Captain America Apparently Still Dead

Some more notes on the out of left-field publicity bonanza for Marvel Comics and writer Ed Brubaker caused by the announcement that the Captain America/Steve Rogers character was killed in the pages of Captain America #25.

* It's day three and already my head hurts.

* For a character/concept with a crap history in film, these videos are strangely hypnotic.

* One important thing to take away from this is that Marvel clearly benefited by releasing the news in conjunction with the issue being available as opposed to releasing it in concert with the deadline for comic shops to order that issue. It also sounds like they'll be able to meet some extended demand by having a flood of issues available by next week. All in all, this was well-played by Marvel in those respects, and I imagine there's a lot of people smiling at the offices.

* Ed Brubaker's description of his day at the center of a mini-media sensation can be found here. I think it's nice that many people are citing as one positive aspect of this Ed's involvement, and the likelihood that the attention will at least drive people to Ed's comics, and that these will have a chance of being rewarding to those readers and not just rewarding to Marvel's bottom line.

* We're starting to get a retailer perspective on the flood of business Wednesday here and here and here and here.

* The biggest complaint from retailers and some fans (perhaps best embodied here) seems to be that despite Marvel saying "please order lots of extra copies of this" that there was no way for anyone to reasonably determine that this plea was any more legit than the last half-dozen times Marvel asked retailers to order extra copies.

* Joe Gross ably covers most of the reasons why it's likely this plot point won't be permanent one. There's another reason no one's really brought up -- while Steve Rogers isn't in and of itself a name along the lines of Peter Parker that has its own pop-culture cachet, the idea he embodies of a World War II-era hero brought into modern times is a huge part of that character as conceived since the early '60s. Leave him dead, you not only abandon the character, you abandon that hook, or are forced to replicate it in some fashion that would be hard not to make a less-effective stretch.

* On the other hand, this brings into some bold relief that maybe connecting characters to World War II as many comics have will grow less and less prevalent as that generation passes on. I think Captain America is the last character that benefits from severing this connection, and certainly they no longer ask us to believe, say, Mr. Fantastic and the Thing are WWII veterans, but it occurs to me you might see a wider disconnect from that specific permutation of comics' "Golden Age" over the next decade or so.
 
posted 3:30 am PST | Permalink
 

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