Coates addressed this early on with his Instagram account. He said, paraphrasing, something along the lines that originally he did plan to de-age her early on, but Helen Mirren being so kick ass inspired him not to. Which, as a 42-year-old female, is a sentiment I appreciate. As much as I love her (Red - so good), Helen Mirren is an outlier and most of the time Hollywood considers any woman past 30 as being past her prime, who therein must be relegated to exasperated mother or grandmother roles. So it's great that Coates is trying to combat that stigma, even if just a little bit.
That said, with the reintroduction of Peggy, I have a feeling Steve and Sharon's relationship isn't long for this world (and trust me, I sincerely hope I'm wrong on this, in fact I would celebrate if I'm wrong on this). It just seems like the comics are bending over backwards to mirror the MCU. The icing on the cake was the 'Steve's early childhood' page in Marvel #1000 which depicted Bucky as Steve's childhood BFF instead of Arnie Roth. It was upsetting to say the least.
Last edited by capandkirby; 10-11-2019 at 08:59 AM.
Steve with some of the 1960s Avengers by Alex Ross:
As for the continuity error, yes, Steve's childhood best friend was Arnie Roth. He didn't even meet Bucky until after he received the serum and became Captain America. The troubling thing about Marvel doing this, i.e. ret-conning Steve's history, is that the Arnie Roth story has cultural/political significance. DeMatteis wrote it in 1982, at the height of the AIDS crises, when homophobia was an even bigger plague than it is now. Arnie was gay and had a live-in, common-law husband, Michael. Writing this story, given the paranoia and rampart hate at the time, was actually very brave of DeMatteis. Even though the CCA was still around at the time DeMatteis got around them and wrote the story anyway. He used Steve as a vehicle to teach acceptance, having Steve actively call out homophobia as being wrong on the page.
So yeah. Ret-conning Arnie out of existence is pretty ouch.
Last edited by capandkirby; 10-11-2019 at 09:32 AM.
And the last page of preview...
The source
Thanks for sharing. Some fine writing so far. Been missing Cap and Spidey interacting.
The spider is always on the hunt.
Arnie Roth was only Steve's childhood friend in Moira Mactaggert's 7th life.