in one issue is going to be hard.

end of the arc, but not the end of Brubaker's run (at least, I haven't heard that he's finishing his run!!). he won't wrap everything up, just have the last of the big events and the fallout in the next arc.

I think that Marvel is doing a little better with their run of Secret Invasion than DC is doing with Final Crisis. I've tried, tried, and tried to read the events leading up to Final Crisis but my God! Is it muddled or what? Countdown to 52, 52...ugh! It's so utterly confusing. Secret Invasion does a good job of presenting a story without getting too muddled in the lore of the past. Final Crisis can't.

Countdown was actually declared non-canon shortly before Final Crisis began!

I want to see Steve Rogers back eventually, but the story had better be damn good.

 

[Hermiod]

^Wait a minute, they asked people to buy 52 weekly issues and then told them all it was non-canon ?

And people complain about Brand New Day!

 

[Nedersong]

Um. Steve is already back in the page of Invaders vs. Avengers.

I don't read comics that much anymore. And in regards to that, I've only read Captain America #25, and only as part of the Civil War storyline.

Which really is just an expansion and a repeat of the Mutant Registration Act Storyline. Instead of just mutants its to any being with superhuman abilities of any sort.

And personally I've come to believe its an allegorical story about firearm registration. The parallels are there. The anti-firearm crowd believes that anybody who owns a firearm is a criminal that is simply out to kill your children and demonizes anybody who owns any kind of firearm. The same kind of attitude is behind the drive to outlaw supehuman beings.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Steve from 1944 and the rest of the Invaders are running amok in present day.

They think the future is horrible and that the Avengers are really Nazis.

Namor beat himself up.

It was very fightclub.

Firearms? Is that all you get out the SRA Nedersong? Wow. Remember the Draft? Hells, it's even about unconditional love for the administration easily as fearful as big brother from 1984. Those loyalty oaths Bush was handing out at his press conferences were just hilarious.

 

[Nedersong]

I was not old enough for the draft and at the time was just a baby during the Vietnam war. I didn't learn of it until after I started learning about WWII then I didn't even know there was a draft for vietnam or a vietnam war until I was almost 17.

But I've never heard that President Bush was requiring loyalty oaths for journalists. Would you happen to have a link to that?

I'm just glad he won't be serving another term.

 

[Guy Gardener]

During the last election during his speeches, the audience and reporters all had to sign loyalty oaths to Bush and whoever was speaking otherwise they were turned away at the gate or not even allowed to purchase tickets or request free tickets.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31019-2004Jul31.html

I'm insanely younger than you then, but Oliver Stone does right by me.

Listening to Jessica Jones-Cage arguments about how she didn't want to be forced to wage war against all the little Muslim oil countries who argue with American foreign policy when she should be breast feeding was chilling. The 50 state initiative is about making an army who has no one to fight. When the House Committee of UnAmerican activities (Lead by you know who!) in the 50s told the Justice Society to unmask or Bugger off, well that seemed fine, it's not like everyone didn't accept that they were ignoring the laws against Vigilantism, it was a fair cop. Stark however is going to be bloodtesting and sifting through the entire population until it's effectively segregated to the point when there will be one law for the flatscans and another for the capes, no matter how inactive, docile and benign they are. Hell when Ben Grimm ditched America to live in France just days before the SRA became law, the petty US government froze and seized his bank accounts, which because of a plot twist from those times had billions and billions or dollars sitting in them.

I'm really sad that that hasn't been addressed.

 

[Yassim]

I've enjoyed Brubaker's run on Cap, but after having read some of his other stuff, it strikes me that Bru doesn't really have any interest in Captain America. Instead of figuring out Cap and writing him, he killed Cap off and figured out how to turn the book into his kind of tortured-soul-tries-to-make-amends book.

Even when Cap was alive, he wasn't terribly central in the book... and then he got killed off. As far as I can see, if Steve ever comes back, Bru will want to keep writing Bucky, and he'll give away the Cap title.

It's not really a complaint, but it's too bad Marvel had to kill Steve Rogers to make him interesting.

 

[Gojirob]

During the last election during his speeches, the audience and reporters all had to sign loyalty oaths to Bush and whoever was speaking otherwise they were turned away at the gate or not even allowed to purchase tickets or request free tickets.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31019-2004Jul31.html

I'm insanely younger than you then, but Oliver Stone does right by me.

Listening to Jessica Jones-Cage arguments about how she didn't want to be forced to wage war against all the little Muslim oil countries who argue with American foreign policy when she should be breast feeding was chilling. The 50 state initiative is about making an army who has no one to fight. When the House Committee of UnAmerican activities (Lead by you know who!) in the 50s told the Justice Society to unmask or Bugger off, well that seemed fine, it's not like everyone didn't accept that they were ignoring the laws against Vigilantism, it was a fair cop.

If by you-know-who you mean McCarthy, he was in the Senate, not the House. Unless you mean Nixon, though I don't think he ever led HUAC.

 

[CaptainCanada]

I've enjoyed Brubaker's run on Cap, but after having read some of his other stuff, it strikes me that Bru doesn't really have any interest in Captain America. Instead of figuring out Cap and writing him, he killed Cap off and figured out how to turn the book into his kind of tortured-soul-tries-to-make-amends book.

Even when Cap was alive, he wasn't terribly central in the book... and then he got killed off. As far as I can see, if Steve ever comes back, Bru will want to keep writing Bucky, and he'll give away the Cap title.

It's not really a complaint, but it's too bad Marvel had to kill Steve Rogers to make him interesting.

I don't agree there; the Steve portion of the run up until #25 I thought was excellent (made me a huge fan of the character). In those issues, Bucky is basically a plot device to trigger an emotional reaction in Captain America; the story is very much about Steve.

 

[Guy Gardener]

During the last election during his speeches, the audience and reporters all had to sign loyalty oaths to Bush and whoever was speaking otherwise they were turned away at the gate or not even allowed to purchase tickets or request free tickets.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31019-2004Jul31.html

I'm insanely younger than you then, but Oliver Stone does right by me.

Listening to Jessica Jones-Cage arguments about how she didn't want to be forced to wage war against all the little Muslim oil countries who argue with American foreign policy when she should be breast feeding was chilling. The 50 state initiative is about making an army who has no one to fight. When the House Committee of UnAmerican activities (Lead by you know who!) in the 50s told the Justice Society to unmask or Bugger off, well that seemed fine, it's not like everyone didn't accept that they were ignoring the laws against Vigilantism, it was a fair cop.

If by you-know-who you mean McCarthy, he was in the Senate, not the House. Unless you mean Nixon, though I don't think he ever led HUAC.

Ah... You're talking about the real world. I've done some googling... Some comic book author was as bad at history as me, and they had McCarthy working along side Huac as a double threat to dispose of the JSA. Of course their dismissal has been rendered a couple times by different people and maybe some of them got it right within the borders of real world continuity.

Did you read the issue of ???? (Civil War #1?) where the armed soldiers told Steve that he was a Capebuster or he was going to be marched into detention? Other writers have soft shoed bad memories of those events, but it's no worse than when the seedy elements of the Reagan administration tired to make Cap pay back taxes on his back wages from being in the army while he was sleeping in near the north pole as soon as they were sure he'd spent all the million dollar hand out they gave him.

 

[Gojirob]

During the last election during his speeches, the audience and reporters all had to sign loyalty oaths to Bush and whoever was speaking otherwise they were turned away at the gate or not even allowed to purchase tickets or request free tickets.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31019-2004Jul31.html

I'm insanely younger than you then, but Oliver Stone does right by me.

Listening to Jessica Jones-Cage arguments about how she didn't want to be forced to wage war against all the little Muslim oil countries who argue with American foreign policy when she should be breast feeding was chilling. The 50 state initiative is about making an army who has no one to fight. When the House Committee of UnAmerican activities (Lead by you know who!) in the 50s told the Justice Society to unmask or Bugger off, well that seemed fine, it's not like everyone didn't accept that they were ignoring the laws against Vigilantism, it was a fair cop.

If by you-know-who you mean McCarthy, he was in the Senate, not the House. Unless you mean Nixon, though I don't think he ever led HUAC.

Ah... You're talking about the real world. I've done some googling... Some comic book author was as bad at history as me, and they had McCarthy working along side Huac as a double threat to dispose of the JSA. Of course their dismissal has been rendered a couple times by different people and maybe some of them got it right within the borders of real world continuity.

Did you read the issue of ???? (Civil War #1?) where the armed soldiers told Steve that he was a Capebuster or he was going to be marched into detention? Other writers have soft shoed bad memories of those events, but it's no worse than when the seedy elements of the Reagan administration tired to make Cap pay back taxes on his back wages from being in the army while he was sleeping in near the north pole as soon as they were sure he'd spent all the million dollar hand out they gave him.

You are correct. I'd forgotten that bit of JSA mis-history. Actually, you bring up a good point from that earlier Cap storyline. I can accept that some people in government are borderline authoritarian, but the US government seems replete with the Skull's followers. And they have never explained to my satisfaction how he became Secretary Of Defense. Cabinet officers are vetted--if not shredded--during the nomination process. A guy from nowhere just can't get in there. He'd have an easier time getting in as VP.

In Cap 350, at the conclusion of the Cap No More storyline, the Skull bragged that he would always have infinite schemes running. But all the setbacks he's encountered have to have taxed that somewhat. When he meets defeat, I hope Brubaker at least makes it a real defeat, not a chuckle followed by the Skull conquers the Balkans two issues later.