Captain America ... why would they? But he punched Hitl-- why?!

[donathinfrye]

And this is why supporting indy comics over the Big Two is so important.

[guilhermecahu]

http://io9.gizmodo.com/everyone-please-stop-freaking-out-about-that-ridiculou-1778646082

[Sanz]

tbh the memes that are appearing because of this is making it pretty funny.

[donathinfrye]

Totally. It's a great marketing ploy! And the resulting conversations are tending towards the funny.

But at the end of the day, it's still bad storytelling however you cut it. I'm not a die-hard Cap'n fan or anything of the sort, but I think it's important to point at what Marvel's doing and say, "Yeah, we shouldn't do that." It works for Marvel because they've got the biggest advertising budget and best brand recognition in the comic world. Most stories, most comics, don't. Stunts like that are a great way to kill a following -- Captain America is, I guess, just too big to fail.

But I'll take the "how else can we ruin established characters with ridiculous plot twist" memes for the LOLs.

[UzukiCheverie]

What people tend to forget is that Marvel/DC comic series "reboots" (where they start from #1) are a dime a dozen, and there's always going to be some weird twist/element to each one (especially because when it comes to the root of the story, they're always. The same.)

Why don't we talk about that time Spiderman and Doc Ock switched brains? Or the parallel universe in Flashpoint Paradox where Bruce is killed instead of his parents, leading his father to become Batman and his mother to become the Joker? Also the fact that Ant-Man is always beating the shit out of his wife lol (but that's not funny....)

It's not just Marvel and DC either. There's a story arc in Archie where Archie dies. Yeah. But it's just another story. Did people freak out? Yes. But they've moved on and Archie is still alive and well in and giving his poor principal the business in another publication timeline - the circle of life continues.

You just let it happen like every other weird, questionable moment in the series, move on, and wait for the next issue that you deem worth reading comes out (chances are it'll also be listed as a #1).

[donathinfrye]

Those are really good points, and really great examples of some terrible ideas. Those sorts of plots are why I don't read some of my beloved characters from childhood anymore (or, at least, until I know that a certain arc is safe from that silliness).

Still, the Captain America twist is worse yet. It might just be the worst plot twist that I can remember in any story, ever. The original writers of Captain America were Jewish during a time when the Holocaust was a thing. Taking their character and saying that he was a Nazi all along (not brainwashed, cloned, etc, but has always been a Nazi) is ... well, problematic. I'm not the most politically correct person in the world, but that's a little icky ... even for me!

[Sanz]

I feel the only reason this is getting as much traction as it is is because of the recent of movie. But i could be wrong

[mariusthered]

personally I hate the way main stream comics and the movies give so much attention to this awful period of history. I am not Jewish myself but my great grand parents were and it chills me to the bone to think about what that generation went through. To take people from their homes, imprison them, and subject them to torture, starvation, rape and murder. These are things that should not be used to make money from a new generation who has no clue what the Nazi's did. ( and I will add not all Germans were to blame for the action of one military group ) I don't care how much press this new captain America story gets, it will never get my money , I too would rather support indey comics.

[AnnaLandin]

I haven't read this comic, but here are my two cents.

The-hero-is-evil is a common trope. It's one of the oldest storytelling tricks in the book - especially the superhero book. It's a way for the creators to make the readers gasp and go "No! Surely not! How could this BE? D:", so that they'll pick up the next issue and keep reading. It's a shocking twist, it's supposed to make you upset and angry that your favourite good guy is suddenly a bad guy - oh no, what will happen to the story?

So you pick up the next issue to find out.

This is not the first time Captain America has been evil. It certainly won't be the last time either. In fact, pick any big-name superhero from the Big Two, and I can PROMISE you that they have been evil at some point. Heck, there are covers from old issues of Superman where Superman is sieg heiling like a Nazi and threatening to take over the world. It has nothing to do with respecting the integrity of the character or its creators, and everything to do with selling more comics.

In a couple of issues, I promise you it's going to turn out that Cap has been brainwashed by magic, or replaced by a shapeshifter pretending to be him, or that someone witnessing this is just stuck in a horrible alternate timeline, and it's all going to be resolved and Cap is going to be non-Hydra again.

The point that Cap's Jewish creators would be offended by this is legitimate - casting a symbol of the fight against Hitler as a Hitler-sympathiser is iffy as heck (though it should be noted that I don't know if Hydra = Nazis is true in the comics, or if Hydra is its own separate fascist ideology? The MCU is muddying the waters there) but then again, there was a LOT of weird stuff done with these characters even when those creators were still alive.

Mainstream superhero comics are a strange amalgam of pulp origins and marketing ploys mixing with attempts at big-issue storytelling that very often fails to achieve any lasting value, because just as you're settling into one idea or aspect of a character, it gets scrapped and retconned. It's why I rarely read them, and when I do, I stay on the edges of it, reading old TPBs of Doctor Strange and pretending really hard that the Strange-movie isn't a thing that exists.

[Simon_M]

Look, superhero comics are dead, creatively speaking. The last time they tried to have some artistic value was when Marvel was near bankruptcy and hired some very good writers and gave them creative liberty. That's when JMS took Spiderman and Morrison the X-men. Even stuff from meh writers like Bendis, his Daredevil run with Maleev is just incredibly good, stylistically. That lasted a few years, but after that, everything went wrong. Crossovers, something that Marvel actively avoided during those years to give the writers more space, returned. And they used one crossover (House of M) to undo the changes that Morrison did to the X-men to return them to the core idea of them being a persecuted minority. They broke Peter's marriage because they wanted him to keep being "young". They revealed his identity in a crossover, then made it secret again in a special event.

And since Marvel started to do their own movies... well, I suspect things got worse. Superheroes were already franchise characters: you can do very little growth with them before deviating from the concept they are associated to. You make Spiderman too powerful thanks to some mystical object? That's bad, it takes him out of queens and manhattan, it's not him anymore. You add on top of that multimillion blockbusters and there's no chance any real change will stick: they need to clean the slate so that when the new thor movie comes out, the two or three random people that cared enough for the character can buy a comic where Thor is basically the same of the movie, and not a woman or a horse-alien being.

Superhero stories cannot end but they cannot change either, since the whole reason they keep them going is because at this point everyone associates them with very specific things. In this context, the only meaningful thing you can do is the gimmick, the Doc Ock in Peter's body things, the Captain America is a double agent or dead or Sam Wilson or whatever is the flavor of the month. Don't worry, they'll return to the status quo soon enough. I guess that minor characters have still some good runs, I've heard good things about Silver Surfer and stuff like that. But, at this point, I'm very tired of them anyway.

[donathinfrye]

Yes! I mean, I dig a good super-hero story as much as the next guy. They're fun and, sometimes, even brilliant. But you kinda hit on my initial point up top, and that's this:

Comic books have this unique opportunity as how users consume media changes. They can grow creatively, meaningfully, to meet the challenge that I feel has been sort of set by the "Golden Age of Television" storytelling that we're seeing now. More people than ever before (in my lifetime) are starting to demand better stories. Making that transition for comics sort of relies on new, upcoming, indy talent. In short, that's sort of us, isn't is? Us and others in the same boat as a lot of us, and those more popular indy creators who've already had some success redefining the genre.

How cool is that? We have the opportunity to rise up to a challenge and maybe help start a new trend of comic storytelling that's bigger than just being this underground webcomic thing.

R.I.P. Captain America. Hail innovation and good storytelling. We can do better.

[theawkwarddreamer]

It just seemed really lazy. There's a million other ways they could've made Cap evil while sticking with his character. Attaching him to Hydra and rewriting his background feels like they didn't put much thought into it.

[TheVoidchildProject]

I'll agree that this seems like one of the most creatively bankrupt twists produced yet by marvel. And I'll agree that it's a shame that mainstream/pop culture comics (the ones I grew up with and loved) often go for these forced plot twists and unintelligible character developments (followed by a retcon). It's gone so far that I don't really believe any of the drama in most of these situations unless it's really well done (see dr doom/Richards relationship explored in the latest secret wars).

I personally blame soap operas for all this. Because I imagine this is where this format comes from. And even though fantastical comic stories should have more room for fantastical storylines, oftentimes they go for the same type of drama.

That being said, I still enjoy marvel/dc comics but not (in this or any other multiverse) for storytelling. Right now one of my favourite comics that I follow and read is Ms Marvel (Kamala Khan) because of how theyre trying to introduce a different culture to comics and at the same seeming playful and enthusiastic about it. And that might be the problem with all this for me, this particular comic (talking about cap again) doesn't seem to me to realise just how silly this whole twist is.

You can probably discard something like this as being "just another ridiculous twist". I certainly do that often enough with these things. But I also remember when it wasn't like that (X-men vol. 2 did superhero drama as well as it could've been back in the day). And I'd love for some more comics to go back that style of storytelling. That's why it's a good thing when people react to this.

Dang, that turned into a rant sorta kinda...

[Simon_M]

Hahaha you are basically me. My main comic, Upsurge, has HBO in its description, as their main trio of shows (The Sopranos, The Wire and Deadwood) are my writing inspiration more so than any comic book. I just love the idea of comics and manga, the idea of fantasy, but these days I don't find them compelling. Characters are flat, situations are cliche and rely on the fact that you've read this cliche so many times before that they can afford to repeat it with a quippy line and all of a sudden -they think- it's ok... In that sense I'm also a little disappointed in tapastic, which, at least as of right now, its staff seems more interested in pushing gag-a-day, slice of life and comics with good art but just passable writing... I understand it gives them clicks, since all of those style of comics get you a lot of attention faster on tumblr and the like, but I think on the long run you need something else to be, you know, important. Although Rickety Stitch is quite good, actually. I was surprised at seeing it as the headline.