[SPOILERS FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA: STEVE ROGERS #1 BELOW]
Yesterday, Marvel released the first issue of Captain America: Steve Rogers by Nick Spencer, Jesus Saiz, and Joe Caramagna. It’s a pretty boilerplate (albeit beautifully depicted) story of a rejuvenated Steve Rogers back in the field…right up until he tosses an ally to his death and declares “Hail Hydra” in a final page splash. The whole thing is intercut with flashbacks to his childhood of a neighbor inviting Steve’s mother to a Hydra meeting, thus implying that Steve was indoctrinated as a child and has been a sleeper agent of Hydra all along.
This is comics, right? Unleash a shocking twist to get readers to pick up the next issue! Make everything All-New All-Different for a few months until things settle back into the status quo! Have a character behave so incongruously that fans just have to know why!
Except.
Except this is different than having Superman be a jackass to Lois and Jimmy on the cover of some Silver Age issue of Action. This is different than a kiss or a death or a resurrection. This is even different than the usual “wildly out of character” stunts that would normally have readers up in arms, like Batman using a gun.
Quick comics history lesson: Captain America was created in 1941 by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby as a superpowered, super-patriotic soldier fighting the Axis forces. He was famously depicted punching out Adolf Hitler on the cover of his first appearance, inCaptain America Comics #1—which hit stands in December 1940, a full year before Pearl Harbor and before the United States joined World War II, making that cover a bold political statement.
You probably already knew that, but I’d invite you to think about it for a minute. In early 1941, a significant percentage of the American population was still staunchly isolationist. Yet more Americans were pro-Axis. The Nazi Party was not the unquestionably evil cartoon villains we’re familiar with today; coming out in strong opposition to them was not a given. It was a risky choice.
And Simon and Kirby—born Hymie Simon and Jacob Kurtzberg—were not making it lightly. Like most of the biggest names in the Golden Age of comics, they were Jewish. They had family and friends back in Europe who were losing their homes, their freedom, and eventually their lives to the Holocaust. The creation of Captain America was deeply personal and deeply political.
Ever since, Steve Rogers has stood in opposition to tyranny, prejudice, and genocide. While other characters have their backstories rolled up behind them as the decades march on to keep them young and relevant, Cap is never removed from his original context. He can’t be. To do so would empty the character of all meaning.
But yesterday, that’s what Marvel did.
Look, this isn’t my first rodeo. I know how comics work. He’s a Skrull, or a triple agent, or these are implanted memories, or it’s a time travel switcheroo, or, or, or. There’s a thousand ways Marvel can undo this reveal—and they will, of course, because they’re not about to just throw away a multi-billion dollar piece of IP. Steve Rogers is not going to stay Hydra any more than Superman stayed dead.
But Nazis (yes, yes, I know 616 Hydra doesn’t have the same 1:1 relationship with Nazism that MCU Hydra does) are not a wacky pretend bad guy, something I think geek media and pop culture too often forgets. They were a very real threat that existed in living memory. They are the reason I can’t go back to the villages my great-grandparents are from, because those communities were murdered. They are the reason I find my family name on Holocaust memorials. They are the perpetrators of unspeakable, uncountable, very real atrocities.
But writer Nick Spencer and editor Tom Brevoort are more concerned with making this “something new and unexpected”; with having “fun” and getting readers “invested in Hydra characters.” Because what’s more fun than downplaying genocide?
I’m not going to pretend to be cool here. I’m emotional. This is emotional. Captain America isn’t even my usual guy to get incandescently angry over the erasure of his coded Jewish history— that’s Kal-El, the Moses of Krypton—but reading this comic made me feel sick to my stomach. Reading the flippant responses of many non-Jewish readers—including friends—has brought me to tears. Somehow a community that gets up in arms about whether or not Batman has a yellow circle behind his logo seems to think that being angry about this is stupid, or indicative of a lack of experience with comics.
So let me be very clear: I don’t care if this gets undone next year, next month, next week. I know it’s clickbait disguised as storytelling. I am not angry because omg how dare you ruin Steve Rogers forever.
I am angry because how dare you use eleven million deaths as clickbait.
I am angry because Steve Rogers’s Jewish creators literally fought in a war against the organization Marvel has made him a part of to grab headlines.
I am angry because the very real pain of the Jewish community has been dismissed since this news leaked on Tuesday night as “Twitter outrage.”
If this story doesn’t hurt you? Good. I’m genuinely glad. I don’t want anyone else to have the gorge rise in their throat when they read the entertainment news. I love comics. I don’t want them to make people feel angry and betrayed. But understand that not feeling that way comes from a place of privilege, and don’t dismiss the concerns of those of us who are upset just because you have the luxury not to be.
I’ve been trying to think of how to finish this post, but I don’t think I can say it better than my friend and fellow Panelteer Sigrid Ellis did here:
And knowing that this wound is temporary, that it’s for the sake of sales and money and a story beat, that just makes it hurt more, not less. How little we must matter, the people who needed Steve to be the defender of the underdog and the weak, how little we must matter if betraying us for a story beat is so easy.
How little must we matter. The people who created Captain America, and Superman, and countless other heroes like them. The people who need him. The people whose history and suffering and hope, as we stood on the brink of annihilation, gave you your weekly entertainment and your fun thought experiment, 75 years later.
The others don’t bring up Steve’s past often because they’re worried it’s a sore subject. But teen Spidey doesn’t have that filter, and is just excited to meet a guy from the 40s. Steve enjoys it – it’s not often he gets reminded of the happy parts of his early life.
peggy was really involved in tony’s life when he was growing up
he still visits her
and calls her “aunt peggy”
literally everyone visited peggy before steve
sometimes bucky uses his arm as a dry-erase or magnet board
tony is always making arm jokes about bucky
like watch out, he’s armed
tony has been trying to buy out the game of thrones franchise (or at least get on an episode) because he is a stark, after all
sometimes clint disappears and they don’t know what happens to him until they find him asleep in weird places, like on top of the fridge or in the big A on the outside of the building
besides steve, bruce was the first person bucky would spend time alone with; when they asked him later, he said it was because “he knows what it’s like to lose control of your own body”
thor frequents protests for social justice because on asgard, all of these rights are already established, and he intends for midgard to have the same
one time, sam did a nick fury impression that was so convincing that tony broke the arc reactor he was fixing
another time, sam was telling everyone to get back to work, motherfuckers in his fury voice when fury himself walked in behind them
sam won’t talk about what happened afterwards
sometimes, steve forgets that he’s not pre-serum anymore and is confused when he picks fights and the other guy backs off
natasha has a collection of old guy nicknames for steve, like “geezer” and “old fart”
when steve discovered harry potter, he read all the books in a week and then insisted on having long discussions about hogwarts with everyone
thor got really into it too, and he and steve are friends on pottermore
natasha runs a jawline commentary, like when steve is arguing and then she’s like “jawline. jawline alert. here it comes…and -” and then he clenches his jaw
usually clint is the only one to hear her, which is ironic, because he can’t hear
when clint doesn’t want to listen to anyone telling him something he doesn’t like, he takes out his hearing aids and hides them
when people (bruce) ask him what happened to them, he signs that he lost them
tony flips shit when clint does this because it’s always right after he makes him a new set that are specifically designed to help you hear better goddammit clint i worked hard on those
bruce likes long sleeved sweaters that are slightly too big on him because they make him feel less like the other guy when he tucks his hands into them
thor is a sucker for baby animals and hurt strays and keeps trying to take them back to the tower and keep them
tony says that they can’t keep every animal you find on the street, thor, we aren’t a pound
so bruce starts a little vet office in the lab and every time thor brings home another stray they patch it up together (sometimes tony contributes with a little prosthetic for it) and then they advertise it on their @officialavengers twitter until someone comes and adopts it
bucky is hyper suspicious of anyone trying to adopt these animals and personally interviews them to make sure they’ll actually take care of it
every time anyone on the team does something stupid, and rhodey hears about it, he looks into an invisible (or sometimes actual) camera like he’s on the office
when steve and bucky walk next to each other in public and someone asks if they’re dating, natasha calls them “elderly ice boyfriends” for the rest of the week
one friday night, they had a drunken argument about who would win in a fight, iron man or batman, and tony insisted that he would win because he’s real
mostly everyone in the tower has nightmares, but they don’t go to each other for comfort, ordinarily. the one person who is always ready to comfort them is thor, because he used to do it for loki when they were kids
pepper, maria, and natasha are good friends, and on pepper’s free nights they drink tea and talk about books and occasionally teach pepper some more fight strategies
sam has tried to convince the entire group to attend therapy
sam has failed to convince the entire group to attend therapy
like the batman/iron man discussion, a few weeks later, there was an argument about who would win, green arrow or hawkeye. it was decided that the winner was clearly legolas
the only one out of any of the team who really wants to have kids is bruce, but he’s too worried about it, so he can’t
thor loves kids, but he’ll live for like 5000 years, so he’s still got plenty of time
steve is nearly violently against anti-vaxxers, and spoke on the tv in what was supposed to be a benign interview but it just turned into a rant about as someone who’s experienced polio and whose mother died of tuberculosis and who basically had huge problems as a child i’d like to give you some advice: vaccinate your fucking kids do you want them to die
steve’s shield is affectionately referred to as “grandpa’s frisbee”
natasha and thor are really good with technology (nat because of her high iq and spy training, thor because asgard is hella advanced)
clint has been taught teaching jarvis swear words
every saturday is movie/tv marathon night
they consistently fight over what to watch, but the one thing they can all agree on is lotr
inspired by thatsthat24, thor and clint start a vine account where they prank the other avengers by handing them mjolnir and watching them fall over
one time thor did put mjolnir on the toilet an then recorded the entire day of people trying to pee and not being able to move it
his plan backfired when steve just lifted it out of the way
What if Captain America’s back story was that he got clawed by a genetically modified bald eagle and he woke up the next day with super patriotic powers
I'd Much Rather Have a Dragon 