Steve Rogers: Captain America Appreciation 2019

[capandkirby]

I named multiple real people and groups on the right who support ideas that you have appropriated as uniquely liberal. Several of them are writers. Why not let them, or someone like them, write "Captain America"?

Steve Rogers is a product of the writers and editors. Are you really assuming that a conservative writer would undermine Captain America?

I know plenty of conservatives who avoid Marvel, in part because a Marvel writer (Spencer) told them not to buy comics. Marvel might sell comics if they reached to both sides of the aisle.

The bolded is EXACTLY what I'm assuming. Yes.

And I already answered your first question. While their may be come liberal conservatives who support one or two liberal values, I have yet to see one who supports them ALL. Steve Rogers supports ALL liberal values, as I have laid out for you, with examples.

[jackolover]

The timeline of everything has been bugging me too, because there's no reference of Steve's incarceration in any of this other appearances, not Avengers, not Invaders and not his brief cameos in other books (Carol's book, Tony's book, Miles' book). I think Coates run happens BEFORE Steve rejoins the Avengers. It might even happen prior to Waid's short mini last year. I say this for two reasons: one, he and Sharon were no longer living together when Steve went on his road-trip during Waid's run because Steve was looking for a place to live and in the Avengers run he's living in Celestial mountain, yet in Coates run they are living together. And two, Tony was already out of his coma during Waid's short mini because Steve mentioned him a few times, but in the actual Iron Man book at the time he wasn't yet. This would also explain the absence of Sam (which has been bugging me) in Coates run, because the events of Sam's solo would place Sam in Chicago during Steve's incarceration. Anyway, this is the best I can figure with the pieces we've been given. It's weird to me that none of Steve's other friends, the non-Cap staples, have shown up to visit him in prison and offer to break him out (Tony, Carol, Thor, T'Challa, the other Invaders besides Bucky), but if Coates run was closer to the end of Secret Empire that would explain it, because they're all otherwise predisposed.

The only glitch in this was that Ross had an appearance in Avengers and the whole reason Steve is in prison was that he was framed for Ross' murder. So maybe Ross comes back to life before the events of Avengers? Don't know. I'm not reading Incredible Hulk (although I've heard great things and am eyeing the trades) but maybe that book will address it (maybe it already has, can't say).

Thanks very much for filling me in on continuity as thoroughly as you have, because I don’t get that many books, so I like your work. I am also bugged by continuity at Marvel these days.

[jackolover]

CentralPower. I would assume that "War of the Realms" happens after this arc. But, I really do not think that Coatse cares. (Did "Superior Spider-Man" really match up with "Age of Ultron"? You don't even remember why it was a question either, do you?)

I was curious about Superior Spider-Man in AoU, but you’re probably right, I don’t remember worrying about it too much at the time.

On WOR, that 2 months gap makes it awkward to other continuity.

[BitParallel]

^^^^^ Following up ^^^^^

I just wanted to understand Marvel timeline here.

So if Steve is in prison. How come he appears in Avengers? Invaders? And X-Books?

Like is it all happening at the same time?

[Prof. Warren]

^^^^^ Following up ^^^^^

I just wanted to understand Marvel timeline here.

So if Steve is in prison. How come he appears in Avengers? Invaders? And X-Books?

Like is it all happening at the same time?

No, at different times. But until Coates' current arc is over, we won't know where it fits in.

I agree that it's a bit puzzling trying to figure Cap's current continuity. The same with Black Panther, who's been in space since the beginning of Coates' latest volume.

As long as I'm enjoying the stories themselves, I'm content to wait and see how it all fits together.

[Arsenal]

I’ve always just assume of that the events of Cap’s series all takes place before he meets up with Tony & Thor to reform the avengers.

[BitParallel]

No, at different times. But until Coates' current arc is over, we won't know where it fits in.

I agree that it's a bit puzzling trying to figure Cap's current continuity. The same with Black Panther, who's been in space since the beginning of Coates' latest volume.

As long as I'm enjoying the stories themselves, I'm content to wait and see how it all fits together.

I’ve always just assume of that the events of Cap’s series all takes place before he meets up with Tony & Thor to reform the avengers.

It should take place before other events because it wouldn’t make sense if it’s “during” or “after”

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I named multiple real people and groups on the right who support ideas that you have appropriated as uniquely liberal. Several of them are writers. Why not let them, or someone like them, write "Captain America"?

Do fans even have the authority to "let" anyone write and not write any licensed character? Or this one fan here.

And in any case, Marvel is currently owned by Ike Perlmutter, a supporter of the current POTUS and he has no problem employing and profiting off Marvel IP and using that money to aid the American right.

If there's a conservative writer with a good pitch for Captain America and they can tell the story they want in superhero terms, all they need to do is do what other Marvel writers of any persuasion have done : make a name in independent creator-owned comics, work as intern at Marvel and network like crazy, attend comic cons and talk shop with anyone and everyone, get their voices heard. No one hired liberal writers like Spencer or others because of their politics, they did it because they proved they could write well, sell ideas, and get published, and to do that you need to have a sense of the audience.

If a conservative comics artist has skill to sell ideas then they can do it. Steve Ditko, the great Randian, wrote Dr. Strange that was a huge hit for hippies and the counter-culture, people who didn't share his political views. Frank Miller also a libertarian/Randian and an atheist wrote a great Catholic character like Daredevil.

It does seem telling that a conservative writer's talent is primarily determined by the ability of writers to have their stories sell across the aisle than vice-versa. To me that says more about conservativism than anything else.

Are you really assuming that a conservative writer would undermine Captain America?

Well Secret Empire written by a liberal, and Ultimate Captain America written by a Scotsman with anti-American attitudes, did undermine Captain America a little bit. It's only thanks to the movies that it didn't go over. So if a liberal writer can undermine Captain America, so can a conservative. Obviously the right answer is that good writing will work regardless of political biases. And if a conservative writes the character in keeping with continuity and pre-established history (i.e not pretend that Cap doesn't support gay rights and others), and finds a way to do it right, maybe it might work. At least in theory.

Characters can be undermined by writers. See what happened to Hank Pym.

I know plenty of conservatives who avoid Marvel, in part because a Marvel writer (Spencer) told them not to buy comics. Marvel might sell comics if they reached to both sides of the aisle.

It's current president Ike Perlmutter is a Trump supporter, and he's a known eccentric. So I don't think Marvel is as liberal as you think. And in any case, look most of the Marvel Universe and most Marvel characters, live and operate in New York City, which went overwhelmingly against Trump in the last election. So if Marvel is to reflect the "world outside your window" and its window is NY, then yeah it's going to have to address the fact that reality has a liberal bias.

[CentralPower]

nd I already answered your first question. While their may be come liberal conservatives who support one or two liberal values, I have yet to see one who supports them ALL. Steve Rogers supports ALL liberal values, as I have laid out for you, with examples.

I cited multiple real people, as a way to demonstrate why blind partisanship does not work, and why a conservative could write "Captain America" without undermining the character. You have a single fictional character that passes an ideological purity test.

Do fans even have the authority to "let" anyone write and not write any licensed character? Or this one fan here.

Marvel has the right to let a writer work on a series. I am just saying that Marvel should maybe consider letting a conservative have "Captain America".

It does seem telling that a conservative writer's talent is primarily determined by the ability of writers to have their stories sell across the aisle than vice-versa. To me that says more about conservativism than anything else.

Or, it says something about liberal bubbles.

2 of the 3 most recent runs of "Captain America" were written by explicitly left-leaning writers. Even the apolitical Waid arc is written by a lefty. Are people really so afraid of letting a conservative write a character that is named for a whole country, not merely one side of the political spectrum?

Well Secret Empire written by a liberal, and Ultimate Captain America written by a Scotsman with anti-American attitudes, did undermine Captain America a little bit.

"Secret Empire" was polemical, which was the real problem. I never saw Millar's run on "the Ultimates" as political, so much as it was incredibly sophmoric. (Put more bluntly, it was too stupid to even be polemical.)

So if Steve is in prison. How come he appears in Avengers? Invaders? And X-Books?

Like is it all happening at the same time?

Maybe, maybe not.

Marvel has not cared about lining up multiple series for a while. And, at this point, they barely even pretend to care. Sometimes, it all shakes out and sort of works. Other times, it never fully reconciles. (If you need on-page logic for this, Ewing's run on "the Ultimates" actually established that Marvel history is relatively fluid, as a way to make the obligatory time-sliding work. That could also explain away any other miss-matched stories.)

It's current president Ike Perlmutter is a Trump supporter, and he's a known eccentric. So I don't think Marvel is as liberal as you think. And in any case, look most of the Marvel Universe and most Marvel characters, live and operate in New York City, which went overwhelmingly against Trump in the last election. So if Marvel is to reflect the "world outside your window" and its window is NY, then yeah it's going to have to address the fact that reality has a liberal bias.

I would guess that Perlmutter (and Marvel) want to make money, which means selling comics. Telling 40-odd percent of potential readers to not buy comics might not be the best way to sell comics. And, ultimately, this is about more than Trump.

[BitParallel]

Really enjoyed reading the analysis of Steve’s political ideologies and where he stance. It’s a good read.
Granted, I do think Steve is a liberal, he probably is a democrate. There’s nothing wrong in establishing him as a liberal but allowing a conservative writer to write him. The writer’s personal ideologies shouldn’t influence the character’s history and his core traits.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Really enjoyed reading the analysis of Steve’s political ideologies and where he stance. It’s a good read.
Granted, I do think Steve is a liberal, he probably is a democrate. There’s nothing wrong in establishing him as a liberal but allowing a conservative writer to write him. The writer’s personal ideologies shouldn’t influence the character’s history and his core traits.

That I can get behind. If a conservative writes Steve Rogers and acknowledges and respects his pre-existing characterization and story and works within that to do his thing, then that might be worth reading.

And in any case Marvel already has a character who is a big hit among conservatives -- Frank Castle, the Punisher who is far more popular among police and military than Steve Rogers is these days. Frank Castle is a real soldier, and not a super-serum guy, and he fights in America's unpopular wars (Vietnam originally, now it's Iraq or Afghanistan), and is...to put it mildly...very tough on crime and is basically a free propaganda character for the NRA. Also one of his biggest writers, Chuck Dixon, is a conservative who did write the Heroes Reborn: Captain America series, which I am not familiar with.

Garth Ennis is also the influential Punisher writer of modern times and he's weird in that he's probably a liberal in the American political spectrum but certainly a centrist figure in terms of the UK. If you read his obscure stuff, like Kev and Crossed, he's actually done nostalgia pieces for the British Empire and saying it wasn't all that bad or otherwise downplaying it in "it's good that it was gone but it wasn't the worst when it was around" sense. Which is an interesting wrinkle. He's somehow written stuff that red state people can read and like even if he's an anti-religious guy. Ennis has in stuff like Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe and his spoof in The Boys, -- Soldier Boy -- kind of opposes the Punisher as the true or more real hero over Captain America and so on.

[Samson3191]

A conservative writer could write a good Cap story in theory, but it’s hard for me to imagine a conservative really clicking with Steve’s long-standing ideals. More than that, are there any conservative writers in comics? Not very many, and the ones that are outspokenly conservative really truly have no right anywhere Steve. Not just because of their vitriolic stances, but their lack of straight up talent and resume.

But if you want to take it even further, most ART in the world of any medium leans left. Movies, tv, comics, whatever. Most of it is created by, influenced by, or leans to the left. It just does. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that as a whole the arts, in general, are more important to liberals than it is to conservatives. I’m not even trying to say that’s a moral issue with a right or wrong answer, I think it’s just the statistical truth. So to say “Captain America could be written by a conservative”, you have to even find one in the first place. Replace “captain America” with any other story in fiction out there and it’s just as true. Conservatism in general just isn’t as drawn to creating things as liberals are.

[CentralPower]

There’s nothing wrong in establishing him as a liberal but allowing a conservative writer to write him. The writer’s personal ideologies shouldn’t influence the character’s history and his core traits.

I can buy in for the idea that Steve Rogers leans left. The single biggest break of his life was the result of a government program, and set him up with a gig as the icon of....a state.

But, America is not just the statist left. And, more importantly, a state is a manifestation of culture. Plenty of narrative hooks for conservative writers.

Ironically, Millar (who is a lefty) arguably wrote the most conservative Captain America with "Civil War". And, it did not make much sense. (Having a character named after the state standing against regulation....while an entrepreneur/industrialist is pro-regulation...) Marvel should have found a write who understands American political association.

A conservative writer could write a good Cap story in theory, but it’s hard for me to imagine a conservative really clicking with Steve’s long-standing ideals. More than that, are there any conservative writers in comics? Not very many, and the ones that are outspokenly conservative really truly have no right anywhere Steve. Not just because of their vitriolic stances, but their lack of straight up talent and resume.

Supers are traditionally written as interventionists, which puts most of them on the left. There are some examples of characters not wanting to interfere beyond their scope. But, those examples are rare, and usually end with the character....getting involved. In that sense, a leftward view is more consistent with comics in general. (On the other hand, most supers are non-state interventionists, operating outside of any regulatory system, putting them on the right.)

Love or hate his his politics, Nathan Edmonson is a damned good writer.

But if you want to take it even further, most ART in the world of any medium leans left. Movies, tv, comics, whatever. Most of it is created by, influenced by, or leans to the left. It just does. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that as a whole the arts, in general, are more important to liberals than it is to conservatives.

There are studies about this. It is arguably a function of differences in mindset along the political spectrum.

So to say “Captain America could be written by a conservative”, you have to even find one in the first place. Replace “captain America” with any other story in fiction out there and it’s just as true. Conservatism in general just isn’t as drawn to creating things as liberals are.

Marvel typically goes outside of comics.

I would like to see a Captain America written by Dan Henninger, Ralph Peters or Andrew Bacevich (three very different types of conservatives).

The left is no more creative than the right. (I know plenty of creatively bankrupt lefties.) But, the right is more interested in creating real things that people would want. When the left veers in to creating real things, they typically need to require a mandate to force people to buy in. (And, I say this as a lefty.) The left is good for thought experiments, which probably helps when creating fiction and other art.

[capandkirby]

This entire argument is a mute point. Marvel does not hire on the basis of partisanship. They are not obligated to give their fictional intellectual property a conservative writer just to balance the fact that the character has mostly been written by liberal writers, they are not obligated to do anything.

The character in question is written liberal for just about any worldly perspective he can possibly have. I have given examples from the comics for this, so this cannot change without the writer being accused of bad characterization that does not follow established canon. Especially since some of it is firmly cemented, like Steve's childhood best friend being Arnie Roth, who was gay and whom Steve was not only fully supportive of but outright called anyone who would judge Arnie for his sexual preference a social pariah, exact term (and this in 1982 during the height of the AIDS crises - go DeMatteis!!!). So unless you retcon Steve's entire history - and why would you do that and call the character Steve Rogers - Steve's gay rights activism is now firmly cemented into his mythos.

Moreover, you change any of Steve's ideologies too much, and you risk alienating his already established audience.

It doesn't matter what CentralPower wants, it matters what Marvel wants, and right now, thank goodness, Marvel is content to leave Cap as he is, which, in the words of Kelly Sue DeConnick, (Steve Rogers is) one of the world's oldest social justice warriors.

[capandkirby]

This entire argument is a mute point. Marvel does not hire on the basis of partisanship. They are not obligated to give their fictional intellectual property a conservative writer just to balance the fact that the character has mostly been written by liberal writers, they are not obligated to do anything.

The character in question is written liberal for just about any worldly perspective he can possibly have. I have given examples from the comics for this, so this cannot change without the writer being accused of bad characterization that does not follow established canon. Especially since some of it is firmly cemented, like Steve's childhood best friend being Arnie Roth, who was gay and whom Steve was not only fully supportive of but outright called anyone who would judge Arnie for his sexual preference a social pariah, exact term (and this in 1982 during the height of the AIDS crises - go DeMatteis!!!). So unless you retcon Steve's entire history - and why would you do that and call the character Steve Rogers - Steve's gay rights activism is now firmly cemented into his mythos.

It doesn't matter what CentralPower wants, it matters what Marvel wants, and right now, thank goodness, Marvel is content to leave Cap as he is, which, in the words of Kelly Sue DeConnick, (Steve Rogers is) one of the world's oldest social justice warriors.

By the way, I've had the pleasure of interacting with DeMatteis over the Arnie Roth Cap story recently on twitter, he is proud of this story to this day as he damn well should be! At the time it was extremely brave of him, especially as Reagan refused to even acknowledge that AIDS, and the homophobia that sprung from misinformation, was an issue.