Follow Up to “Don’t Buy Steve Rogers #1″ post, but I want to stress:
This can not be a kneejerk reaction. Marvel seems like they have no interest in backing down. They are committing to this vulgar storyline. That means we need to commit to a long campaign. We need to have plans for the whole summer, including San Diego Comic Con.
Pre-Sales Matter to the Companies the most. Also, if a store over buys a comic, they are stuck with that non-refundable inventory. It’s bad for the stores. CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION NOW. Cancel before the stores can order issues #2 and #3.
We have to go after Disney. If this affects Disney’s box office or merchandise sales they will step in. Don’t buy merch. Don’t buy the Captain America: Civil War Blue-Ray/Digital. Support the Dr. Strange Boycott. Get Disney’s attention.
Please do not threaten the live’s authors/publishers. Yes, they are giant assholes for greenlighting this disgusting shock value scam. Unfortunately, the easiest way for Disney/Marvel to dismiss you is for them to think you’re “one of those crazy people from the Internet.”
Okay everyone. So while we’ve all been indignant and disgusted by Nazi Cap, the fact that his creators are Jewish, and that it goes against everything Steve Rogers was meant to stand for, there’s a few things the writers completely and utterly missed.
Now, I want to come out and say that I am not Jewish and that I am not trying to make this trivial to them. I think that it is abhorrent and I am completely, utterly shocked they would violate a character like this. I am not happy.
I also have yet to read the comic and, frankly, I’m not going to buy it. I won’t give Marvel money for this shit. What I have is what I’ve taken from tumblr and my own research, so take this with a grain of salt.
So while the fact he is now a Nazi and has never been, apparently, a good person, there is something important that I wanted to focus on.
Like the fact that Steve Rogers would have NEVER been chosen by HYDRA in the first place.
This was a big deal in the 20s and 30s. Google it. The short answer is this: the perfect race. The desired traits. The perfect human being. Sounds familiar, right? Hitler used it for his Aryan race. Blonde, blue-eyed, tall (i.e. what he wasn’t). We ought to know about that.
Well, here’s the thing–it started in the USA. Well, not completely. The idea of Eugenics has been around since Plato. But the idea that people who weren’t “perfect” should be removed from society became pretty big in the USA in the 20s. Hitler borrowed the principals of it from the US. You’ve heard of the Kennedys. The oldest daughter was sterilized against her will, lobotomized, and locked up. Don’t believe me? Look it up. This was common. It was common through the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. It was repealed in 1972. People who were mentally ill were locked away and sterilized. When it became too expensive to house those people, they government shut the program down and those people who had been locked away were suddenly homeless because no one wanted them. Hitler got his Nazi Youth from the USA, people.
Back to the topic at hand.
Steve Rogers was Irish and most likely Catholic. Click here and look under “early life”.
Remember little orphan Annie? With her cute little red hair? Yeah. That means she’s Irish. Not a big deal right? Everyone today loves the Irish. Being Irish or part Irish nowadays is, well, cool.
Yeah, no, not back then. The Irish were hated. You did not advertise the fact that you were Irish back then because you would be beat up. Annie was made an Irish girl because she wasn’t wanted. That reboot in 2014? Annie is now African American because they are among the children who are adopted the least, nowadays. HYDRA would not take Steve Rogers in simply because he was Irish. But hey! It gets better.
Steve Rogers wasn’t healthy.
See, Eugenics only works if the desired people are healthy. You don’t want unhealthy people. So Steve, with his asthma and his heart conditions and his color blindness and his partially deafness … well. Yeah. HYDRA would have left him and his mother to die. His father is now a drunk in the comics, right? Drunk Irish. They would have been tossed for that. His mother was single. She worked instead of remarrying. Tossed for that.
So this woman who took Sarah and Steve in an indoctrinated him into HYDRA? Nope. Wouldn’t have happened–not even out of the “goodness of her heart.”
Also, literally the only people stopping Steve Rogers from being institutionalized and sterilized were Sarah and Bucky. When Sarah died, Bucky would have kept Steve out (MCU, for those fans.)
Steve is a good person. He would have been more loyal to Bucky than anyone else. That’s the MCU. In the comics, well … I guess Steve would have found a way to stay out.
So HYDRA would never have looked twice at poor little Steven G. Rogers. They simply wouldn’t have. He wasn’t “perfect.”
Personally, I think some of the reason why Steve was chosen for the serum was not only because he is a good person, but also because he was the exact opposite of what the Nazis and the Eugenicist considered desirable. It was sort of a “Fuck You” to the Nazis.
So while it’s horrifically offensive that Cap has been turned into a Nazi and that, suddenly, half his character no longer makes sense (Thor’s hammer? The fact he provably has no prejudices? The fact that he would have turned out like the Red Skull if he had been a bad person when injected with the serum?), it’s historically inaccurate. There is no way some Eugenicists would have looked at Steve and told him he was destined for greatness. There is no way a Eugenicists would have taken pity on poor, unhealthy Irish folk. There is no way a single mother and her sickly kid would have been accepted into the Nazi fold. There is no way Steve Rogers would have been indoctrinated into the Nazi ideals. He would have never been chosen in the first place.
The writers are completely ignoring history and completely ignoring the time period. The events and the people’s ideals played an ENORMOUS role in Steve’s life. The writers literally do not understand just what that time period was like. They threw everything out and ignored it. Not only have they done a disservice to the Jewish, Catholic, Romani, and Homosexual (and every other group that suffered under the Nazi reign–while 6 million Jews died, the total death toll was 12 million) communities they are doing a disservice to the USA’s history, both good and bad.
This is a problem. Sure, Steve Rogers as bisexual would be great. But this? I don’t care what anyone says. If someone tells you this is no big deal, tell them they don’t understand the cultural and historical impact this has. This comic may be lost in the recesses of time, but it still exists, now.
Some people may still remember the 20s and 30s, but there’s a century between the rest of us and that time period. Most of us can only know that era through history–and this is why the writers should have done that time justice. People often learn more fact through fiction than they do in school. This was an injustice.
And writers?
Only a handful of people ever saw Steve’s worth, andHYDRA was never one of them.
[SPOILERS FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA: STEVE ROGERS #1 BELOW]
Yesterday, Marvel released the first issue of Captain America: Steve Rogers by Nick Spencer, Jesus Saiz, and Joe Caramagna. It’s a pretty boilerplate (albeit beautifully depicted) story of a rejuvenated Steve Rogers back in the field…right up until he tosses an ally to his death and declares “Hail Hydra” in a final page splash. The whole thing is intercut with flashbacks to his childhood of a neighbor inviting Steve’s mother to a Hydra meeting, thus implying that Steve was indoctrinated as a child and has been a sleeper agent of Hydra all along.
This is comics, right? Unleash a shocking twist to get readers to pick up the next issue! Make everything All-New All-Different for a few months until things settle back into the status quo! Have a character behave so incongruously that fans just have to know why!
Except.
Except this is different than having Superman be a jackass to Lois and Jimmy on the cover of some Silver Age issue of Action. This is different than a kiss or a death or a resurrection. This is even different than the usual “wildly out of character” stunts that would normally have readers up in arms, like Batman using a gun.
Quick comics history lesson: Captain America was created in 1941 by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby as a superpowered, super-patriotic soldier fighting the Axis forces. He was famously depicted punching out Adolf Hitler on the cover of his first appearance, inCaptain America Comics #1—which hit stands in December 1940, a full year before Pearl Harbor and before the United States joined World War II, making that cover a bold political statement.
You probably already knew that, but I’d invite you to think about it for a minute. In early 1941, a significant percentage of the American population was still staunchly isolationist. Yet more Americans were pro-Axis. The Nazi Party was not the unquestionably evil cartoon villains we’re familiar with today; coming out in strong opposition to them was not a given. It was a risky choice.
And Simon and Kirby—born Hymie Simon and Jacob Kurtzberg—were not making it lightly. Like most of the biggest names in the Golden Age of comics, they were Jewish. They had family and friends back in Europe who were losing their homes, their freedom, and eventually their lives to the Holocaust. The creation of Captain America was deeply personal and deeply political.
Ever since, Steve Rogers has stood in opposition to tyranny, prejudice, and genocide. While other characters have their backstories rolled up behind them as the decades march on to keep them young and relevant, Cap is never removed from his original context. He can’t be. To do so would empty the character of all meaning.
But yesterday, that’s what Marvel did.
Look, this isn’t my first rodeo. I know how comics work. He’s a Skrull, or a triple agent, or these are implanted memories, or it’s a time travel switcheroo, or, or, or. There’s a thousand ways Marvel can undo this reveal—and they will, of course, because they’re not about to just throw away a multi-billion dollar piece of IP. Steve Rogers is not going to stay Hydra any more than Superman stayed dead.
But Nazis (yes, yes, I know 616 Hydra doesn’t have the same 1:1 relationship with Nazism that MCU Hydra does) are not a wacky pretend bad guy, something I think geek media and pop culture too often forgets. They were a very real threat that existed in living memory. They are the reason I can’t go back to the villages my great-grandparents are from, because those communities were murdered. They are the reason I find my family name on Holocaust memorials. They are the perpetrators of unspeakable, uncountable, very real atrocities.
But writer Nick Spencer and editor Tom Brevoort are more concerned with making this “something new and unexpected”; with having “fun” and getting readers “invested in Hydra characters.” Because what’s more fun than downplaying genocide?
I’m not going to pretend to be cool here. I’m emotional. This is emotional. Captain America isn’t even my usual guy to get incandescently angry over the erasure of his coded Jewish history— that’s Kal-El, the Moses of Krypton—but reading this comic made me feel sick to my stomach. Reading the flippant responses of many non-Jewish readers—including friends—has brought me to tears. Somehow a community that gets up in arms about whether or not Batman has a yellow circle behind his logo seems to think that being angry about this is stupid, or indicative of a lack of experience with comics.
So let me be very clear: I don’t care if this gets undone next year, next month, next week. I know it’s clickbait disguised as storytelling. I am not angry because omg how dare you ruin Steve Rogers forever.
I am angry because how dare you use eleven million deaths as clickbait.
I am angry because Steve Rogers’s Jewish creators literally fought in a war against the organization Marvel has made him a part of to grab headlines.
I am angry because the very real pain of the Jewish community has been dismissed since this news leaked on Tuesday night as “Twitter outrage.”
If this story doesn’t hurt you? Good. I’m genuinely glad. I don’t want anyone else to have the gorge rise in their throat when they read the entertainment news. I love comics. I don’t want them to make people feel angry and betrayed. But understand that not feeling that way comes from a place of privilege, and don’t dismiss the concerns of those of us who are upset just because you have the luxury not to be.
I’ve been trying to think of how to finish this post, but I don’t think I can say it better than my friend and fellow Panelteer Sigrid Ellis did here:
And knowing that this wound is temporary, that it’s for the sake of sales and money and a story beat, that just makes it hurt more, not less. How little we must matter, the people who needed Steve to be the defender of the underdog and the weak, how little we must matter if betraying us for a story beat is so easy.
How little must we matter. The people who created Captain America, and Superman, and countless other heroes like them. The people who need him. The people whose history and suffering and hope, as we stood on the brink of annihilation, gave you your weekly entertainment and your fun thought experiment, 75 years later.
Okay but the thing is, we can’t just ignore this. We can’t just pretend this never happened and be like “lol classic marvel, let’s just imagine Steve never had a run this year”. We have the right to be angry, to boycott marvel, to @ the writer, to create hashtags and be as loud as possible. Don’t go around telling people to chill because this probably won’t be “permanent”. It doesnt matter. Its still fucking disgusting and disrespectful to the original creators and fans. They crossed a line and they deserve the backlash they’re getting.
On twitter, there’s already a fairly substantial campaign going with the hashtag #SayNoToHydraCap. Join in, tweet with the hashtag, retweet tweets under the hashtag, etc. Be loud.
It’s one thing if we choose to ignore this in regards to Steve’s characterization within the fandom and within fanworks and fan discussions, because, honestly, we should. This should have no impact on Steve Rogers and his characterization because it’s disgusting and horrid and so disrespectful to the character and his legacy, as well as his original writers and his fans.
But we can’t ignore this in regards to Marvel, to the writer, to the people who went “Yes, let’s turn Steve Rogers into a sleeper agent for a literal Nazi organization, ignoring decades of characterization and the fact that he was originally written by two Jewish writers, and the fact that he’s one of the most idolized superheros in the game.” We have to be loud. We have to be vocal. Like OP said, they crossed a line, and they need to know it. They need to know that what they did was unacceptable, uncalled for, and absolutely disgusting.
where are all the comic old boys yammering about respecting the history and origins and keeping characters as they were originally intended to be, or are those arguments only for when people want to make heroes black, female, or lgbt?
To be fair you’re not seeing many men on tumblr be up in arms, but the reddit community is beyond pissed. They’re rightfully calling this a character assassination and a cheap gimmick to try and shock people into buying the run.
damn, you know Marvel’s fucked up real bad if tumblr and reddit are in agreement on something
1. Well done for shitting all over anybody that has ever believed in Captain America.
2. Because Steve Rogers is a symbol of hope, freedom, justice, equality, and kindness.
3. Captain America was literally created by two Jewish men as a symbol of hope against Hitler, and now you’re telling me he’s a nazi?!
4. Say it again for the people in the back: CAPTAIN AMERICA DESERVES BETTER, SHOCK VALUE DOES NOT EQUAL GOOD STORYTELLING!
5. No matter what their comics say, it’s our job to plant ourselves like trees beside the river of truth and tell them ‘No, you move’.
6. Because the hero that stood up for the oppressed just became the oppressor.
7. High-key hoping that this was a spelling error and that he meant ‘Hail Hydration’ drink plenty of water and look after yourselves kids.
8. Because Steve Rogers deserved better on his 75th anniversary.
9. Because the little guy from Brooklyn that was too dumb to not run away from a fight deserved better.
10. Because Coulson didn’t spend years completing his Vintage Captain America Card Collection for his childhood hero to be a nazi.
11. Bucky Barnes did not go through hell just to hear that his best friend has been working with the people that tortured him and used him as a weapon unwillingly.
12. No gonna lie I didn’t think it was possible to mess up this badly but Marvel always manages to surprise me, only not usually in a bad way.
13. Because apparently nothing says Happy 75th Anniversary better than nazism.
14. What next T’Challa is secretly a member of the KKK?
15. Not a good soldier but a GOOD MAN, you hear me Marvel?? A GOOD MAN!!
16. You either die a hero or live long enough to see douchebag writers turn you into everything you’ve ever stood against.
17. Because Cap didn’t get iced for this shit.
18. What about Chris Evans? How do you think he feels? Oh, that’s right!
Captain America was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby to be a symbol of freedom, hope, equality and kindness.
Captain America was created to be a pillar of justice and compassion and courage and empathy.
Captain America was created to be someone who would always stand up for what was right.
Captain America is traditionally considered one of the truest heroes in the Marvel Universe.
Captain America, Steve Rogers, became Captain America because of how kind, courageous, and compassionate he was.
Captain America was created by TWO JEWISH MEN DURING WORLD WAR II, as someone who would ALWAYS STAND UP FOR THE LITTLE GUY.
THE FIRST ISSUE OF CAPTAIN AMERICA FEATURED HIM PUNCHING HITLER ON THE COVER.
TO MAKE CAPTAIN AMERICA HYDRA IS DISGUSTING AND I REFUSE TO BELIEVE IT AND I REFUSE TO ACCEPT IT AS CANON. I SUGGEST YOU, OR ANYONE WHO READS COMICS OR HAS THE SLIGHTEST BIT OF CARE FOR THE CHARACTER OF CAPTAIN AMERICA, DOES THE SAME.
THIS IS HORRIBLE.
WHAT THEY’RE DOING IS NOT ONLY COMPLETELY INSENSITIVE BUT DISGRACEFUL, DISRESPECTFUL, COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY INAPPROPRIATE, AND HONESTLY DOWNRIGHT DISGUSTING.
Its so offensive and so, so inappropriate. Doing this? Is practically shitting on the memory of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. And I am completely, and utterly offended. Stop this. Boycott this. Keep blogging, sharing, tweeting, do whatever is in your power to #SaveCaptainAmerica and #SayNoToHydraCap
Whatever it is you have to do, do it. Joe wouldn’t of wanted this. Jack wouldn’t of wanted this.
We need to plant ourselves like trees on the river of truth, and tell the whole world, “No, you move.”
