The last wall came down...

[subplotkudzu]

and I missed it. Just as well I suppose. The flurry of press reports today confirmed that as part of their incredibly inane but high selling cross universe crisis Civil War, Marvel comics has just killed Captain America.Now you might expect that I would use this space to go on a rant about said incredibly inane civil war, or how it's just more evidence of 40yearsagotoday's astute theory that by and large comics nowadays are essentially fanfic ("Let me tell you my Bullseye story! it's so wicked cool, and only 85% stolen from Miller's original ones!"), but I have to disappoint you. I'm instead going to complain about the collapse of one of the last, if not the last, moments of tangible continuity in comics. Go back and read that NYT story I linked to. 

Further down. 

A little further. Do you see it? I'll help. "More recently, Bucky, the Captain’s wartime partner — who was thought killed by an explosion as he tried to defuse a bomb — was revealed to be alive. Bucky was saved by Soviet forces, who put him on ice and thawed him for their own missions. Captain America broke the Soviet hold on Bucky, and the two had a brief reunion. Bucky, who has taken on the name the Winter Soldier, is now on a quest to redeem his actions."

They brought back Bucky. They f'k'n' brought back Bucky!?!? The one actual tangible touchstone death in the continuity, the one that wiser writers and editors had sashayed towards and then turned away from at the last minute on multiple occasions (I am particularly fond of how Peter David had the immortal leader of his greek god descended supporting cast organization look amazingly like a young Rick Jones - who as we all know was a dead ringer for Bucky Barnes - commented on how said immortal last wandered the earth in WWII and then had him die/vanish while escaping on a rocket in a scene drawn in lovingly rendered Kirby-vision without every stating that this was indeed Bucky) and they undid it?

The wind and the rain, why? WHY? So we could have Bucky and Jean Grey make out and produce offspring who will look nothing like Cable and marry Peter Parker's cloned daughter (or daughter's clone, or something...) when she returns from being vanished and never spoken of again? Gyyyyaaaaaaahhhhhhh!

OK, I'm better now. Well, no I'm not, but it's the best I can do. Time to go take two

Tom Strong and try to feel better in the morning.

Comments

[40yearsagotoday.livejournal.com]

I would have posted on this, but that would be giving the matter more attention that it deserved.

I have one question, which I have not seen answered in any of the news coverage I've seen so far: are they canceling the title? If not, we may rest assured that Cap will be back within the year.

And if they are, we can be fairly sure he will be back within five years.

In any case, there's a Cap movie coming out soon, which is far more important to Marvel than anything on paper.

[40yearsagotoday.livejournal.com]

PS: Someone online said "Everybody comes back from the dead, except Barry Allen."

To which I reply: give it time. We'll see him back yet.

We've got to remember: to the companies, it's not a dead character. It's an intellectual property that's not generating revenue.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

I'm leaning towards Barry remaining dead because there's no loss of intellectual property: the Flash comic, with the same powers, uniform and sensabilities, is still coming out. Unlike other DC legacy heroes (Green Lantern, Green Arrow) the writers on Flash managed to catch it right in the early days of the post Barry universe, and Barry was given an appropriate death - saving the universe after his own title had been cancelled due to lack of sales - so there's no hue and cry from the fans about the need to bring back Barry. Plus, they keep doing flashback tales (JLA year one, the Brave and the Bold, etc.) that keep an infusion of still living Barry stories into the market. Barry's still bringing in money that way.

That being said, I won't be surprised if some dumbass writer a decade from now has this wicked cool idea about bringing back this forgotten character he just read about. Or if they license a Flash movie and decide that they havee to use Barry Allen because the whole Kid Flas thing is too hard to explain, and therefore they need to prime the pump in the comics. But if they didn't use the TV show as an excuse to undo his death, even that might not cut it.

Three Things...

[panzerschrek.livejournal.com]

1) Shooting a guy in a stars-n-stripes uniform in front of a set of big marble steps with the world and its brother watching by a guy with a skull mask? Been done before... with less than lethal results.

2) Only Bucky, Jason Todd and Uncle Ben stay dead... well, Uncle Ben, at least, although we do invite his alternate dimension self in on alternating Thursdays...

3) Barry Allen, at least within canon (yeah, I know... I'm a frickin' purist), *CAN'T* come back within the prime reality b/c he never left -- he is the lightening-bolt that gave himself his powers.