RIP Cap?!?

[Orrex]

Shocking event for Captain America

What do you make of this? I never read Captain America too often, but I liked his appearances during Frank Miller's mid-80's return to Daredevil. I haven't read a single frame of Civil War, so I don't know how this all plays in. What is the continuity like now? Does this mean that he's "really" dead? At least until they resurrect him in a few weeks? Or do the events of Civil War take place in another timeline?

Anyway, here's a bit that struck me as rather odd:

As originally conceived by creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, Rogers was a man born before the Great Depression in a very different America. He disappeared after the war and reappeared only recently in the Marvel timeline.

WTF? Did he take another hiatus of which I was unaware? Didn't he initially resurface somewhere around Avengers #4 in like 1964? That means that he's had more history after his first resurrection than before. What is CNN talking about?

Not that I look to CNN for wisdom on all things comic-related, but this seems like a major fact-checking error. Unless it's something to do with the "Ultimates" reboot. I can keep track of all the ways they come up with to squeeze a few more bucks out of their venerable characters.

Your thoughts?

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

1. The Civil War events affect the Marvel comic lineup, from what I'm told.

I haven't read much of Civil War yet (and I regret that, because what I did read was quite an exceptional storyline) but
as far as I know, the Civil War storyline is the current "background" for the Marvel Universe; Spider-Man's unmasking, the divides
between the heroes over this "Superhero Registration Act"...the ripples will be felt for some time to come.

And I don't think they'll bring Cap back any time soon; it's been a recently added rule for Marvel comics that once a character dies, they stay dead. (Jean Grey of the X-Men, for example. She's been dead for about 3 years now.)

I thought that Captain America was cryogenic ally frozen after World War II because of a flaw in the super soldier serum and only later resuscitated (at the start of his own comic book run)?

Captain America and Iron Man have been on opposite sides of the Civil War since it's beginning, I believe. (Captain America being on the anti-Superhero Registration Act and ol'
Shellhead being pro-Registration.)

[FVZA_Colonel]

2. Well Cap, it was nice knowing you.

Why couldn't it have been Ultimates Captain America (who I like to refer to as "Captain Jingo of the Ultra-Nationalists")?

[semillama]

3. maybe not actually dead?

i don't know. You should really catch up because this effected everything in the standard Marvel Universe. He sure looked dead in Captain America #25. I don't read CA, but I had to pick up this one as part of Civil War. It's a good issue. Ms. Marvel hints to Spider-Woman in the Initiate one-shot that I also picked up that Cap isn't dead but in a coma or something.

But, keep in mind that Marvel actually has been keeping dead characters dead for the last couple of years. Look at Jean Grey. This is the longest she's been dead.

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

4. I was told from a friend...

...that there's a new standing rule in the Marvel Comics editorial room that dead characters are supposed to stay dead.

I don't think they're going to bring Jean back for quite some time, if ever.

I think the only exception they made was in Astonishing X-Men, but that was probably because of Joss Whedon's story idea more than anything.

[Orrex]

5. How long's she been dead this time?

If memory serves, she was offline from Uncanny X-Men #137 until X-Factor #1, but that was a lapse of only three or four years, I think.

Anyway, I like the idea of a dead-means-dead rule because it eliminates the temptation to use death as an easy plot device.

[Efilroft Sul]

9. Jean Grey was "dead" for nearly five years in the eighties.

Uncanny X-Men #137 was published in 1981. The run-up to X-Factor took place during spring of my college freshman year, in 1986. I was so pissed off that they brought her back that I stopped collecting comics altogether within a year. Only recently did I get back into comics.

[Orrex]

10. I started reading Uncanny X-Men at issue 174

So she was already long dead by the time I started reading, and they'd already churned up the Madeleine Pryor character/arc. I'd have started reading X-Men sooner, but they weren't sold within walking distance of my house, and I was still in gradeschool.

I never read X-Factor. Since I came into comics in the early 80's, I had no particular devotion to the original X-Men, and the "stasis coccoon" idea was transparently hackneyed even to my unsophistimacated literary tastes.

In retrospect, the way they handled the whole Madeleine Pryor is-she/isn't-she plotline was a lot more sophisticated than the lame "bring back your dead" mantra that crept into the industry a few years later. Of course, they F'ed it up with Mr. Sinister and all that crap, and that's when I stopped reading, except for a few choice titles.

[Norrin Radd]

13. It makes sense, though, to bring back someone called "Phoenix" n/t

[JackRiddler]

6. Yeah, like this isn't the marketing start for the Captain America movie (2009)

Whether they resurrect him or not - and you can bet they will have CA titles running for the movie launch, whether set in the past or with a resurrected Rogers or Successor Cap'n in the "present."

[Broken_Hero]

7. A Capt. America movie?

:D I would cast Matthew McConaughey....:D

[semillama]

8. uh-oh!

[Mojambo]

11. I KNEW it!

America is about to be punished.

[CarbonDate]

12. Somebody's going to Hell for this.

Seriously.