Friday Night on the ISB
As you may have heard from Kevin, the final issue of Civil War: Frontline, a book that manages to be so unflinchingly awful that it laps back around to "hilarious," involves a scene where journalist Sally Floyd takes Captain America to task for an apparent cultural irrelevance.
As someone whose very first Marvel Comic was an issue of Cap, my immediate fannish response is to leap to Cap's defense, but, well, she's right. Captain America, the Living Legend of World War II, probably doesn't spend his free time hitting on underage girls via MySpace or checking out videos of people lip-synching to Coldplay on YouTube.
Why?
Maybe because he's been busy FIGHTING A BEAR.
And damn it, he did it for America.
(Images from Mark Gruenwald and Tom Morgan's Captain America #336)
posted by Chris Sims at 3/02/2007 11:22:00 PM
33 Comments:
Sally Floyd should have to answer to Captain America and Steven Colbert about her nonchalance when in the presense of America's #1 defense against bears!
3/03/2007 2:32 AM
I'm not even American and I can just about count the shades of wrong that prude old witch is!
Mind you, I'm Irish-Australian, so that might just be the concentration of alcohol in my blood talking...
3/03/2007 3:38 AM
How Cap should have responded:
"Well gosh, Sally, if it weren't for people like me fighting for American 'ideals', you'd be watching YouTube and reading about Paris Hilton IN FUCKING GERMAN!!!"
3/03/2007 4:52 AM
That Sally chick is such a communist. The only thing commies should ever know of America is the taste of cold steel was Cap's sheild bouncing off of their lips, in my humble opinion. Anyone that will fight a bear or worse for America , maybe even a shark, deserves eternal respect and some kind of immunity from annoying, bitchy reporters.
3/03/2007 8:00 AM
Poont?
3/03/2007 8:43 AM
The funny thing about Sally's tirade is that it seemed like she was giving Cap shit for not keeping up with technology. This is a man who's in outer space so much, he get frequent flier miles from the Kree and the Skrull.
He should've been like, "MySpace? is that steam-powered?"
3/03/2007 10:50 AM
By Sally's logic, we should only elect people with a MySpace page and a love of shitty tabloids.
How is standing up for an ideal a bad thing? Are we fighting to keep people mediocre now? Should we send troops to arrest Grant Morrison and Brian K. Vaughn? I don't know where Jenkins was going with that, but that was the worst Cap characterization I have ever seen. And I read Civil War #7.
Cap should have escaped right then and been like, "Damn, I've got to get back to work if that's what people think America is about."
3/03/2007 11:06 AM
To hell with Sally Floyd. You know what I want from a post-Civil War Marvel?
The return of that beard Cap's rockin' while he's kicking that bear's ass.
3/03/2007 11:40 AM
I haven't read any of this crap because it would take time away from the Power Man/Iron Fist cartoon I have playing in my head (It's awesome, BTW! It's set in 1975 and they fight Cobra and Mr. Hyde).
But are they serious? Seriously serious? Cause it seems like they couldn't be. Is Marvel actually staking out the position that people with busy, productive jobs that don't leave them free time to watch reality TV aren't American? I mean that's so completely asinine that either they're kidding and trying to take yet another backhanded shot at the obsessive comic book geeks who pay their salaries, or else Marvel has been infiltrated by America's enemies and this is some devilishly clever propaganda plot to make readers waste their lives.
I do award 0.01 points for the author making the reporter ask Cap "Who won the last World Series?" as a loyalty test.
P.S. as always, Cap's bearpunching skills are second-to-none.
3/03/2007 11:56 AM
If he were a REAL superhero, he could do both. I bet Superman could.
Mutt,
Yeah, "poont" is the sound of a fist hitting an angry bear in the muzzle. I heard Mark Gruenwald got in trouble while researching that script by going to the zoo and having a friend hold him by the ankles over the bear pit so he cold punch them in the face just to hear what it should sound like. Today's comic book writer's just don'e have that same kind of dedication to their craft, and the medium is worse off because of it.
3/03/2007 12:04 PM
Another thing is that it's not like the America of the 1940's was the "ideal" that Cap fights for either. It was full of institutionalized racism and sexism at levels that seem almost comical today.
What I mean to say is that Cap's ideal America NEVER existed and probably never will, thus it being an ideal. There's nothing foolish or outdated about wanting to aspire to it.
All Sally prooved with her comment is how big of a moron she is.
3/03/2007 12:07 PM
In the "real world," Sally Floyd's unprofessional conduct would get her drummed out of any self-respecting newspaper.
She'd probably get a job with Fox News Network, though ...
3/03/2007 12:39 PM
"I do award 0.01 points for the author making the reporter ask Cap "Who won the last World Series?" as a loyalty test."
Given the lateness of this project, which Series do you think she was originally talking about?
3/03/2007 12:48 PM
Well, fortunately, she and Ben are the sole operators of an Internet start-up, so she's got some job security for now. Because Lord knows, when the Hulk lands on the East Coast and starts smashing stuff, the fine people of 616 America will want to get their news from a dinky little...you know, it's not even clear whether they're a Salon knockoff or a Huffington Post knockoff.
Say what you will about the writing in this issue, at least we were spared from having to read another of those "this thing what is happening in this comic book is powerfully evocative of a real-life human tragedy" BS that was filling up the other issues. The only one of those that was any good was when Jenkins wrote the thing about his dad.
3/03/2007 12:52 PM
And yet, even Cap is sick of "Dick in a Box."
Christ, if he saw half the shit on youtube, he would have stopped fighting for our freedom earlier.
3/03/2007 1:48 PM
If punching bears isn't culturally relevant, I don't know what is.
3/03/2007 2:14 PM
Did anyone else notice that Cap has apparently been teaching Doc Strange how to Karate Kick?
See: Chris' previous post for visual reference.
3/03/2007 3:41 PM
Maybe we should get Sally's ideal 14 year old Emo Cap who's power is to have his girly wastrel finger on the pulse of today's youth and pit him against a bear.
You know who I mean, he looks like any of the dudes that fight Anita Blake.
3/03/2007 5:33 PM
The cap teach to Doc Strange hot to fight?, because those movement are very similar
3/03/2007 8:00 PM
Haven't you guys ever read your Official Handbook? Cap has taught EVERYONE in the MU hand to hand combat.
3/03/2007 8:55 PM
Just for that tirade against Cap, here's hoping at least Sally gets indicted along with Stark when his insider trading comes to light.
3/03/2007 9:02 PM
Two cents 'sez that Tony Stark would also have been stumped by Sally's little tirade.
Hell. There's probably not one historical figure or political leader who could ever relate to such a trivial question to begin with. Next week in "Civil War FrontLine," Sally disputes Ghandi's seriousness as a peacemaker for India because he doesn't know who the hell Paris Hilton is. Please.
If that was a fair and serious exchange, Cap should have responded with this: "Fair enough, but how many of this "You Tube" generation can name at least five amendments from the Bill of Rights? Do they even know what the the three branches of our government are? How many of them even vote? Why should they be held up to be a better representation of what America is if they do not know how it works or even participate in its governance?
I don't have the time to go on MySpace because I'm out there saving this planet from domestic threats and alien invasions every week. I sacrifice my time so that you and every other person can spend their time freely. I don't have to know exactly how you enjoy your freedoms, only that you still are alive to enjoy them."
The ownage from that would have been as awesome as punching Galactus in the face, with a bear, but Marvel decided that Captain America, unwavering beacon of liberty, should be humbled by a vapid mouthpiece of cultural mediocrity.
3/04/2007 1:56 AM
Civil War: I'm with pbares
3/04/2007 5:15 AM
Civil War Frontline 11 was the single most screwed up comic that Marvel has produced in many, many years. It is wrong on sooo many levels. This new Marvel universe that has emerged post Civil War just isn't for me. I wish them luck.
3/04/2007 8:58 AM
I wonder, if the Nazis had somehow won WW2, would that timeline's dimwitted blonde hotel-chain heiress/professional tart be named Berlin Hilton?
3/04/2007 2:13 PM
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u51/The_Mutt_pics/CAPAM2.jpg
3/04/2007 2:56 PM
I'm with pbares too.
ALL HAIL PBARES
3/04/2007 3:14 PM
To paraphrase Dan Ackroyd,
"Sally, you ignorant slut!"
Cap does too have a MySpace page and here it is.
CaptainAmerica
Fact-checking 01, Sally 00.
3/04/2007 9:01 PM
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=164096979
3/05/2007 5:17 AM
I too agree with Pbares. Her "Cap" speech hit dead on what has always been wrong with people in general (not just America.) People are more concerned with the fact that their politician has something in common with them, like myspace or music or partying, rather than an ability to see a bad situation and to take action against it. Having Cap give up being Cap(again!)rings false. How the hell did he make it through WWII? "Well, I hear whispers in my own government that we are not focusing on ending the holocaust so I'm out like shout..."
3/05/2007 8:50 AM
That was the comic with Brother Nature in it, right? That was about the time I started collecting Cap, too, right after he got the boot because he refused to be the government's unquestioning agent. That was some good shit there, y'all. The Red Skull was behind it all somehow, which is the only part I didn't like (there wasn't any need for a supervillain to be the bad guy in this sort of story, but whatever), but I thought from the get-go Marvel should've done this with Civil War.
Cap isn't going to blindly follow a law he doesn't like but Cap isn't going to fight his country. Cap will keep fighting the good fight even if he can't be Cap anymore, he won't get into a slap-fight with Tony Stark and be a total dick the entire time.
I liked Frontline much more than anything involved with CW when it started, but that last issue...gah. I used to be a journalist and I've always liked Ben Urich, but the idea that he'd be complicit in a cover-up that was part of that much pain and death and hurt just ruins him.
And the "who would have a beer with Captain America" nonsense should've resulted in a thrown car battery at whoever at Marvel okayed that.
3/05/2007 1:56 PM
Punching Galactus in the face, with a bear = OWNAGE.
pbares does rule.
S**t like this makes me put on my elder collector hat and tell you that comics *REALLY* were better back in the 80's. I'd take a run of US 1, Dazzler, Rom, the Star line, and the entire New Universe over Civil War crap.
3/05/2007 1:59 PM
If I thought they had any wit to them, I'd attribute the "Who won the World Series" question as a reference to a trope of World War II films, where the soldiers asked strangers claiming to be Americans to name the starting line-up of the Yankees to prove they weren't German spies.
Of course, that makes no sense in the current cultural context (not that it ever made more than a kind of pulpish sense in the first place), but it might indicate that Marvel spent a nanosecond thinking about the culture he grew up in and its connection to today, rather than just talking about how "out of touch" he is.
3/06/2007 9:22 AM
Post a Comment
<< Home