Steve Rogers: Captain America Appreciation 2019

[Huntsman Spider]

Question (and maybe I should make a separate thread for this, but since the original Earth X was very much a Steve Rogers-centric story, and the summary for Marvel X specifically mentions him, as well, it's not exactly off-topic). Wasn't the original Earth X story the one to posit the idea of the Celestials 'seeding' the Earth and making Eternals/Deviants/X-Men/Metahumans possible? And didn't Aaron just ret-con that in Avengers, wherein he modified the origin of life on Earth as originating from a sick Celestial who crash-landed on Earth and from his blood and vomit (gross, Aaron!) life sprung? It will be interesting to see how Marvel X (which is supposed to be a prequel to Earth X) rectifies this. I mean, Loki could have just been lying in Avengers, this is true, but the Avengers are using that dead Celestial's body as their base currently in the storytelling.

Yeah, that's true. And Earth X is technically a different continuity from 616, even if some concepts from Earth X have been incorporated into 616, so whatever applies to Earth X doesn't necessarily have to square with 616 canon. As for Aaron's take on the origin of life on Earth in the Marvel Universe, I thought that was so utterly nihilistic, but then Steve's answer gave me new life, paraphrasing from DC's Blackest Night, which also posited that life in the universe was an accident and/or an aberration --- "Life doesn't give us purpose. We give life purpose." Right on, Captain.

[Chris0013]

CAPTAIN AMERICA #18
TA-NEHISI COATES (W) • JASON MASTERS (A) • Cover by ALEX ROSS
MARVELS X VARIANT COVER BY ADAM KUBERT
THE LEGEND OF STEVE continues!
Cap vs Nick Fury! Cap vs The Dryad! The new Scourge vs everybody! And a heart-stopping climax that you’ll never forget!
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

I am hoping this is not the way they bring Priscilla Lyons/Vagabond/One time Scourge trainee back.

[Marvell2100]

Question to Cap fans:

What is the most emotional Captain America story you've read?

For me, it's Operation: Rebirth by Waid and Garney. Steve getting the life he wanted only to realize it was the Skull manipulating things with the Cosmic Cube and him giving it all up to stop him just hit alevel for me. Once again, Steve gives up his dreams to save the world.

[K7P5V]

Question to Cap fans:

What is the most emotional Captain America story you've read?

For me, it's Operation: Rebirth by Waid and Garney. Steve getting the life he wanted only to realize it was the Skull manipulating things with the Cosmic Cube and him giving it all up to stop him just hit alevel for me. Once again, Steve gives up his dreams to save the world.

Definitely Frank Miller's Born Again:

[capandkirby]

Question to Cap fans:

What is the most emotional Captain America story you've read?

For me, it's Operation: Rebirth by Waid and Garney. Steve getting the life he wanted only to realize it was the Skull manipulating things with the Cosmic Cube and him giving it all up to stop him just hit alevel for me. Once again, Steve gives up his dreams to save the world.

Sad emotional: Fallen Son legit made me cry. I had to put it down and pick it up again later to finish, I was that distraught. Second place would be the What If issue that accompanied Roger Stern's Captain America #250.

Happy emotional: This one is more difficult to narrow down to one or two choices, as there are tons of times I cheered out loud while reading Steve finally come out ahead of whatever villain was giving him a hard time. But I guess if someone forced me to choose just one, it would be when Steve told the Reagan administration to take a hike during Gruenwald's run, re: Captain America No More. Granted there is some bias here. Gruenwald was my first experience with not only Cap comics, but comics as a whole, so I pick this one out of equal parts superb storytelling and nostalgia.

[capandkirby]

Yeah, that's true. And Earth X is technically a different continuity from 616, even if some concepts from Earth X have been incorporated into 616, so whatever applies to Earth X doesn't necessarily have to square with 616 canon. As for Aaron's take on the origin of life on Earth in the Marvel Universe, I thought that was so utterly nihilistic, but then Steve's answer gave me new life, paraphrasing from DC's Blackest Night, which also posited that life in the universe was an accident and/or an aberration --- "Life doesn't give us purpose. We give life purpose." Right on, Captain.

I agree, Steve was definitely on-point there.

Thanks! Alternative universe does make it easier to reconcile. I didn't remember Earth X as being an alternative universe. Admittedly it's been years since I read it and the details are fuzzy. I didn't even remember there were sequels to it until someone on twitter reminded me. Probably due for a reread. Particularly before January as I pre-ordered Marvel X yesterday at my CBS.

[PCN24454]

Same! I was hugely disappointed. And it wasn't because of Peggy or anything like that. It's because I've been reading Cap since Gruenwald and the one thing I associate with the character is that Steve Rogers does not give up. If I had to sum up Steve in three words they would be: adaptable, persistent, honorable. Him going back to the past felt like quitting. And Steve Rogers, at least in my understanding of the character, does not quit.

I once read an interview with Kirby where he was talking about how he wrote Steve before he went to war (Kirby is a WW2 vet himself, he was drafted and fought in the army) to how he wrote Steve during the Silver Age, after the war. Kirby was very cognizant of how tough it is for veterans to return to normal lives as citizens after having been a soldier in active combat. And Steve's coming off the ice to have missed years and to see that life moved on without him was a giant metaphor for what it feels like for a soldier to come home and adjust to life again, how different the world feels to them. Steve's ending in Endgame totally destroys that metaphor because it's basically sending the message that a soldier can't adapt.

Besides, these panels, which directly contradict Steve's MCU ending, exist...

I don’t know how I feel about the story. On one hand, Cap should stay. On the other hand, most of the characters’ treatment of him felt extremely callous considering how he had entirely life upended. Why would he stay with a bunch of people who only seem to see him as Captain America, guy who can just flex off having everyone he knows and loves just be dead?

There’s a reason why it’s hard to take lessons in morality from superhero fiction.

[Prof. Warren]

Same! I was hugely disappointed. And it wasn't because of Peggy or anything like that. It's because I've been reading Cap since Gruenwald and the one thing I associate with the character is that Steve Rogers does not give up. If I had to sum up Steve in three words they would be: adaptable, persistent, honorable. Him going back to the past felt like quitting. And Steve Rogers, at least in my understanding of the character, does not quit.

Well, I think you're just seeing the difference between an ongoing narrative in live action and one in comics.

In comics, Steve Rogers can go on forever. He can die, be reborn, turn old, get young again. He's forever. So, of course, it easy for him to never quit. He's essentially immortal on the comic page.

In live action, it's a different story. Chris Evans can't play Cap forever. So to retire him, they have to give Cap an ending. Do they kill him off, like with Tony, or do they give him a way to step down? I think having both Cap and Tony die - on top of Nat's death - in the climax of Endgame would have been too much. Allowing Steve a happy ending in the context of the films works for me. He's not giving up. He knows that Sam will be a more than fit replacement for him and who knows what he got up to in the past. Surely he did some good during the course of that life with Peggy.

And, in time, Marvel may decide that they want to bring Cap back. The character is still around.

It would easy to recast Steve, once some time passes, and have Cap de-aged into the new role.

At the moment, it's best to keep him on the bench and let Evans run stand as the end of the character for now. But who knows what the future holds?

[capandkirby]

I don’t know how I feel about the story. On one hand, Cap should stay. On the other hand, most of the characters’ treatment of him felt extremely callous considering how he had entirely life upended. Why would he stay with a bunch of people who only seem to see him as Captain America, guy who can just flex off having everyone he knows and loves just be dead?

There’s a reason why it’s hard to take lessons in morality from superhero fiction.

Yeah, I agree with you there. The MCU did a great disservice to Steve's ties to the present, particular his relationship with Stark. Comic Civil War felt more... earned. Even though they fervently disagreed to the point of coming to blows about it, you still got the impression that they cared about each other underneath it all and regretted, later, that it went as far as it did. Moreover, it was because those two had such strong feelings for each other, that you could believe that they would become irrational about it. You don't get that mad at someone you're ambivalent about. The opposite of love isn't hate, it is indifference. MCU Civil War wasn't earned. Of course those two characters would disagree, they had never agreed on anything ever in that universe up to that point, and had started off, from the get-go, antagonistic towards each other as established in the Avengers 2012 film. Them arguing over something was just another Tuesday. And as for Steve's immediate circle: the MCU did a good job with Sam, love Mackie's version of him, Bucky had none of the personality of comics!Bucky, he was used mostly as a plot-device (I believe the trope is called sexy lamp?) though maybe this can be made better with the Falcon and Winter Soldier show, hopefully they'll delve into his individual thought processes more, and Sharon, well, they did her the most dirty of all them. It's criminal how under-utilized she was used and forgotten about when she was no longer convenient. So yeah, I can see why you would think that. The MCU really did a terrible job of setting up a "found family" for Steve in the present, like he has in the comics.

I don't hate the films at all. I own most of them on bluray and went to see them all in the theater. But, the films are not without their issues. Particularly to those of us familiar with the source material.

[capandkirby]

Well, I think you're just seeing the difference between an ongoing narrative in live action and one in comics.

In comics, Steve Rogers can go on forever. He can die, be reborn, turn old, get young again. He's forever. So, of course, it easy for him to never quit. He's essentially immortal on the comic page.

In live action, it's a different story. Chris Evans can't play Cap forever. So to retire him, they have to give Cap an ending. Do they kill him off, like with Tony, or do they give him a way to step down? I think having both Cap and Tony die - on top of Nat's death - in the climax of Endgame would have been too much. Allowing Steve a happy ending in the context of the films works for me. He's not giving up. He knows that Sam will be a more than fit replacement for him and who knows what he got up to in the past. Surely he did some good during the course of that life with Peggy.

And, in time, Marvel may decide that they want to bring Cap back. The character is still around.

It would easy to recast Steve, once some time passes, and have Cap de-aged into the new role.

At the moment, it's best to keep him on the bench and let Evans run stand as the end of the character for now. But who knows what the future holds?

Fair enough. Though I'd like to point out that there are several ways to "retire" Steve rather than having him return to the past. The comics themselves addressed this after Captain America Reborn. Steve let Bucky remain Cap and became Commander Rogers instead, and accepted the title of Top Cop. In the What If for Roger Stern's #250, Steve pursued politics. Stern also had him, in regular continuity, try to live a normal life for awhile as a commercial artist and moved him into a Brooklyn Heights apartment. I'm not protesting taking Steve off the board. I totally get that Evans can't play Steve forever. It's the returning to the past that felt off to me. But I recognize that this is subjective.

[PCN24454]

Honestly I think that this is why I wasn’t as annoyed by OMD as most people were. It was literally just a means to an end. There was no deeper meaning behind it. I’m not saying that I’m not mad; more that I didn’t expect much from them anyways.

[Huntsman Spider]

I agree, Steve was definitely on-point there.

Thanks! Alternative universe does make it easier to reconcile. I didn't remember Earth X as being an alternative universe. Admittedly it's been years since I read it and the details are fuzzy. I didn't even remember there were sequels to it until someone on twitter reminded me. Probably due for a reread. Particularly before January as I pre-ordered Marvel X yesterday at my CBS.

You're welcome, and yeah, Earth X might not have been intended as an alternate universe at first, though somewhere along the way, it got settled or finalized as such. I do like some of the ideas in the later installations and figure they would make sense to implement in the main continuity, chief among them that demonic influence is responsible for amplifying a lot of the ongoing conflicts and tensions to keep the heroes at each other's throats or arm's length, not to mention alienated from the rest of society, so they can't or won't unite to do lasting good for the world as a whole.

[Ichijinijisanji]

Fair enough. Though I'd like to point out that there are several ways to "retire" Steve rather than having him return to the past. The comics themselves addressed this after Captain America Reborn. Steve let Bucky remain Cap and became Commander Rogers instead, and accepted the title of Top Cop. In the What If for Roger Stern's #250, Steve pursued politics. Stern also had him, in regular continuity, try to live a normal life for awhile as a commercial artist and moved him into a Brooklyn Heights apartment. I'm not protesting taking Steve off the board. I totally get that Evans can't play Steve forever. It's the returning to the past that felt off to me. But I recognize that this is subjective.

im with you, i wasn't into steve going to the past, not because of him "quitting", but more because of him not moving on. Age of ultron showed how he was stuck in past, which drove some of his motivation during civil war with bucky, reinforced it.

Instead of developing him past that, they just seemed to reinforce it.

The also turned peggy into kind of a prize for steve, instead of developing his relationship with sharon.

[BitParallel]

Same! I was hugely disappointed. And it wasn't because of Peggy or anything like that. It's because I've been reading Cap since Gruenwald and the one thing I associate with the character is that Steve Rogers does not give up. If I had to sum up Steve in three words they would be: adaptable, persistent, honorable. Him going back to the past felt like quitting. And Steve Rogers, at least in my understanding of the character, does not quit.

I once read an interview with Kirby where he was talking about how he wrote Steve before he went to war (Kirby is a WW2 vet himself, he was drafted and fought in the army) to how he wrote Steve during the Silver Age, after the war. Kirby was very cognizant of how tough it is for veterans to return to normal lives as citizens after having been a soldier in active combat. And Steve's coming off the ice to have missed years and to see that life moved on without him was a giant metaphor for what it feels like for a soldier to come home and adjust to life again, how different the world feels to them. Steve's ending in Endgame totally destroys that metaphor because it's basically sending the message that a soldier can't adapt.

Besides, these panels, which directly contradict Steve's MCU ending, exist...

Ding ding ding. Exactly my thoughts on endgame but I guess MCU Steve is so different from 616 Steve.

[capandkirby]

Interesting Steve name drop in the Black Cat #6 preview...



Looks like Batroc is finally owning up to his major crush on Steve Rogers. The rest of us, we been knew. For decades.