Marvel Comics General

Reading Marvel.com's interview with Aaron and Ewing about the Valkyrie comic is fascinating.

Also, she's going to be wielding a new weapon UNDRJARN THE ALL-WEAPON, which makes me believe that somehow Mjolnir is going to be put back together by the end of War of the Realms and Thor will wield it again.

Edited by alliterator on Apr 17th 2019 at 9:04:19 AM

Aaron's run is the most interesting Thor has been since JMS and if War of the Realms lives up to its promise it could well be on the plane as Simonson.

I thought it was Al Ewing writing the Valkyrie book?

And my only concern is if Valkyrie is dead, what does that mean for Anabelle Riggs?

Sam won a few of the battles he fought, it's just he definitely lost anything to do with the police brutality case.

It was Cut Short far too soon.

I think Sam needed lots and lots more issues. Pity Spencer didn't get a Falcon series.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 17th 2019 at 9:12:11 AM

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

A common problem with superhero comics but at the end of the day you gotta judge what you're left with. James Roberts had to rush Transformers: Lost Light and didn't get to end his near perfect Transformers saga the way he wanted to.

Charles (from last page)

Dramatic Irony? If, as he says, he didnt expect the backlash, then it would be a Deliberate Flaw Retcon.

Besides, Spencer knew from the very beginning that his book was going to be controversial; if anything he relished in it, so that just comes off as more ego stroking on his part to me.

-ahem-

Back on topic though, I too was dissatisfied with Sam's lack of success. And therein lies the real crux of the problem: bringing up "these problems exist" isn't really enough. Back in the 70's, people were very aware of the Watergate scandal, civil and women's rights, etc. Superhero comic's didnt just settle for bringing up that they existed, because people already knew that they existed; they had the heroes actually solving the problems (to an extent) in their own unique ways. Because that is the fantasy of superheroes — they are people who actually can make a difference by the strength of their will alone (and cool superpowers).

It would have been nice if Sam had actually caused some positive change in his book to counteract the depression, but the end of the day, you can't judge a book on what it could have been, you can only judge whats on the page.

Also, and don't take this the wrong way, but I can't help but find it a little bit amusing that you and others here are so critical of Jane Thor, when Sam Cap got the exact same criticisms thrown at him when he was around. Kinda ironic.

Rodimus

That part of the story with John Henry was very well written I thought, but it also really undercut the fact that the story wasn't really about anything other than nostalgia for all of DC's white— I mean, "classic" heroes. The John Henry story really felt like a serious vigilante piece awkwardly wedged into a fun Zeerust superhero story.

×2

Right, there are a lot of things writers aren't able to finish because of one reason or another.

Edited by Cortez on Apr 17th 2019 at 12:23:44 PM

Yeah, that's why I would have left Sam as Captain America and made Steve in Nomad. How long was Bucky Captain America? Like, he had three years (2007 to 2010) of being Cap while Steve was dead and then stayed Captain America until his past was revealed to the public, so...four years, right? 2007 to 2011. Sam's book lasted less than two years, I believe. So I would give him another book by another writer and have Mark Waid writing Steve as Nomad (which he basically was — roaming around the country helping people).

How did Steve Rogers solve Watergate, though? Again: he solved it in a very comic-book-y way, much like how Sam Wilson "solved" the Americops police brutality (this was before Rage was arrested) with his eyes in the sky.

Edited by alliterator on Apr 17th 2019 at 9:26:31 AM

Well, more of that, I guess. You've got super fascist cops which require a superpowered solution, so you have Sam use bird telepathy to keep them under surveillance and also by the way isn't this a clever metaphor for keeping tabs on police officers due to their abuse of power.

Steve "solved" Watergate in the same way everyone beat up Hitler back in the day. The real event didn't go away but the fictional characters don't look powerless against their version of injustice.

Edited by RodimusMinor on Apr 17th 2019 at 12:30:28 PM

There's also the fact that Sam Wilson was deliberately and secretly being pushed against by Hydra Steve — that's why US Agent went after Sam in the first place (he refused to go against him at first, but then Hydra Steve asked him personally).

A book about Sam as Captain America without the spectre of Hydra Steve would be very, very interesting.

Edited by alliterator on Apr 17th 2019 at 9:32:16 AM

At the end of the day I think we're all in agreement that Samerica was a lot of wasted potential.

Yeah, there were two very good ideas:

1. Sam Wilson as Captain America and the hardships he would face.
2. Steve Rogers revealed to secretly be Hydra and the dangers of blindly trusting anyone and that no one man should have all that power.

Individually, you could tell great stories with each idea. Together they...didn't mix well.

1) I can agree with you on that, as long as it's not a "Shaggy Dog" Story. Which, ironically, we almost got, and got a brief glimpse of with Remeder's short lived Sam Cap run (which I thought was quite good).

2) ...could """"possibly"""" work, but you'd basically have to restructure the whole thing from the ground up to remove all the stupid. And quit it with the whole "Thisisreallyreallyrealforrealzyouguyz!" advertising.

Edited by Eldritcho on Apr 17th 2019 at 9:43:22 AM

I do wonder what Remender's version of the Hydra story would have been.

Yeah, Tom Brevoort and Nick Spencer insisting it was real (when the second issue proved it wasn't) was stupid, because every comic book reader knew it wasn't real. So all they were doing were angering comic book fans by lying and non-comic book fans who assumed they were telling the truth and hated the storyline for changing Cap at all (there were people who were saying that making Cap Hydra was anti-Semitic because he had been created by two Jews, despite the fact that Cap himself isn't Jewish and Cap has been hypnotized into being a Nazi before this, too). It also didn't help with them trying to say that Hydra weren't actually Nazis when...yes, yes they are. They are Nazi+ — Nazis plus something else, too, but still Nazis.

In any case, if I had been in charge of the Hydra Cap storyline, here's what I would have done: introduce an alternate universe where Hydra really did raise Steve Rogers. Introduce this alternate Earth from the very beginning. Steve was raised by Hydra, won World War II for them, and conquered the world for them...but was then banished somehow and found himself alone on an alternate Earth where Hydra had always lost. This Hydra Steve isn't from Earth-616, but he's still a real Steve Rogers. And so AU-Steve decides to find the other Steve Rogers and take his place and restore what he views is Hydra's true glory.

This way, we wouldn't rely on Kobik as a literal Maguffin. There would be no "Search for the Cosmic Cube" — no magical thing that would fix everything. What everyone would be doing is searching for allies in order to stop Steve and Hydra.

Edited by alliterator on Apr 17th 2019 at 9:55:16 AM

Ya'know, I see the "Cap was brainwashed to be a Nazi before" argument brought up a lot, but really... it's not a very good argument? Yes, Cap was brainwashed, with the cosmic cube even... for one issue. And fighting it the whole time. Through sheer force of will, because the Nazi ideology is so antithetical to his beliefs, Steve broke free of the (cosmic cube enforced, remember) brainwashing before he could hurt anyone, after a single issue, and proceeded to kick Nazi ass. And yes, Jack Kirby wrote this story.

So for a later writer to basically keep saying "nah, Cap was a Nazi all along! But see, he was a good Nazi, trying to fix it from within. Because his ideology isn't completely antithetical to that of the Nazi's, after all they kept the trains running on time...", while perhaps not overtly anti-semetic, well, it's offensive in some regard. To good taste, perhaps.

This always bugged me. There have been stories in the comics that portrayed Hydra as white supremacist and one of their frequent leaders, Baron Strucker, is an unapologetic racist.

Were we supposed to forget about that?

Come to think of it, have we ever actually seen black people as members of Hydra? My thinking is no. Because they're white supremacists.

X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics.

That story, Tales of Suspense #67, featured Cap brainwashed through regular means, not though the Cosmic Cube. In fact, the Cosmic Cube wouldn't appear until issue #79. So that was Cap fighting back regular brainwashing, not Cosmic Cube-induced brainwashing.

In any case, I don't see the problem in stretching out a storyline that would be one or two issues in the Silver Age, since modern writing and audiences have changed.

I think they were just trying to distance themselves from the word "Nazi," since technically Hydra predates the Nazis. They even made the argument that Hydra was more akin to SMERSH , since it had been invented to be the enemy of Nick Fury and SHIELD. But...it was then retconned to be Nazis, too, so that doesn't really work.

Edited by alliterator on Apr 17th 2019 at 11:03:58 AM

A cursory glance at membership lists shows only a couple of obscure minor characters like that one who looked like a little girl (despite being 27) from Peter David's X-Factor.

You're right, my mistake. Though i'd still argue that they're not at all equivalent, as a 1-issue story from back then is worth, at best, a 5-6 issue story today — not a 50 issue epic (especially for something so cut-and-dry as brainwashing).

Captain America: Steve Rogers was 19 issues. Secret Empire was 11 issues (yes, there was #0). Add in, like, Civil War II: The Oath, and you get, at most, a 31-issue epic. Which, also, I'd argue has a lot more than just "brainwashed Cap" in it. (For one thing, he isn't technically brainwashed, it was just that his entire history had been rewritten. So there was no "brainwashing" to fight against.)

Speaking of Secret Empire, i just realized that most characters that died in that event have come back in some form or another.

Oh God Jane Foster is getting her own comic & through appropriating another super-identity.......

She’s lucky she got a good writer though, she really needs it.

Well at least no one has to go through a forced name-change this time.

Edited by slimcoder on Apr 18th 2019 at 1:05:21 AM

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Nah, instead, a character just got killed off to make room for her. I'm assuming Annabelle Riggs will be separated from Valkyrie in Got G, as I'm sure Bunn will want the opportunity to save his character. If not, it'll mean two characters killed to make Jane a Valkyrie, even though they could've easily just had Valkyrie training Jane as a Valkyrie, no need for a character death.

But Marvel's been really kill-happy lately in general.

Jane's new costume is frigging sick, though. Awesome design. Kudos to whoever came up with it.

Edited by Tiamatty on Apr 18th 2019 at 4:16:43 AM

X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics.