PaybackJack posted:The "Retcon" of the allies losing the war isn't necessarily retcon, in universe. If a few things hadn't worked out the way they did the Germans could have won the war in theory, so with the allies using a cube to win it's really just like saying they used a super weapon, not that they actually rewrote time. Nick Spencer is explicitly saying that they did, though. He's also explicitly saying that Steve being a member of the Not Technically Nazi Party is the "true" continuity being restored.
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Apr 22, 2017 06:26
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Nick Spencer keeps trying to do an old school Vertigo comic where you set up a bazillion plot threads and let them play out over 70 issues or whatever, but doesn't remember to make the individual story arcs interesting.
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Apr 22, 2017 06:41
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Considering the character who is saying all this stuff about it being the 'true' history is someone who both A) has the Hydra logo for a face right now, and B) is implied to be some agent of some vast, eldritch being, I'm quite skeptical that it's ACTUALLY the case and not just what they're being told happened. But then I feel like that horse has probably been beaten to death by this point.
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Apr 22, 2017 06:41
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Even just floating that out there is kind of stupid and wrongheaded, especially in this political climate. Less than a week ago, actual nazis marched on Berkeley campus and assaulted protesting students, one knocked a woman out and became a heroic meme for his allies. Sending comic book stores Not-Nazi shirts and encouraging them to change their names to, I dunno, Captain Fascist's Big House of Comics is like... saying "tone deaf" doesn't even begin to cover it. The absolute last thing anyone should be doing right now is normalizing fascism. The original Captain America comic actually influenced public opinion about Hitler and Germany, and was created explicitly to do that. I doubt Nick Spencer or anyone at Marvel is trying to use him to do the opposite, but they're being really boneheaded and run the risk of actually doing that by accident, especially when this storyline involves the "true pure Hydra" and things like Nazi Cap lifting Thor's hammer. Like it's not even about how "respecting the memory of the creators" or my personal feelings about Captain America as a character or anyone getting offended by the idea. It's about the fact that, corporate or not, art can have a societal impact, and this storyline, right now, is sending a pretty ugly message.
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Apr 22, 2017 06:48
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I guess we'll see where it all ends up. As a Cap fan, I'm ready to see what an evil Captain America can do. The timeline stuff is just window dressing. I'm here to see how Captain America and Hydra take poo poo over, and how the heroes fight back. And if/when Rogers returns to the side of the angels, I'm interested to see how he comes back from the bottom. Comics are good, guys.
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Apr 22, 2017 06:49
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Just not these comics
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Apr 22, 2017 07:03
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The thing I don't get about Spencer's argument is that the dude had to cook up a multi-layered interference to get to this point. I guess the idea that Cap is symbolic of "The things we believe in" but... Even at it's best, the government has always been shady. Captain America is interesting because he's a good guy who's dedicated to holding up the values he thinks his country should represent, regardless of how that country actually acts. Having him be corrupted for the sake of symbology i.e. "EVEN THE BEST OF US CAN FALL FROM GRACE" doesn't hold a lot of water when you literally have to enable in-universe God mode to make it happen. No tot mention all the additional stuff of "But he's so conflicted, can't you see, he's just doing what he thinks is right!" comes with more than whiff of sounding apologetic for shitheads in real life. And frankly, I don't understand how Captain America being Cosmic Cubed into a Nazi is supposed to address how lovely society is. In real life you don't need to use a Cosmic Cube to turn people lovely. Y'know what did this exact storyline better? The last two episodes of Superman the Animated Series. OnimaruXLR fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 07:13
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Is this gonna be a monthly comic? I had fun with this issue, but I hope we have other things to talk about for the rest of 2017.
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Apr 22, 2017 07:31
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Teenage Fansub posted:https://twitter.com/nickspencer/status/855563192398991364 I guess I'm supposed to read these and think he's an rear end in a top hat but like, I kinda agree? I mean if it's a bad story, it's a bad story, no one read it; but condemning a story's concept for "poor timing" is a poor justification, imo. All that said though, I have been reading and enjoying both Cap books so I am possibly a Nazi and\or Nick Spencer, who even knows. Open Marriage Night posted:And if/when Rogers returns to the side of the angels, I'm interested to see how he comes back from the bottom. I'd put good money on the whole event getting erased, if only because of that scene right near the start where Nitro pops up and fires off Stamford 2.0 in the middle of NYC. No way that just stands. TwoPair fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 07:33
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ImpAtom posted:Considering one of Marvel's higher ups is a massive Trump supporter and ally he probably thinks that this represents a better present than the actual one. Perlmutter has lost basically all power in the company months before the election. Also, all the diversity pushes Marvel made were done under his leadership. Especially the part he directly controlled (TV series) was on the forefront of it.
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Apr 22, 2017 07:34
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The other issue with Secret Empire is that we've already seen Facist Cap done better:
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Apr 22, 2017 08:08
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As a compromise, I am 150% down with whatever crazy evil poo poo Cap does in Secret Empire so long as he wears that shirt the whole time.
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Apr 22, 2017 08:37
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Lurdiak posted:Even just floating that out there is kind of stupid and wrongheaded, especially in this political climate. Less than a week ago, actual nazis marched on Berkeley campus and assaulted protesting students, one knocked a woman out and became a heroic meme for his allies. Sending comic book stores Not-Nazi shirts and encouraging them to change their names to, I dunno, Captain Fascist's Big House of Comics is like... saying "tone deaf" doesn't even begin to cover it. The absolute last thing anyone should be doing right now is normalizing fascism. It's not nomalizing fascism though. Or treating fascism as it's the cool or right thing. It's making it out to be the horrible thing it is. I think people can like or not like the story on its own merits, I was a fan of the first bit of the story but it's somewhat lost me along the way, but to say it shouldn't be told because of the political climate of the real world is a lovely argument. Just say you don't like the story and move on. A story shouldn't be off limits because we have an rear end in a top hat in the White House going on an ego trip. If you don't want to read because it hits to close to home that's fine. I'm also not sure by painting a super bad guy and bad ideals as the ultimate evil is sending a bad message but that's just me. And I guarantee if they were doing the exact same storyline right now with Zemo as the main character there wouldn't be near this amount about whining about it. It'd just be another event book that people would hate and there would be none of this "you can't do it in this political climate!" discussion.
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Apr 22, 2017 09:14
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I'm gonna say the same thing I said (more or less) way back when this whole Hydra Cap business was first revealed: For a while now, genre media has had A) really iffy mindsets about Jewish issues and B) a sort of casual flirtation with "cool Nazis" as some edgy cool thing to hype and market...and when I say "genre media," I actually am specifically referring to Marvel comics and studios for a notable chunk of these instances. When you combine that with the state of the world where Nazism has been regaining traction with the 'chans and redditors and within the White House itself, with Holocaust denialism and Jewish defamation being a regular fixture of the news cycle...it's no wonder that a lot of the Jewish community and blogosphere has been feeling disenfranchised by a lot of the old entities and structures that had seemed like they should be able to count on as a matter of course. That includes our government, that includes our fellow citizens, and it also includes our media. That's what people mean when they say this feels like the worst sort of climate for a story that reveals and is marketed on the premise that Captain America was secretly a Nazi all along. It's not that people don't want the current political climate to be examined and lampshaded in media -- and Spencer is being profoundly disingenuous if he's really under that impression -- it's that this specific method of examination comes across scarily comparable to all the antisemitic media and rhetoric that's been released throughout the years which has led us to this current political climate in the first place. It's the media-slash-rhetoric where Jewish (and other) characters have their origins retconned and whitewashed into homogeneity, where pontificating supervillains are just misunderstood revolutionaries who might have a point or something, where fascist police-states are shock value tropes to engender hype and interest amongst audiences. Spencer's argument is that this story, which depicts a universe where the fascists win, is intended to incite discourse and criticism against such a universe. Hydra are still clearly the bad guys of the story, we're obviously intended to want to see them lose, of course they're going to lose by the end. But the way that the story has been constructed up to this point exhibits a lot of the same exact signatures of various antisemitic story beats we've had throughout the years. Captain America being retconned from a stalwart defender of Jewish people into being a Nazi agent, for instance, evokes Wanda and Pietro Maximoff being changed from prominent Jewish-Romani superheroes into whitewashed Hydra recruits on the big screen...and there was certainly no secret message or hidden allegory behind the Maximoffs' change; all it was was antisemitic and tone-deaf and that was it. For another instance, Steve Rogers delivering issues-long sermons about how the heroes of this world have gotten complacent and misguided and that the world needs someone willing to make the tough choices, to do what it takes to protect it, is reminiscent of Tony Stark and Carol Danvers making fascism-apologia for months on end throughout the Civil War events, like hey maybe these guys playing the hardball roles have a point right? Hey aren't we so hardcore and edgy for tackling the hardcore and edgy topics?...and in the end this fascism-apologia is just played completely straight, no hidden critique, just Marvel turning its heroes into borderline supervillains and that was the end of the story. But hey, this story here and now will be totally different from that! Becuuuz At the very least, there's this weird romanticizing of Hydra Cap from Spencer in what I've read of it so far; Steve is still the protagonist of these books, no matter how brainwashed he is, so these issues seem to have come across less like "Our heroes have to prevail against this nefarious schemer and his nefarious schemes!" and more like "Watch in wonder as this shadowy agent prevails against all the clueless establishment and does badass things throughout his mission!" It falls into the "cool Nazi" trend where it's like, of course we're consciously aware that he's the bad guy here, but isn't he so edgy and hardcore and badass anyway? I dunno. I haven't read as many issues of Hydra Cap as Spencer would probably like, so let me know if I'm way off here. And I don't know if I really have a great point behind this big post. Mostly I'm just trying to say that I understand where the outrage is coming from, I think a lot of it is justified, and the hands behind Marvel have no one but themselves to blame no matter how innocuous or artistic their intentions were.
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Apr 22, 2017 09:22
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X-O posted:And I guarantee if they were doing the exact same storyline right now with Zemo as the main character there wouldn't be near this amount about whining about it. It'd just be another event book that people would hate and there would be none of this "you can't do it in this political climate!" discussion. yes it wouldn't be the same if the guy who spends like 60% of his time as a villain, who has a Nazi dad, and views himself as a uniquely superior specimen, turned out to be a Nazi Now, if they did Zemo as president, that'd be neat. And unlike Dark Reign (and potentially real life) the heroes would have to contest with a pretty competent bad-ish guy being legitimized by a crazy public, instead of an idiot like in real life, or someone like Osborn who's kookoo for Cocoa Puffs
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Apr 22, 2017 09:30
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So how unambiguous is it that Steve's being fed a pack of lies by Mr. Hydraface, or is that just a plausible conjecture? Like this feels way more "unfortunate timing of sophomoric effect" than anything.
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Apr 22, 2017 09:31
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OnimaruXLR posted:yes it wouldn't be the same if the guy who spends like 60% of his time as a villain, who has a Nazi dad, and views himself as a uniquely superior specimen, turned out to be a Nazi Yeah but then they'd just get chastized for ripping off DC's President Luthor storyline.
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Apr 22, 2017 10:32
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OnimaruXLR posted:Y'know what did this exact storyline better? The last two episodes of Superman the Animated Series. Agents of Shield is doing this storyline better right now.
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Apr 22, 2017 13:16
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Nessus posted:So how unambiguous is it that Steve's being fed a pack of lies by Mr. Hydraface, or is that just a plausible conjecture? Like this feels way more "unfortunate timing of sophomoric effect" than anything. Kobik fundamentally altered history in bunch of ways to make Steve a Hydra. Many of them barely make any sense. As the story went on Kobik (or Nick Spencer, if you prefer) had a hard time thinking up a reason why none of the Hydras and Nazis that are secretly Steve's best buddies now (AND FOREVER BECAUSE SHE CHANGED REALITY) don't remember being friends (or uneasy allies because Steve is not a Nazi man) with Steve, and Steve doesn't remember being a Hydra but not a Nazi even though yes sure he wanted the Nazis to win and he was friends with Nazis but he's NOT A NAZI MAN OKAY. So her alteration of reality relies on the fact that there was a secondary alteration of reality to make everyone forget about the stuff she changed pre-1945, since it does not like up with what we know about the Marvel Universe post-1945. And Steve got dunked into Nostradamus's Magic Pool of Magic by Hydraface so he'd like... um.... not be.... de-Hydra'd by the Cosmic Cube and uh... er.... get...... frozen in ice? Because he didn't get frozen in ice and aww geez, he has to be frozen and woken up by the Avengers I guess? Kobik/Spencer didn't really think this through, sorry. But don't assume Hydraface is lying within the secondary/tertiary/we'll get it this this time/magical reality alteration that will get undone for sure in six months.
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Apr 22, 2017 13:44
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Marvel's attempts to distance Hydra from the Nazis end up looking a lot like: you think the Nazis were bad? They're not even that evil compared to these REALLY bad guys who were using them. This is also an issue because it promotes the idea, in universe admittedly, that the atrocities committed by the regime weren't done by "ordinary humans", that we don't have to be vigilant for them and don't have capability or culpability for them because the real bad guys in the Axis forces were super villains and eldritch gods so the concentration camps are sort of, uh, small fries when compared to fighting those. On the specifics of this event, my fundamental issue isn't that it's the wrong time for this kind of story or anything like that, I do agree with Spencer on his general point there. But we are left with a world where the Holocaust is presented as a necessary evil, as a victory that is bittersweet but saved us from the end of everything. That's my issue. That not only does situating Hydra as the force behind World War II (an Axis victory is here actually a Hydra victory) degrade all the very real and still present forces behind the real conflict, but it contextualizes the "good ending" for the conflict as one the helps the comic book status quo but lacks concern for the millions of Jews, LGBT, Roma, disabled people involved. Anyone who can look at what happened during WWII and present it as the best of all possible worlds is not thinking clearly.
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Apr 22, 2017 18:50
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I just caught up with the new U.S.Avengers and LOLOL Nazi Cap has a giant Hydra chest tattoo? Even if he's only been unfrozen for an in-universe decade (I don't know how long it's really supposed to have been, 'course we all know it's been like two months since the universe was remade or some poo poo) he's managed to go a really fuckin' long time with none of his teammates seeing him shirtless, considering how often heroes have "clothes get partially torn off" moments.
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Apr 22, 2017 20:20
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Maybe it's a temporary tattoo and he only gets to put in on every time he finishes a box of Hydra cereal and fishes it out of the bottom.
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Apr 22, 2017 20:27
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 Although, I didn't finish the CapSteve series, so I can't say if it's just drawn on anymore.
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Apr 22, 2017 20:37
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LAAAAAAAAME
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Apr 22, 2017 20:37
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I think someone hit on the worst and least thought through part of this story earlier with the implication that the Allies rewrote reality to win the war, but left the Holocaust. If you think about that at all, it makes both sides of the war absolute monsters. It also implies that the story will end with history being restored and everyone cheering because they've gone back to a world where the Allies could have undone the Holocaust but didn't. Some people didn't like Hydra Cap but no one got really, truly angry till this history rewrite thing, and it's really because Spencer just should have stayed away from WWII.
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Apr 22, 2017 20:39
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Poor Miserable Gurgi posted:I think someone hit on the worst and least thought through part of this story earlier with the implication that the Allies rewrote reality to win the war, but left the Holocaust. If you think about that at all, it makes both sides of the war absolute monsters. It also implies that the story will end with history being restored and everyone cheering because they've gone back to a world where the Allies could have undone the Holocaust but didn't. Some people didn't like Hydra Cap but no one got really, truly angry till this history rewrite thing, and it's really because Spencer just should have stayed away from WWII. Also on top of those problems with the writer, Kobik was being manipulated by Red Skull with Xavier's brains smooshed on top.
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Apr 22, 2017 20:42
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Asking again, are we sure it's not just his altered memory? I didn't finish the Steve series.
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Apr 22, 2017 20:44
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Edge & Christian posted:The reality in which the Allies rewrote reality was concocted by a childlike intelligence that doesn't seem to understand much about morality or cause-and-effect, and is prone to temper tantrums. That hasn't actually been confirmed in the story yet that I've seen. If it ends that way, it makes that glossing over less of an issue. But any WWII story dealing with Nazis where you gloss over war crimes is kind of dumb just in and of itself.
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Apr 22, 2017 20:44
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Teenage Fansub posted:Asking again, are we sure it's not just his altered memory? I didn't finish the Steve series. That's the story as presented in Secret Empire #0, nothing about it is presented as a memory at least to my reading.
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Apr 22, 2017 21:00
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I mean... There are two possibilities (altered reality/ altered memories) It is established that Kobik altered all of reality (or memories, though the Cosmic Cube is supposed to alter reality, not memories, and Nick Spencer has repeatedly stated it's reality-warping not memory-warping in interviews, on Twitter, etc.) So Kobik changed [THINGS] to make Red Skull and Steve Rogers friends (she failed, Steve still hated and eventually murdered the Red Skull, but it was her stated goal). Whatever she did, it resulted in Steve Rogers in 2017 being wholly devoted to Hydra. In flashbacks (to the altered [THINGS]) Steve remembers an entirely different childhood than the one previously depicted/remembered. He was an orphan raised at a Hydra boarding school. His best friend since childhood was Helmut Zemo. Elisa Sinclair was his surrogate mother, indoctrinating him into Hydra. Helmut Zemo murdered Dr. Erskine before Steve could get the Super Soldier Serum. etc. etc. etc. All of these things are a result of Kobik messing with [THINGS] so that they're different than they were before. The whole "and then rather than Steve Rogers getting blow off of a rocket and landing in the water and going into suspended animation" has been altered (in memory or reality) so that rather than that happening he was dumped into Nostradamus's Magic Pool to be teleported into ice in the present. This is an alteration of [MEMORY/REALITY], as is everything listed above. Since the chain of events that lead to "the Allies are about to use a Cosmic Cube in 1945 to win the war and alter history" is all altered, I don't know why this particular aspect of things, revealed to someone whose [MEMORY/REALITY] was altered by someone they never would have been interacting with were it not for [MEMORY/REALITY] alteration, I think it's very very very very very likely that this last data point is also part of the [MEMORY/REALITY] alteration, not a heretofore unrevealed Real Truth. Then again Nick Spencer has surprised me before by not being able to keep track of his own stupid twists, so who knows?
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Apr 22, 2017 21:04
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"The Allies used the cosmic cube" being fake would be a hard twist to pull off not because it's implausible but because it's very easy for that to feel pointless or like a meaningless twist for shock value and nothing else. It could just be flavor but if it's just flavor it's probably poorly-considered flavor
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Apr 22, 2017 21:18
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ImpAtom posted:"The Allies used the cosmic cube" being fake would be a hard twist to pull off not because it's implausible but because it's very easy for that to feel pointless or like a meaningless twist for shock value and nothing else. It could just be flavor but if it's just flavor it's probably poorly-considered flavor a) It explains how they won even though the Nazis literally had Captain America, a bunch of other double agents, and ELDER GODS working for them they somehow lost the war b) It explains why all of the Nazi/Hydra/Bad Guys who were literally best friends with Captain America in 1944 do not remember being best friends with him in 2017. It serves zero purpose in the narrative of a story where Steve wasn't a Secret Nazi being best friends with Reluctant Nazis and Public Nazis back in 1944.
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Apr 22, 2017 21:24
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Hell I already think I know how this is going to end. The last piece of the cosmic cube saved Bucky and combined with him somehow and he is going to reform the cosmic cube and put everything back in place. He is going to have angst over saving himself, but he knows he has to and everything will go back, but people will remember or at least Steve will remember his actions.
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Apr 22, 2017 21:31
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Poor Miserable Gurgi posted:I think someone hit on the worst and least thought through part of this story earlier with the implication that the Allies rewrote reality to win the war, but left the Holocaust. If you think about that at all, it makes both sides of the war absolute monsters. It also implies that the story will end with history being restored and everyone cheering because they've gone back to a world where the Allies could have undone the Holocaust but didn't. Some people didn't like Hydra Cap but no one got really, truly angry till this history rewrite thing, and it's really because Spencer just should have stayed away from WWII. e: Like who were the available superheroes in that period, Namor? Namor ain't gonna fight a saucer Nazi. Not unless it's Ilsa, and even then he will only fight with his love. Nessus fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 23:12
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Marvel Legacy #1 will be a 50-page one-shot issue by Jason Aaron and Esad Ribic. Goodness. http://www.cbr.com/marvel-returns-to-classic-heroes-with-marvel-legacy-launch/ Aaron posted:“This is by far the biggest thing I’ve ever done,” Aaron said of the story. “This book deals with Marvel’s past, present and future…the one thing I really wanted to do with this book is that we dive right into Marvel’s past to introduce what I call the prehistoric Avengers. One is a character that’s running around now, and the rest are like caveman versions of the biggest legacy characters in the Marvel U.” From there, the present story will check in with the likes of Steve Rogers, Thor Odinson, Tony Stark and the other classic heroes. “This story will set up things that will play out across every book we publish,” the writer said. 
MorningMoon fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 23:15
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Jason Aaron taking over Captain America would be wonderful
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Apr 22, 2017 23:23
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Can Jason Aaron write everything please? Also I was basically told to gently caress off when I asked about Miracleman in the Marvel booth.
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Apr 23, 2017 00:27
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Rhyno posted:Can Jason Aaron write everything please? Did you say a few weeks ago that if you ask marvel about miracleman they will tell you to gently caress off? Prophecy fulfilled.
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Apr 23, 2017 00:30
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I said they wouldn't answer questions during the town hall or conference calls. I was super polite today too!
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Apr 23, 2017 00:42
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ArmyOfMidgets posted:Marvel Legacy #1 will be a 50-page one-shot issue by Jason Aaron and Esad Ribic. Goodness. Now I'm interested in Marvel Rebirth. Beautiful.
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Apr 23, 2017 01:37
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