What's Wrong With Steve Rogers?

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is out next month, so for the entirety of March, all of my articles will be about the Star-Spangled Man with a Plan! Today, we talk about...

What's Wrong With Steve Rogers?

by Duy

Steve Rogers has been cool from the very start. I mean, the guy easily has the coolest cover of the Golden Age.

This cover made a dean at my college give me a job for the summer.
It was awesome.

He punches out Hitler! But all the same, creators don't seem to last long on him, do they? If we look at what seems to me to be the most acclaimed runs on the character, we have the following list.

• Joe Simon and Jack Kirby (1940s): 10 issues 
• Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (1960s in Tales of Suspense as a co-feature): 41 issues
• Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (1960s): 11 issues
• Stan Lee and Jim Steranko (1960s): 3 issues
• Stan Lee and Gene Colan (1960s): 21 issues
• Jack Kirby (1970s): 21 issues
• Roger Stern and John Byrne (1980s): 10 issues
• JM DeMatteis with various artists (1980s): 33 issues
• Mark Waid and Ron Garney (1990s): 10 issues, then 6 issues
• Ed Brubaker with various artists (2000s): 25 issues, then a handful of specials and miniseries, and then 19 issues

Now things like 41 issues by Lee and Kirby might sound like a lot, but it's really not when compared to the fact that they worked on over a hundred issues each of Thor and Fantastic Four, and that Tales of Suspense only featured Cap for half the magazine. Actually, even if you look at just Stan, he wrote only 86 Captain America issues straight, which is, really, a low number for Stan.

Ed Brubaker wrote Steve Rogers for 25 issues and replaced him with Bucky, then brought him back later on but kept Bucky in the spotlight. By the time Brubaker put Steve back in the suit, he wrote him for 19 more.

There are, of course, extenuating circumstances. Simon and Kirby only did 10 issues of Captain America for Timely, because that's just the way the business worked back then, with people shuttling back and forth between publishers. According to Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, Steranko was fired from it for being late. Stern to the best of my knowledge has never come clean with why his and Byrne's run was so short-lived. Waid and Garney gained momentum as their run went on, but Marvel had to give the character to Rob Liefeld for the moneymaking Heroes Reborn event. When they returned on the character, Marvel replaced him with the more commercial but not-as-good Andy Kubert. JM DeMatteis was let go after his 33rd issue due to editorial differences with Jim Shooter. (His story would have involved Steve dying and getting replaced, so his run on Steve would have been capped at 33 regardless.)

Mark Gruenwald wrote Captain America for 10 years, but while some of his stuff was very well-received, a lot of it was also panned. His "The Captain" storyline is one of the highlights of the characters 73-year existence (and it involves him getting replaced!), while "Capwolf" remains one of the lowest points.

So there's got to be something to all this, since Steve Rogers apparently has a curse that either gets creators to go away or have them make him go away. But what is it? It's kind of unfair to the Greatest Nonpowered Superhero Ever.

So what's wrong with Steve Rogers? I've thought about it long and hard, and I've really just come up with a couple of things.

First of all, he's a Golden Age character. While he's far from being the archetypal Golden Age character (rich playboy who put on a mask to fight crime because he's bored), he's still a Golden Age character not named The Spirit, meaning he's generally flawless. That's a big part of his makeup. That means his motivation is pure (he does the right thing because it's the right thing to do) and any self-doubt is nonexistent. He's as confident as they come, he knows what to do during a fight, and you'd follow him to the depths of Hell if he said he could get you out alive. That's Steve Rogers. If he didn't do that, if he didn't have that confidence, he wouldn't be Captain America.

On the other hand, though, that kind of approach works if you're doing stand-alone stories where the adventure is the point. However, since Marvel got big in the 60s, the format of the continuous narrative has gotten increasingly more traction to the point that it is the norm to stretch out any sort of character arc or development for several years. When a character (or a universe) hits a point that may be deemed stagnant, things are shaken up

Steve Rogers has nowhere to go and no room to grow. As the pinnacle of human perfection, he's already the end product. He's a lot like Thor in that sense, except Thor has the eternal familial conflicts with his father and his brother that will never end and is automatically more open and ripe for future stories. There's already conflict built into Thor's life, while the conflict with Steve is external, and maybe that gets old. Really, how much can one pull off the "man out of time" bit? Before too long, Steve should know how to use an iPad, because he's still in his 20s psychologically and should be able to catch up with technology. How often can Captain America go up against the government or a government agency or SHIELD (as he seems to be close to doing in the upcoming movie) before that gets old for a particular reader? It's the kind of thing you can retread over the course of several years, but it's probably gotten harder to do the more comics have acquired long-term fans and perhaps impossible in today's trade paperback, long-term market.

Our culture now rewards long-term storylines and emotional developments and perhaps Steve Rogers just isn't the guy for that. You can kill off Sharon Carter — as they recently did — but you know she's the love of Steve's life and she'll be back the first time someone's got a good story for her. You can have Steve doubt himself, for the bajillionth time, but he'll snap out of it, always and always.

As a result, going away has kind of become Steve's "thing." Maybe he needs to go away for us to appreciate him, to remember how cool and awesome it is to have such an aspirational character. It's Awesomeness by Omission, as I wrote about last week, the idea that we see what's good about something when it's gone. Steve Rogers is always getting replaced as Captain America — by John Walker, who was too extreme and later became the USAgent; by the Cap of the 50s, who went insane; by Jeff Mace, the Patriot, who tried his best but just wasn't Cap; by Bucky, the Winter Soldier, who just didn't want anyone else to have the shield. These characters are compelling in their own right, and perhaps they're more suited to carrying out a prolonged narrative. (On that note, go read Karl Kesel and Mitch and Bettie Brettweiser's Patriot mini.) But one thing they all have in common is they're not Steve, nor can they be as good as him regardless of how hard they try.

So that's it. That's all I've come up with. I've bounced it around in my head for a while and the best thing I can think of is that Steve Rogers just isn't the kind of guy who's suited to a very long run sustained by one creative team. Maybe the novelty wears off. Maybe it gets too preachy after a while. Maybe people jump off before they get on their soapboxes, which might just mean Cap making speeches about the meaning of America.

There's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes things are better in shorter doses. EC Comics, Whose Line Is It Anyway, a random Peanuts stretch, The Twilight Zone — these are all things that would get old fast if you marathoned them. Perhaps it would serve Steve Rogers if he's more in the background and supporting characters could grow on his watch. Maybe for all that Gruenwald's run is not as loved or acclaimed as the shorter ones I've listed, he had to do a lot of stuff outside of Cap's comfort zone like Superia's Island of Women, Capwolf, and Flag-Smasher (a sound but undeveloped concept) because once he was done with his whole "Steve Rogers gets replaced" storyline, that was it for the "core" Captain America story he could do, and he still ended his run by putting a twist on that concept and removing Cap's powers, putting him in armor and surrounding him with sidekicks that tried living up to his example.

So what's wrong with Steve Rogers? Maybe the problem is there's nothing wrong with Steve Rogers. We, the audience, want something wrong with our protagonists, especially if we're reading them for the long haul, through multiple paperbacks, each and every month. But I still don't want Steve to change. If anything, I'd love to see someone get on him and write him for a long time and reach the same heights of acclaim that runs like Stern and Byrne's, Stan and Steranko's, and Brubaker's have, without replacing Steve Rogers as Captain America, either by being stripped of the identity or by "dying." I'm sure there's a run for that at some point, by someone.

Maybe that someone... could be... you! Or the dude next to you. Or behind you. I'm not picky.

Seven Things People Need to Stop Saying

Sometimes, comics fans tend to lose track of the bigger picture. We get a certain view of what comics should be like and then we complain when that doesn't meet our expectations and we complain when it does. This is borne out of a set of contradictions: comics fans keep saying they want change, and then we go insane when change happens.

Don't worry. I'm here to put it all into perspective!

Seven Things People Need to Stop Saying

by Duy

#1: This is all a gimmick to get us to buy things!

You hear it pretty much all the time when a big new development happens. "What? They're killing Peter Parker? Gimmick!" or "Dick Grayson is Batman now? Gimmick!" And sure, maybe it's true that some things start off because of some gimmickry, but that doesn't mean the story's not worth telling. And also, here's the thing: this has been happening for decades.

There are two big differences now from the way things have traditionally been. The first is that everything has a wider reach now. You can blame social media for that, but the fact is that people talking about things will help sell it. And I know for a good portion of you reading this, what I just typed is a terrible thing, because comics are art, dammit and shouldn't be influenced by anything other than quality, but you know that's not the way things work and that if things don't sell, it can't keep being made.

(While we're at it, can we also stop with "This crappy comic keeps selling while this comic I don't like has low sales"? If anything, the profits from the crappy comic is helping your non-selling comic stay in print. At least, that makes some sort of business sense.)

If it were today, this would be a gigantic development that would give way to a bunch of "How dare you do this to Peter!" letters.

And who's to say it didn't? Have you read letter pages from back then? They sound a whole freaking lot like a bunch of the complaints now. So in terms of that, the nature of the industry didn't change; the channels and the exposure did. It's still about cliffhangers and developments that look permanent and most likely aren't. Mike Carlin said in Panel Discussions that they couldn't kill Superman without a fully formed plan, right up to after they brought him back, that was approved by the higher-ups at Warner Brothers.  In contrast, Kevin Smith said when he was slated to write Amazing Spider-Man that the whole "Mary Jane was missing" thing was a way to keep Peter single without making him divorced or a widower. That kind of thing comes from the top. That's the nature of the business, and railing against that kind of thing is just a moot point. Warner Brothers and Disney aren't going to care about the railing rants of hardcore fans who are going to keep buying the product anyway; they're just going to keep doing what they think is best for business and getting new readers.

The other big difference right now is that stories are longer, so there's a longer illusion of permanence when things like Superior Spider-Man happen, leading us to...

#2. Back in my day, you could tell a story in (insert an arbitrary small number of issues/pages here)!

Okay, yeah, we're all guilty of this. Let's stop it right now. Back in the 40s, 20 pages was long for an adventure story, and it had to be an epic if it were that long. When Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were revitalizing superhero comics in the 60s, they were getting letters about how Marvel didn't have as much story, and Stan would put in captions about how that was probably true, but the art and the energy made up for it. This scene by Steve Ditko was definitely decompressed by 1966 standards and is likely still decompressed by today's standards, and I wouldn't change a thing about it.

Could Ed Brubaker tell a story in a shorter number of pages? Sure, but Criminal wouldn't have the same kind of punch. Could Brian Bendis write more compressed scenes? Sure, and I wish he did. I also wish Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams had a bit more space for their Batman stuff, since a lot of the time it seemed they got to page 20 and went "Oh, crap, we've only got two pages left!" There isn't one answer, no one hard and fast rule for this kind of thing. Pacing is, like everything else, a matter of execution. If there were a formula to this, these guys would all be millionaires.

Here's another thing. If you've ever spoken to writers or artists or other creative types, you'll know that most of them set constraints first before they start anything. It's a part of the process. When Rachel Helie was still writing Double Helix for the Cube, the first thing she'd always ask for was a word count quota she should target. And yeah, that's normal. Constraints are there to be met, and that's part of the creative exercise. As time has gone by, those constraints have gotten bigger. And that's okay. That's not to say shorter stories can't be written. It's just to say that the average space is different now. And that's the nature of any industry — a continuous evolution.

#3. How dare it play off the movie!

Every time a movie comes out, the source comic plays off of it, and fans go apeshit. "Amazing Spider-Man #1 comes out the same month as the movie and has Electro, just like the movie? How con-veeeee-nient!" Let it go, guys.

Marvel and DC, more than other companies due to their massive multimedia presence, meet at the intersection of art and commerce, and in an ever-declining industry, it would be dumb, businesswise, to not capitalize off of the cross-platforms. Whether or not this actually works is a matter of debate, but the companies have the numbers and I doubt that they would continue with the practice if it weren't at least yielding some additional profit.

The thing about this that gets me, really, is that in the long run, it's irrelevant. A lot of people are buying the trades now, and shit, a lot of people are still buying the single issues just to have and not to read. So if anything, you should blame those guys, the type who'll actually buy this comic and have its price marked up so much in the back issue bins just because the cover has a resemblance to a scene in a movie.

But yeah, people are buying trades now. The whole "playing off the movie" thing is fleeting. I read Thor: Accursed last week in hardcover, and I didn't even remember, at all, that when it started, people were complaining that the only reason Jason Aaron was using Malekith was because he was the villain in The Dark World. It's irrelevant once the movie is over. If it can cause some increase in interest when it comes out in single issues, then why not go for it? If anything, they should place the product placement story early on, so that the trade comes out in mass market bookstores when the movie is out.

As long as the story is sound, what's the harm?

#4. How dare it renumber!

People hate it when titles get renumbered, but again, like playing off the movie, it doesn't matter in the long run. If #1 issues can get new readers, then why not go for it? There's speculation that Lady Sif's run in Journey Into Mystery, by Kathryn Immonen and Valerio Schiti, would have been longer than it was if it had rebooted and been rebranded as Marvel Now title. I'd rather get new readers than pander to the anal-retentive comics-bin organizing of existing fans. How your comics are organized is not the problem of the company's, and I really don't see the value of keeping an existing numbering system if it's holding back exposure and maybe blocking off new readers.

In fact, forget keeping a numbering system or renumbering; I say just relaunch everything with every story arc and just give it a subtitle.

#5. Marvel should reboot!

This is the kind of complaint that you hear from hardcore fans who can no longer see the forest for the trees. DC rebooted and provided clear jumping on points, so of course Marvel should reboot, because, when you've been around for fifty years, there will be contradictions and you'll need to do some fixes. Iron Man's war was originally Vietnam, and now it's not. Reed Richards used to fight in World War II. Spider-Man used to be married and now never was. But... it's an untenable suggestion. It doesn't work.

The main reason it doesn't work is that even when you reboot, you will eventually get back to that point. You may be easy to jump on now, but developments will happen, contradictions will arise, you'll need to fix things again, and if you're DC, you just end up rebooting again and you have the same kinds of problems you had before. Even the Ultimate Universe, launched just this century so that new readers would have a whole new universe with a fresh start to follow, eventually became this history-heavy universe that was no longer so much fresher a jumping-on point as the regular Marvel Universe was.

Reboots lead to reboots, and it greatly discounts reader's abilities to jump into the middle of a story. How many times did you jump into the middle of a movie and followed it just fine? How many TV shows did you get into way after the first episode? I started watching Buffy at Season 4 and when I started reading comics, I knew what Earth-2 was and sometimes Spider-Man wore red and blue and sometimes he wore black. The term in medias res exists because you can actually start at the middle of a story when writing it. And as long as writers and creators make each story accessible, it doesn't need to start from the beginning every time.

Now you may be saying, "But you just spent a kajillion words talking about how it's important to get new readers, and reboots get new readers!" Yeah, they do. For a while. But unlike renumbering or playing off a movie, it doesn't just pass once it's done and may in fact just lead to more reboots in the future, as it has with DC. It would have to be really worth it to do, and yield sustainable and substantial long-term benefits. And like I said, after a couple of years, it's no longer "fresh" anyway.

#6. What is this diversity!

It's one of the universal complaints when a minority character gets introduced. Kevin Keller, the new Ms. Marvel — whatever it is, if it's a minority, people get up in arms, some even saying that these characters are just there to meet some sort of political correctness quota.

Diversity requires conscious effort. Sorry, it just does. It would be easy to create all-white, all-male, all-straight characters all the time, but that's not the way the world works and people should see themselves represented. So if you're really complaining about this kind of thing because you're a cynic, just realize you're complaining about diversity. That's what you're complaining about. You are complaining that people of other skin colors, orientations, religions, and other such categorizations are getting represented. If you really are complaining about that kind of thing, if that offends you so much, then I hope you can find happiness somewhere far, far away from me.

When Ultimate Spider-Man killed off Peter Parker a while back to replace him with Miles Morales, I spoke to one African-American kid who told me that Miles Morales was the first hero he found himself able to relate to. And that's cool. I'm glad that happened. And I'm glad Richard Pace overheard this at his local comics shop.

Finally, if you're complaining about diversity, just know two things: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were two of the biggest proponents of diversity of their era, introducing black characters like the Black Panther and Joe Robertson and Wyatt Wingfoot, and that when the following characters came out, a bunch of bigots probably complained and spoke about affirmative action and everything.

Shit, let's just look at a letter Charles Schulz got shortly after he introduced Franklin in Peanuts.

Gentlemen:

In today's "Peanuts" comic strip Negro and white children are portrayed together in school.

School integration is a sensitive subject here, particularly at this time when our city and county schools are under court order for massive compulsory race mixing.

We would appreciate it if future "Peanuts" strips did not have this type of content.

Thank you.

Now imagine just how stupid they look in hindsight.

Really, really stupid.

#7. Lebron James can defend every position on the floor! This has never been done before!

First of all, Lebron can defend every position on the floor because the league is significantly smaller now than it was in previous decades. The height difference between the league's premiere center and its two premiere small forwards isn't huge. Next of all, Lebron couldn't defend Roy Hibbert (too tall), Tony Parker (too good), and Tim Duncan (too good and too tall), so the whole "defends every position" thing is suspect. He could defend non-all-star power forwards and centers who are actually power forwards playing the center position.

Next of all, stop it. Scottie Pippen still existed.

On the Winter Soldier

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is out next month, so for the entirety of March, all of my articles will be about the Star-Spangled Man with a Plan! Today, we talk about...

The Winter Soldier

by Duy

Spoiler Warnings: Don't read on if you don't know anything about the Winter Soldier and want to go into the movie cold. Just bookmark this post and read it once you've seen the movie!

In many ways, The Winter Soldier is the little superhero concept that could. Bucky Barnes, the World War II sidekick of Captain America, had been dead since before the war ended, a victim of the same accident that tossed Cap in the ice. (In the movies, it's similar — Bucky falls to his "death" just a few days or weeks before Steve Rogers plunges into the ice.) When Cap was brought back into the Marvel Age in 1964, Bucky stayed dead as Stan Lee, for one, was against the concept of kid sidekicks in general. This isn't surprising considering that a kid sidekick's primary narrative purpose is really just to give kids an identification point, and this was certainly at odds with Marvel's objective to deliver a more "realistic" product. Bucky's death also provided Steve with a pathos that kind of helped to carry him for a bit in his initial Silver Age run.

Over the years, a kind of "rule" came about in comics fandom, especially as resurrections became more and more common. That rule saw a lot of variations over the years, but the gist of it was that "Only Bucky stays dead." (Some variations include "Only Bucky, Jason Todd, and Uncle Ben stay dead" and "Only Bucky and Gwen Stacy stay dead.") It's an exaggeration, of course, as a lot of characters have to stay dead to remain effective, such as Batman's parents and Spider-Man's uncle, but the point is, for a very long time, it was just accepted that there was no bringing Bucky back.

But sometimes all you really need is the right creator, the right twists, and the right push, and you can break these otherwise arbitrary rules. Ed Brubaker clearly loved Bucky, saying in his "A Goodbye to Cap..." essay that showed up in his last issue that he first encountered Cap and Bucky through one of the 60s cartoons. This one, specifically:





Like Bucky, Brubaker was a military brat, but Brubaker states that he just simply liked the idea that next to a super-soldier was a "well-trained kid with a machine gun and an attitude." So when Brubaker got the assignment of writing Captain America in 2004, he wanted to bring Bucky back.

Fortunately for him, and for comic book readership in general, then-editor-in-chief Joe Quesada was behind him all the way, giving him Steve Epting (his first choice) for an artist, and lining up other artists with similar styles, such as Michael Lark and Butch Guice, to maintain a visual consistency whenever Epting needed some help. The result is one long story that could easily fill up an entire bookshelf, with a clear narrative and visual flow. This is impressive in and of itself, but especially if you realize that it involves the return of Bucky. Bucky, for whom there existed a no-resurrection rule until they decided it was time to break it.

Alan Moore, apparently, was criticized for changing too much of Swamp Thing, but as he points out, "Unless I understood the tradition of Swamp Thing, how could I ever come up with exactly the right sort of twist to put in them?" In that vein, you can tell that Brubaker was a fan of both Captain America and Bucky because he was able to find just the right twists to put on the story — which is actually highlighted more when you consider the fact that at pretty much the same time, DC Comics brought back Jason Todd, the second Robin, in a similar plotline where he was after Batman. Two similar controversial premises, and one is now going to be a big blockbuster movie while the other one, while not largely forgotten, has more receded in significance after nine years.

Brubaker's twists were just right and, in many ways, so blindingly obvious. Bucky Barnes was a kid who ran around with Captain America, so he could keep up with a super-soldier. Logically, that just makes him the greatest natural fighter that's ever been born. Bucky carried a machine gun around, whereas Cap did not, so he did the dirty work that Cap, as a symbol and point of morale, couldn't do. These were so obvious and such easy ways to get past the perceived "lameness" of Bucky. In fact, just by introducing those elements, Bucky immediately goes from "stereotypical superhero lame sidekick" to someone you absolutely have to respect and a very real threat.

Here's a twist I really like. In the Marvel Earth, Captain America Comics #1 is, ostensibly, the same as the one on our real Earth. It's the official cover story for wartime Marvel Americans, and the twists Brubaker put in (Bucky wasn't a kid anymore, for example) made it so that the "real" Cap #1 has more in common with that cover story than the actual story being told.

So when Brubaker begins his run and all this backstory with Bucky is filled in, you realize what a threat he really is and really can be when he shows up as the Winter Soldier. Fished out of the ocean by the Soviets and brainwashed into being their assassin, kept young by cryogenics in specific periods over the years, the Winter Soldier remembers nothing about his past, but his muscle memory is intact. With his left arm replaced by a cybernetic prosthetic, Bucky has become one of the very few people that can pose a legitimate threat to Captain America. And you know, that's good stuff. After years of Steve beating himself up over Bucky's death, it turns out Bucky's alive, and suffering a fate that might be considered worse.

When Bucky finally does get his memory back, his actions as the Winter Soldier don't leave him, and he's haunted by guilt. He eventually ends up having to take over as Captain America in the much-publicized "Death of Captain America" storyline a few years back, and that gave us some pretty good stories until Marvel put Steve back in the uniform.

Still, Marvel, Ed Brubaker, and company managed to make Bucky Barnes/the Winter Soldier a viable character moving forward, and The Winter Soldier storyline is now the basis for the upcoming movie. That's the first time ever that a Marvel-produced movie is directly based on just one specific storyline instead of being an amalgam of multiple storylines. Somehow, The Winter Soldier has taken the steps to become an evergreen book.

The Black Widow is also a major part of the story, in case you guys were
wondering why Natasha/Scarlett was in the movie.

Considering that it all revolves around a character that the comic book industry and fandom long regarded as unusable, I'd say that's pretty impressive.

You can start reading Ed Brubaker, Steve Epting, and company's run on Captain America in the following books:

Fighting Chance and Operation: Rebirth

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is out next month, so for the entirety of March, all of my articles will be about the Star-Spangled Man with a Plan! Today, we talk about...

Fighting Chance and Operation: Rebirth
Awesomeness by Omission

by Duy

As a kid in the 90s, I wasn't a big fan of Mark Gruenwald. I found him to be a writer of limited skill in comparison to his grand ambitions (Squadron Supreme is probably the best example of this — lots of ambition but in my opinion falling really short on execution). So I wasn't picking up Captain America on a regular basis or anything, even if, by concept, Steve Rogers is one of my favorite superheroes. I love the idea of a perfect physical specimen also being the symbol of liberty and freedom. I often see people online talking about how Captain America is unrelatable to people who aren't American, because of him being a symbol of America, but I have to say that that's never been a problem for me. What's important are the principles for which he stands.

Gruenwald wrote Captain America for 10 years, and he decided to wrap it up with as close to a "death of Captain America" storyline as he could possibly get. It ran for a couple of years and was called "Fighting Chance." With artist Dave Hoover, he kicked off the almost-two-year-long storyline with the whole idea that Steve Rogers' Super Soldier Serum, responsible for his peak human abilities, was degenerating and that it would eventually lead to his paralysis and death. The run was really panned, and people seemed to hate it because it put Cap in such unfamiliar trappings. For example, when he needs to arm himself so as to make up for his cellular degeneration, he gets a battle vest.

When his body finally does give out but his mind is still active, he has Iron Man make him a suit of armor.

People hated this stuff just like they hated when Superman went electric or Batman got replaced by some dude with spikes, but hey, I liked it. It wasn't the greatest thing in the world or anything, but it was kinda neat to see Cap just get distilled to pure determination and a desire to do right, which is what he had before he ever had the serum in his blood.

I like to call this kind of thing "Awesomeness by Omission." A characteristic is highlighted because something is being omitted. Superman going electric was an exercise in showing that Superman is the guy who does the right thing and figures out what he can do given his powers, and if he doesn't have those powers, he'll adjust. Batman getting his back broken and being replaced by Azrael in "Knightfall" was all about how Azrael is a crappy Batman. The Superior Spider-Man series is about what a fucking terrible Spider-Man Dr. Octopus is and how awesome Peter Parker is in comparison. "Reign of the Supermen" is all about how no one can possibly replace Kal-El.

Awesomeness by Omission tends to go over the heads of a lot of fans, who seem to think changes like these are permanent (they never are). But what got me about the then-negative reaction to "Fighting Chance" was that Captain America had lost the mantle of Cap before, twice — once when he quit and became Nomad, and once when he was fired by the government and became "The Captain." Maybe yeah, readers didn't know that this kind of thing happened to Cap all the time, but I was also 13 then, so what do you want, a fair and impartial judgment? Leave me alone.

Another thing that got me then, and it gets me now, is that for all the 90s-ness of Cap's armor and battle vests, it seemed kinda clear that Gruenwald was trying to poke fun at the tropes. His armor shot "mylar shrouds," which were really just saran wraps. His battle vest had air bags!

We got introduced to new sidekicks, Jack Flag, whose mask indicates he was based on the WildCATS' Grifter, and who carried a boom box around, because the 80s were never gone in Gruenwald's heart; and Free Spirit, officially the Favorite Captain America Sidekick of Every Adolescent Boy and Dirty Old Men, like Back Issue Ben.

Anyway, this all led to Mark Waid and Ron Garney's run. Gruenwald set the table for them by having Cap disappear, and before Waid and Garney decided to bring Cap back (Cap dies and gets brought back once every 12 or so years, you see. More on that next week.), they do more Awesomeness by Omission by having the Avengers each give their own testimony about the Star-Spangled Man with a Plan. My favorite is Hercules': "On Olympus, we measure wisdom against Athena... speed against Hermes... power against Zeus. But we measure courage... against Captain America."

Waid and Garney bring Steve back in the next issue though, in a storyline called "Operation: Rebirth." And from there on out, it just starts to gain momentum. First, Steve wakes up, shocked to find he's alive because the last thing he remembers is being close to death. Then, he discovers that his old girlfriend and the closest thing he had to a true love, Sharon Carter, Agent 13 of SHIELD, is alive and well after being dead for around 15 years in real time, and kinda hates his guts. And then he discovers that to save him, Sharon had to flush out all his blood and receive a complete transfusion, which impairs his physical capabilities for a while. But as usual, the fate of the world is at stake and Cap decides to still help.

That's the last time we see Awesomeness by Omission, because when his abilities start to come back, he realizes that the transfusion could have come from the only other person in the world with the serum running through his veins.

Turns out the Red Skull had a Cosmic Cube, one of those trinkets that make one's thoughts a reality. (Red Skull always has one of these. How it became his "thing," I don't know. You don't think it'd be a good fit or anything. But I guess it makes as much sense as "dying and coming back every 12 years" does for Cap.) But imprisoned within that Cube is the mind of Adolf Hitler. Cap doesn't know whether or not to believe Skull, but regardless, Skull tricks him into entering the Cube anyway, on a quest to destroy whatever it is in the Cube that's preventing the Skull from using it properly. And just as when it looks like Steve's about to bite, he breaks right out of the Cosmic Cube.

Steve Rogers, by sheer force of willpower, breaks out of the Cosmic Cube. After that, he threatens to kill the Red Skull. He doesn't actually do it, but it's pretty clear, at this point, Captain America is back in full force.

And that's when the run really kicks into high gear. Waid and Garney do "Man Without a Country" next, where Steve is branded as an outlaw and has to give up being Captain America for a while (another thing that happens to him a lot), and by the tenth issue of their run, one of my favorite moments ever in comics happens. While on a mission to free some prisoners of war in Tap-Kwai, Steve tells Sharon to lead them towards a rendezvous, and meanwhile, he'll hold off the army.

And of course, he does.

Unfortunately, that was it for Waid and Garney. Rob Liefeld got a hold of the character afterward for the outsourcing event Heroes Reborn, but Waid and Garney's run was building up and building up and building up that people in general thought taking them off the book so quickly was just a big waste of potential, so they were tapped to bring back Captain America in 1997 with Heroes Return. Unfortunately, I think Waid in general isn't as good on something the second time around (I don't know why this is), and Marvel moved Garney onto a Captain America spinoff title, Sentinel of Liberty, six issues in, replacing him with Andy Kubert. It wasn't the same. The momentum was gone. Garney had a dynamism and a sense of action that Kubert didn't have, despite a more commercially successful style. As it is, the Waid/Garney team left us with the promise of greatness, and some truly great moments, but without ever really fulfilling that promise.

It's a shame, but I guess one could say that Liefeld taking over the title was Awesomeness by Omission, this time for Mark Waid and Ron Garney.

You can read Fighting Chance and Operation: Rebirth here:

Captain America: War and Remembrance

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is out next month, so for the entirety of March, all of my articles will be about the Star-Spangled Man with a Plan! Today, we talk about...

Roger Stern and John Byrne's War and Remembrance

One Brief Shining Moment

by Duy

I don't really like saying absolute statements like "This is what superhero comics should be like," since that feels like imposing my tastes in too extreme a manner to be taken seriously, but there are times I'll make an exception or at least choose my words carefully while essentially saying the same thing. Captain America: War and Remembrance, written by Roger Stern and drawn by John Byrne, which ran in Captain America #247–255 (1980–1981) is one of those exceptions.

This run, short as it was, is one of those rare perfect combinations for me. I can't say enough good things about Roger Stern. For my money, he's one of the two greatest pure superhero writers ever, and by "pure superhero writer," I mean someone who tells his stories in a straightforward, conventional manner and reinforces what's great about a particular character instead of someone who overturns conventions and takes those characters down before rebuilding them (the comics buzzword is "deconstruction," but I hate that since it's actually an inappropriate term). In that sense, Roger Stern for my money has the highest batting average.

Meanwhile, on the list of comic book artists that I love so much, there are very few I'd put above early 80s John Byrne, and I can count them on one hand. This probably shouldn't count as a surprise since George Perez is my favorite artist of all time, but you know what? I actually would take early 80s John Byrne over George Perez of the same era. I think he was the superior artist then, and I think Byrne in that time was the perfect superhero artist.

And of course, Captain America is one of my favorite characters ever, one of my three or four favorite Marvel superheroes, and my absolute favorite superhero who doesn't have any superhuman powers. Sure, he got his powers from a Super Soldier Serum, but the dude was 4F, physically frail, and from poverty, and he wanted to do the right thing because it was the right thing to do. I'm sure we'll forgive him for not being a perfect genetic specimen and rich enough to train his body to the peak of human conditioning and is driven by obsession. Steve Rogers is the perfect hero because he was a hero before he ever had any physical right to be.

So we're talking my favorite pure superhero writer, one of my absolute favorite superhero artists at the peak of his powers, and my favorite nonpowered superhero ever. But as is often the case in comics (or in life, really), a combination of great parts is nothing if you can't bring it together. Fortunately for us all, Stern and Byrne brought it together on War and Remembrance. And like I said, I don't want to say things like "This is what all superhero comics should be like," so I'll phrase it a little differently and say this instead:

If I could give an aspiring superhero creative team a comic to study and emulate, it would be War and Remembrance.

Let's look at some of the things this book can teach aspiring creators.

Tell What You Must, Show What You Can

The first scene of War and Remembrance has Captain America running across the Brooklyn Bridge, jumping on top of a bus, hitching a ride to Midtown New York, jumping off in the middle of the road to an awning then to a flagpole then to a rooftop, and running for a while until he finally gets to SHIELD headquarters.

All throughout, Cap's thought bubbles fill us in on what's going on in his mind and what the purpose of his litte trip is.

The interdependency of the words and pictures, meaning the fact that they add something different to the story, makes the storytelling incredibly efficient. Stern's advancing the plot by telling you what you need to know, and Byrne's showing you just how capable Cap is in terms of physical skills and athleticism.

Now for sure, Stern still does do some unnecessary explaining — it's an 80s comic, after all, and it should still be read in that context. The thing, really, to remember about 80s comics is that accessible back issues were still a novelty, so exposition was a necessity. But Stern was very good at making it unobtrusive for its time, and it still does, to a large extent, hold up pretty well now. The important thing is that comics are a visual medium and the artist should shine, and Stern wrote sequences in such a way to make sure that Byrne did, in fact, shine.

Continuity Should Be a Tool

So Cap is running to SHIELD headquarters in that first sequence because he's got some questions about his past. This is because, when Roger Stern was editor of the book in previous years, he was stuck with a story that contradicted a lot of Cap's established history, and he wanted to clear that up. While there could easily have been a way to make it the focus of a multi-part story, Stern resolves the issue in one page. The entire thing is just a way to get Captain America to SHIELD where, because Nick Fury is missing, we see Steve Rogers and Dum Dum Dugan's friendship re-established, and then Baron Strucker attacks, kicking off the main story and the direction for the first three issues of the run.

The continuity problem was resolved in one page. Cap needed to get to SHIELD and it was as good an excuse as any. Stern killed two birds with one stone.


So to recap: for the first half of the first issue, we've seen Cap's physical capabilities, learned what he's after, resolved a continuity problem, established he's friends with multiple SHIELD agents, and kicked off the direction for a few issues. That's pretty economical.

Villains Should Be Threatening

Among the many villains Captain America fights in this collection are Baron Blood, an immortal vampire; Dragon Man, who's gone toe to toe with the mighty Hercules; and Mr. Hyde, who regularly fought Thor.

 Cap was constantly overmatched in this run, and it gave off a real sense of danger as well as a sense of curiosity because you wanted to know how he was going to win. Of course, there was little doubt that he was going to win, because he's Captain America. Which leads us to our next point...

The Hero Should Be Awesome

Captain America is pretty awesome. We all know it. The guy's the perfect physical specimen, the best and most capable nonpowered superhero in existence. But the man has his limits. And like every great hero, he excels at going past those limits. Here he is bending a massive chain just enough to break free.

The one who's chained him to that boat is Mr. Hyde, who was introduced in comics as an enemy for Thor, and who has teamed up with my favorite Captain America villain, Batroc the Leaper! (I unabashedly love Batroc. Here's why.) Now Batroc's a villain, but he's not incredibly stupid, so he knows that Hyde would turn on him eventually, so he's actually the reason Cap is fighting Hyde at all.

Yep, of all the people Batroc could have called in to help fight Hyde, he chose Captain America. Now that's awesome.

It seems there's a lot of traction today in having heroes lose or fail, and maybe there's something to that. But I always think that win or lose, heroes should be awesome. We should be able to look up to them. More, we should be able to want to be like them.

As an aside, I really love Captain America's shield. The idea of a discuslike weapon that is both offensive and defensive and cannot be broken lends an air of myth and fantasy to someone who is otherwise a relatively (to the rest of his peers) grounded character. It adds the touch of "legend" to Marvel's living legend.

Vary the Tone as the Story Calls for It

Stern and Byrne didn't hesitate to go with changing the tone of each scene to suit whatever mood they were going for. It seems to me that these days a lot of superhero comics tend to go with a specific tone for each series, but Stern and Byrne proved that you can vacillate between lighthearted moments, tense moments, and even dark and disturbing moments. For example, here's Steve Rogers being introduced to the new tenant in his apartment, Bernadette Rosenthal.

A fun moment, right? Bright colors and all smiles and everything. Some issues later, he's fighting the vampire Baron Blood, and he tricks Blood into attacking him by pretending to sleep. Suddenly—

Cap tricks a vampire into coming really close to him. I love Cap.

I love that scene. Byrne really made you feel the collision with the shield.

When it is clear that Cap wasn't going to be able to beat Blood before the sun goes down (which would give Blood more strength),the color scheme shifts into a darker palette, and Cap does what any soldier would do — not that he has to like it.

That's the new Union Jack (essentially, he's the Cap of England) looking at the decapitation happening, by the way, and showing his reaction while he's engulfed by the shadow of it is probably more effective than actually showing the decapitation.

But the best issue to demonstrate these tonal shifts is probably the one where a third political party endorses Cap for president, starting a media blitz that has the nation believing that he would, in fact, run. Check out this panel where the Beast tells him about it. Byrne manages to convey frustration, disbelief, and amusement all in one go.

Then, here's Cap reacting to the reactions of Iron Man, the Wasp, and the Vision.

And then by the end, he just gets really serious, turning it down because he knows that politicians, even those he respects, would have to make compromises that he, as Captain America, wouldn't and shouldn't make.

In the second issue, actually, Cap makes a mental note that Nick Fury's job must in fact be a dirty one, and that he feels bad for him and respects him at the same time. There's an underlying complexity to the run, with Cap knowing that the dream and the reality are, at the moment, incongruous, but that he'd never stop doing his part in it as the symbol of the dream and that he's grateful for those who need to get their hands dirtier and make compromises so the reality can come closer to the dream. It's nothing the run dwells on for too long, but it's there, and you know it's there because Roger Stern put enough words in Captain America's thoughts and speech to remind you, and because John Byrne conveyed it as well as anyone could, without ever once forgetting that this was a superhero book and that bad guys needed to be punched.

So I don't usually say things like "This is what most comics should be like," but again, I'll say this: If I could give an aspiring superhero creative team a comic to study and emulate, it would be War and Remembrance.