Massive Marvel Comics spoilers (oh God, I'm afraid to look at the rest of the internet)

[elspethdixon]

So, this morning I got up at 7:30, spent the entire morning rushing my way through four books on politics and propaganda during WWI and WWII, then spent until 4:30 writing a paper on American propaganda and the demonizing of the enemy during the World Wars. This involved, among other things, spending about an hour looking at photographs the WWII Censorship bureau had barred from publication, most of them depicting the mutilated corpses of WWII soldiers.

Then I walked a mile through the snow to the comicbook store and bought the last issue in stock of Captain America #25.

Then I read it outside in the snow while walking back through campus, with the university clock bell tolling in the background.

Then I stood on the History building steps in the snow making incoherent keening noises for about ten minutes, the kind you make when you're too keyed up to actually shed tears but are crying anyway.


For those couple-three people on my flist who probably also spent about ten minutes of today crying hysterically, I have a music download:
Bang the Drum Slowly by Emmylou Harris.

(Click on the link, and it will take you to yousendit, where you will click on another link--You might have to sign up for an account with yousendit to download, but it verifies very quickly and is free).

Comments

[kali921.livejournal.com]

You may have seen the rant on my LJ about this.

I am so upset. Steve was the moral center of the Marvel universe, and his death reeks of a cheap bid to increase sales.

I want to throttle Joe Quesada and Tom Brevoort right about now. BASTARDS.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I'm not reading any discussion or meta on it--I need to mourn, and I can't do that and participate in wank (and I... it just doesn't feel right to wank over this). I've dropped both scans_daily and comicstore_news for the immediate future.

I may be the only Marvel fan out there who's not actually mad at Quesada or Brubaker--I knew this was coming from the moment I read Frontline 11, and kind of sensed it on the wind even before then, and compared to the way DC handled some of the deaths in their lastest clusterfuck Crisis, it was so much more respectful and better done. I'm just grateful they let Brubaker do it in Steve's own title instead of having it happen under Millar at the end of Civil War 7.

Also, I'm clinging to that little core of hope that they'll bring him back eventually, because a) this is Marvel, and b) He's just That Important, especially with the new dynamic they've set up, where everything is centered on him and Tony and their angsty love. I don't care that bringing him back (or even having him not dead, as Carol suggested in Initiative) would be a publicity stunt/cop out--I like reports-of-my-death-were-greatly-exaggerated plots.

[kali921.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm glad that Brubaker got to handle it, rather than Millar. But I've read the interview with Bru, and he did say that Joe and Tom had a LOT to do with Cap's death.

Bru basically came off as "I loved him so much that he had to die." I'am SO SICK of writers and creators doing that to characters; BKV said that almost verbatim about Gert in the Runaways.

I don't think this was a ballsy move on Brubaker's part, although he wants to present it that way. I love Brubaker - or did - and now? He can go die the death of an unloved pauper, for all that I care.

As for wank, I haven't actually seen much of it, but I define wank as people tearing into each other. All I've seen is rage and grief setting the internet ablaze, and for me, it's cathartic to share in that. Scans_daily has been remarkably unwanky about it, although there are close to 900 comments on the two posts about Cap at this point, virtually all of it an outpouring of disgust and sadness.

But I totally understand the need to sequester. I'm still really just...overwhelmed with the magnitutude of what Brubaker has done.

And poor Sam and poor Sharon! Sharon's going to go through absolute hell, and Sam lost his best friend in the entire world. I know that Brubaker will handle those two characters well, at least. I used to like Diamonback far better than Sharon as a romantic interest for Steve, but Sharon's grown a lot under Brubaker's pen.

And I bet the Punisher is going to be MIGHTY pissed off.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I've read the interview with Bru, and he did say that Joe and Tom had a LOT to do with Cap's death.

Bru basically came off as "I loved him so much that he had to die." I'am SO SICK of writers and creators doing that to characters;

It doesn't surprise me that the head editorial staff had a lot to do with it--it fits much better with the CW storyline than with the eventual-confrontation-with-Red-Skull-arc Brubaker's been setting up. Red Skull killing him from afar does not make a sufficiently dramatic climax for two years of build up.

I just flat don't get the "kill them because we love them" concept. When I love a character, I can't kill them. Gleefully torture the hell out of them, yes, but not kill them. It just seems like a waste of writing potential, as well as sales potential(especially since I'm pretty sure Brubaker's run had made Steve more popular than he's been in a while).

As for wank, I haven't actually seen much of it, but I define wank as people tearing into each other. All I've seen is rage and grief setting the internet ablaze, and for me, it's cathartic to share in that.

I'd define tearing into the Marvel staff as wank as well--it's just one-sided wank. It could be that I'm grieving privately instead of collectively because the Marvel characters (esp. Steve, Tony, and the rest of the Avengers crew) feel so much like real people to me -- and the Marvel universe so much like a three-dimensional, fully realized world -- that I tend to think of the characters as real and the writers as an after-thought sometimes (much like thinking of Josh Holloway as a random guy who happens to look a little bit like Sawyer, rather than as the guy who technically is Sawyer).

I'm glad to hear that S_D is being respectful--the outpourings of character-hate and negativity that have been raging there over CW over the past couple of months had led me to expect... I don't know, something dreadful and offensive.

And poor Sam and poor Sharon! Sharon's going to go through absolute hell, and Sam lost his best friend in the entire world

My best hope is that Sam, Sharon, and Winter Soldier are going to pull together because of this--otherwise, the three of them are going to be so utterly alone; Sam with his grief, Sharon with her guilt, and Bucky with pretty much no one left in the world but Nick Fury's voice on the radio.

Then, of course, there's Tony, so thorougly into emotional shut-down that he can't even say Steve's name anymore. I'm kind of worried that, with Steve gone, he's going to be unfixable--and I'd hoped that there might be some sort of redemption down the road for him.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Well, Quesada may not think Tony was wrong, but a not-insignificant number of other Marvel characters do (ex: Jessica Drew telling Carol that she refused to join up with the Avengers because Tony was responsible for Steve's death), and in their eyes, he's going to need some sort of redemption. People like Luke Cage and Spiderman aren't going to come in from the cold while they still think of Tony as a power-hungry traitor to superhuman-kind.

He needs redemption in his own eyes, too. At this point he's thrown away everything he ever cared about and lost two of his oldest and closest friends (Happy & Steve) through circumstances that are at least partially his fault--Happy was attacked by villains trying to get to Tony, and though Tony didn't have anything at all to do with Red Skull's assassination scheme, his side of the war inadvertantly gave Red Skull the opportunity. He did everything because he thought he had too, but that doesn't necessarily mean he doesn't hate himself for the price it cost.