And I don't just mean the revolving-door afterlife of comics in general, but with Captain America himself. Specifically, I'm thinking of Jim Steranko's "The Strange Death of Captain America" in 1969's Cap #113, wherein Cap's been taken out by the surprisingly hot forces of HYDRA, who then move to ambush the rest of the Avengers at his funeral.
Of course, he's only dead for about eleven pages, at which time he crashes into the graveyard on a rocket-powered motorcycle--a recurring theme in Steranko's work--and then proceeds to beat the ever-loving hell out of everyone.
It is beautiful.
(Click for Super-Awesome Giant-Sized Version)
A man can be destroyed! A team or an army can be destroyed! But how do you destroy an ideal--a dream? How do you destroy a living symbol--or his indomitable will--his unquenchable spirit? Perhaps these are the thoughts which thunder within the murderous minds of those who have chosen the way of HYDRA--of those who face the fighting fury of freedom's most fearless champion--the gallant, red-white-and-blue-garbed figure who has been a towering source of inspiration to liberty-lovers everywhere!
How can the fearsome forces of evil ever hope to destroy the unconquerable
CAPTAIN AMERICA?
More Great Moments in Comic Book History:
| Volume One: Pirate Batman Throws Down On A Shark |
| Volume Two: Nick Fury Appears Like a Human Cyclone |
In other news, a man was found dead in his home today. Cause of death...
ReplyDeleteHe was totally freaked out.
How can the fearsome forces of evil ever hope to destroy the unconquerable
ReplyDeleteCAPTAIN AMERICA?
Hiring Mark Millar and Paul Jenkins seems to have done the trick. :)
Is that Rick Jones in the Bucky suit? Maybe he should become the new Bucky when the original becomes Captain America.
ReplyDeleteSo Richard Corben ganked Meat Loaf's BAT OUT OF HELL album cover from Steranko!?!
ReplyDelete"Cap's gonna hit the hordes of HYDRA like a battering ram on a rocket powered bike!"
When people tell me "Cap has no super-powers," I totally sneer at them and declare "Cap has the super-power of awesome."
ReplyDeleteAnd getting sneered at by a little stuffed bull is such total pwnage...
ReplyDeleteNot only is Madame Hydra surprisingly hot, she's also believably so, unlike one recently revamped villain who will remain unnamed but is now inexplicably a big-breasted hot babe.
ReplyDelete(Hint: It's Ultron.)
If you look closely,you can lip-read Cap in that pick, and he's saying
ReplyDelete"I got your fucking Myspace right here"
That image should be added to the panels that could have been 80s heavy metal albums
ReplyDeleteThe Jim Steranko theory of comics: "Everything can be made better if it features a man laeping off a motorcycle and into a gunfight."
ReplyDeleteThis needs to be bronzed and hanged somewhere in Marvel's offices to show writers how you do things like this right.
I don't care how good a writer Ed Brubaker is. Unless the eventual resurrection of Captain America culminates in that exact same image, I'm not buying it (figuratively and literally).
ReplyDeleteThat image of Cap busting some Hydra ass in the graveyard while riding a motorcycle freaked me out so hard I couldn't even articulate complete thoughts a full minute after I saw it.
The Steranko Age of Comics - brief, but it totally blew my mind.
ReplyDeleteUnlike the Quesada Age, which just blows.
1) Is it too late to open a mySpace account in Cap's name?
ReplyDelete2) The Baroness vs Madame Hydra - Udecide.
Yes, Chris, we HAVE been down this road before, but in all other times Cap died as a hero.
ReplyDeleteThis time, a disgraced and arrested Cap was gunned down like a dog.
Heroic sacrifice vs. senseless execution.
Marvel really shouldve collected the Steranko Caps into a treasury edition---that wouldve ROCKED, and ROCKED HARD.
ReplyDeleteMarvel really shouldve collected the Steranko Caps into a treasury edition---that wouldve ROCKED, and ROCKED HARD.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the the folks at Marvel responsible for Civil War have seen that image lately, and if they have I wonder if they just chuckle, roll their eyes and think how out of touch it is. Assholes.
ReplyDeleteGive me liberty.
ReplyDeleteWhy won't you give me liberty, Marvel? Why?
I could be wrong but I think before it all went down Cap was heard to mutter, "Not like this!" *Blam Blam Blam*
Baroness vs Madame Hydra? I pick... both?
ReplyDelete1. Is it just me, or is there an extra HYDRA arm in the image, right around where Rick/Bucky's left leg should be?
ReplyDelete2. You just know the HYDRA dude drawing down on Rick from behind Cap's right thigh is going to discover a whole new world of hurt before he gets a chance to pull the trigger. The potential for sheer mayhem and Sterankophonic carnage is just mind-boggling.
So I was reading Marvel Two-in-One #3 for my blog stuff, and there it is, Captain America getting shot... BY HITLER!
ReplyDeleteSteve Gerber telegraphed it all way back in 1974!
Vincent Dacak: I thought the exact same thing.
ReplyDeleteErin Palette: I've got to disagree with you on this one. Cap takes a sniper's bullet while knocking someone out of the way, even while he's handcuffed, and even after an ungrateful crowd has literally thrown rotten tomatoes at him. He's still protecting the people even after the people have turned on him, and that's pretty much the definition of heroic sacrifice.
As unimpressed as I am by the hype, it is a good comic.
Alas, poor Cap. So great they killed him twice. Or was that three times? Gruenwald did it as well -- only that time he also had to suffer the ignominy of having to wear a suit of bionic armour...
ReplyDelete"... No matter whom he really was ..."
ReplyDeleteOh, that Steranko. Great with the rocket-powered motocycles; not so hot with the grammer.
Hard of core, and bad of ass.
ReplyDeleteChris,
ReplyDeleteAs per my bio, I must now resort to shrieking and spitting when confronted with inconvenient facts. Thus:
< shrieking>< spitting>
"Given the character assination rampant throught Civil War, I refuse to accept your logical and substantiated argument! I reject your reality and substitute my own! What they did to Cap was criminal and unforgivable! DEATH TO QUESADA! DEATH TO MILLAR!
< /shrieking>< /spitting>
are they trying to exhume Fury's body and switch it with someone else?
ReplyDeleteDidn't Cap get shot dead in a hallway while he was with Falcon just last year?
ReplyDeleteFlanagan,
ReplyDeleteWhy blame Steranko? Surely Madame Hydra's using an accusative pronoun with a copulative verb because her evil knows no bounds.
Yeah, this is awesome and cool and shows how Cap is not an outdated patriotic symbol, but in fact a total badass, but I think you'll find it lacks the gritty relevance and verisimilitude that comic readers really want. They don't want heroes fighting hordes of bad guys, they want heroes fighting heroes for no apparent reason.
ReplyDeleteThis is true. I heard Joey Q say it.
Hang on, is the Vision supposed to be there, or is he just hanging out in a Where's Wally style?
ReplyDelete'< shrieking>< spitting>
ReplyDelete"Given the character assination rampant throught Civil War, I refuse to accept your logical and substantiated argument! ...
< /shrieking>< /spitting>'
The great thing about shrieking, spitting people is that they come up with new words that demand to enter the critical lexicon. If you look in future literary dictionaries, you will see "character assination" defined as "turning a formerly admirable character into an asshole for the sake of an ill-conceived story; cf. Civil War, Tony Stark, Reed Richards."
Now I really want to see a Marvel Universe stage musical written by Jim Steinman. With Meat Loaf playing Uatu the Watcher.
ReplyDeleteHell, they could just use Bat Out of Hell. It makes so little sense at parts ("there's a man in the shadows with a gun in his eye?") that it wouldn't really matter one way or the other.
At the very least, Marvel, we need a Marvel Comics Sternako Stunt Spectacular motorcyle tour.
Frank Miller did an awesome (if offensive to Jews, perhaps) parody of that image in that Dark Horse HAPPY ENDINGS book from four/five years ago.
ReplyDelete