Captain America #1 Preview

[DDM]

Stop stealing our X-Stuff Coates! Just make JDW let you relaunch Uncanny and be done with it. Manifold will make an excellent X-Man.

[Anduinel]

Stop stealing our X-Stuff Coates! Just make JDW let you relaunch Uncanny and be done with it. Manifold will make an excellent X-Man.

He's used Storm better than Guggenheim or Lemire (yes, I know; low bar) and Selene better than Wood. I say let him keep raiding the X-Offices.

[WallStreeter]

He's used Storm better than Guggenheim or Lemire (yes, I know; low bar) and Selene better than Wood. I say let him keep raiding the X-Offices.

Both these characters deserved to be far biggest players in Marvel Universe as a whole. I'm glad he had Storm defeat the Adversary and acknowledged her descent from a long line of African priestesses and her divinity. I'm glad he spectacularly wrote Selene as the truly frightening villain she is.

[berserkerclaw]

I loved that Cap and Bucky were working together. And also that cap didnt wuss out when bucky had to kill some Nukes

[Prof. Warren]

No, it isn't. The idea that there is a "leader of the free world" or "Capital of the free world" is debatable and the term has mostly fallen out of use. And even if there was a "capital of the free world" there would be an argument to make for Brussels or Germany.

For the most part, America is considered that, the term hasn't fallen out of use. And Washington DC is the capital. So...

I mean, this isn't a controversial opinion. And, if nothing else, if anyone's going to hold that opinion, whether everyone shares it or not, it's Steve Rogers.

[KC]

For the most part, America is considered that, the term hasn't fallen out of use. And Washington DC is the capital. So...

I mean, this isn't a controversial opinion. And, if nothing else, if anyone's going to hold that opinion, whether everyone shares it or not, it's Steve Rogers.

I would say that for the most part, America isn't considered that and the term has fallen out of use.

It is a controversial opinion, I have to wonder if you have even been outside the USA if you really think that it isn't.

Nope, disagree. Steve isn't arrogant or egotistical enough to believe that.

[Prof. Warren]

I would say that for the most part, America isn't considered that and the term has fallen out of use.

It is a controversial opinion, I have to wonder if you have even been outside the USA if you really think that it isn't.

Nope, disagree. Steve isn't arrogant or egotistical enough to believe that.

If you don't think that Steve Rogers considers America to be the leader of the free world and you find it weird that he would say that it was, you don't know the character at all and there's nothing left to say.

[KC]

If you don't think that Steve Rogers considers America to be the leader of the free world and you find it weird that he would say that it was, you don't know the character at all and there's nothing left to say.

Nope. The Steve I know would not buy into that idea and would not be egotistical enough to believe that.

[Prof. Warren]

Nope. The Steve I know would not buy into that idea and would not be egotistical enough to believe that.

Any one who's written Captain America would tell you that Steve believes in the American Dream, the American Ideal and the idea that America should, at its best, be a beacon of democracy. It doesn't matter that it's old-fashioned or out of step or even corny to say so. He believes it. As he says, he's loyal to nothing except the dream.

And it's not about ego at all, it's not about thinking America is superior, it's not a braggadocios statement. It's about idealism.

[MichaelC]

Rogers definitely believes in American Exceptionalism to at least a degree, otherwise he'd call himself Captain Freedom or Captain Democracy. It may be mitigated by other things, but it must exist to a degree, or his name simply makes zero sense.

[KC]

Any one who's written Captain America would tell you that Steve believes in the American Dream, the American Ideal and the idea that America should, at its best, be a beacon of democracy. It doesn't matter that it's old-fashioned or out of step or even corny to say so. He believes it. As he says, he's loyal to nothing except the dream.

And it's not about ego at all, it's not about thinking America is superior, it's not a braggadocios statement. It's about idealism.

Steve can believe all of that without also believing that America is the “leader of the free world”

Considering that the ideals that America holds are not mutually exclusive with being the “leader of the free world” it is about ego.

[responsarbre]

"These men brought terror to the capital of the free world" no American actually believes this right? This statement is so insulting and so wrong on multiple levels.

That statement made me do a double take, too, but the more I thought about it, I got more okay with the idea of Steve saying that. I'm giving Coates the benefit of the doubt here considering his literary and journalistic career mostly covers the myriad ways in which America fails to provide an equal measure of freedom to all its citizens (foreign activities notwithstanding) and assuming Coates hasn't internalized that idea to the extent he would just reference it casually in given character's dialogue.

But would Steve think that? It's a more complicated question. Both in his interviews and throughout this issue, Coates calls attention to the idea that, while Steve may not specifically be loyal to any government, he is loyal to "the Dream", a set of ideals. And I think that, to a certain extent, even buying into the idea that something called "the American Dream" exists is to acknowledge some form of American exceptionalism; it's the idea that America is uniquely qualified to bestow freedom upon its people (regardless of whether current events show that sort of thing to hold true).

So, if we acknowledge that Steve believes in the American Dream (which I would say is definitely something he does), Steve also, to a certain extent, buys into a certain form of American excpetionalism, especially with respect to freedom. So he might not blink twice when people start talking about America in terms of the "free world."

But would Steve legitimately talk about D.C. as the capital of the Free World? I think that's conferring a level of confidence in the American government that Steve generally doesn't have, not even over the course of this issue. So from that perspective, it does seem like a faux pas.

I think the biggest wrinkle, though, also ties into the most likely reason why Coates is using this outdated turn of phrase at all: it's really more of a Cold War way of thinking. The whole idea of this story seems to be a Cold War-retread, so it sort of makes sense why Coates would have the characters in this story be implicitly thinking in a Cold War framework. If you read all of Steve's Silver and Bronze Age stories that had him fighting communists as being in-continuity, it might not be so out of character, but on the other hand, the sliding timeline makes it so that he was on ice for the entire Cold War...

[Rzerox21xx]

someone at daily scans cleared up what Coates said which sorta won me over in getting Cap,

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertai...718-story.html

During the event, Coates, 39, read a chapter about his meeting with Mable Jones, a Philadelphia radiologist whose son, Prince, was fatally shot in 2000 by an undercover Princes George's County police officer. The officer claimed that the unarmed man — the author's friend and former classmate at Howard University — had tried to run him over.

"My son was a month old at that point, and I couldn't distance myself from what Prince had done," Coates said. "If I'd been followed through three jurisdictions by someone who didn't identify himself as a police officer, by someone who was dressed as a criminal and by someone who pointed a gun at me, I might have done just what he did. It's very, very easy for me to see how I could have been killed that day."

[...]

The following passage in the book gave me pause, and I'm wondering if you wished you'd softened it. You were living in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, and you write:

"I could see no difference between the officer who killed Prince Jones and the police who died, or the firefighters who died. They were not human to me. Black, white or whatever; they were the menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm, which could, with no justification, shatter my body."

No, I wouldn't soften it. That was a state of my raw emotion at that time. Later, I came to grips with the fact that each of the folks who died were individual humans with likes, dislikes, hates, loves, etc., and I was able to grieve for them.

[Samson3191]

Very interesting takes on the “capital of the free world” line. When I read it, I sort of assumed it was less about Cap’s own personal view and more about how much of the world at large views America. Like “this is the common line of thought” without Steve saying outright “this is what I personally believe.”

[Witchfan]

From at least World War 2 onward, the American president has been called The Leader of the Free World.