Captain America a Hydra Agent?

Cafe Society
1

Captain America has been one of my favorite characters since I was a kid. A long time let’s just say. A few years ago my son asked me who my favorite superhero was and I said, “Captain America.” He promptly told me that wasn’t possible because I was a girl, so that became a teaching moment, but the point is that for decades he’s been Cap. Almost (almost!) boringly moral and straightforward. Unchanging, sort of. A living symbol, yada, yada.

And then this shit happens. Apparently, see, Cap has really been in Hydra all along. First, I totally believe this, because comic writers and editors never, ever, ever screw with their fan base. Second, some things, sirs, are Just Not Done. Kill off characters and bring them back in ridiculous ways, fine. Have them get married to different people in different timelines. Have them live between molecules or whatever. Have witches and robots have kids. I could go on. Comics are the very haven of improbability. This Will Not Do.

Lookng for an explanation I find, CNN Artcle:

<my line breaks>

Kinda figured that out champ.

OK. I’m paying attention. I think you’re batshit fucking crazy, but you definitely got my attention.

And we’re done. Not touching Cap, hell, The Avengers, or anything tainted by this mess until it’s gone.

2

So, I’m guessing you haven’t read the comic in question? Because it’s actually pretty good, and there’s been a ton of subtle build up to the reveal in the past few months, which gives some pointers to where they’re going with the story, and who’s responsible for Cap’s sudden revelation. It’s interesting the extent to which this has caused the Internet to lose it’s mind, though. I don’t really get the outrage. Ridiculous plot twists like this are the best thing about the genre, and always have been

3

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the latest Brevoort cheap stunt. Just like that Spider-Man’s body was possessed by Doctor Octopus and would never, ever change back. Or when Captain America lost the super-soldier serum and got old and nothing would make him get back into the tights, or…

Yeah, it’s either some deus ex machina gizmo altering reality, or Cap is going Deep Undercover. Don’t expect a lot of originality.

4

I haven’t really read actual comics in some time, but I’ve always been a fan. I saw the headline about this but never really got the whole poop as to what was going on. So hied I to the internet for some research. Came up snake eyes … but I did trip acrossthis page of photoshops of the last panel.

5

I’ve been stewing quietly. I may work up to it. Of course it’s going to go away. It’s just really, really annoying. It’s the third rail of comics! Or something. yells at clouds

6

I have to assume that the people freaking out about this clearly don’t read comic books, or they’d know that this is just a typical plot twist and that eventually things will revert more-or-less to the status quo. Were they freaking out when Captain America died, or when he was aged up to 90 years old or whatever? Maybe they were, but if so, they’re a little slow on the uptake not to have figured out this is just how comics work. Hell, they’ve destroyed the whole universe on multiple occasions, and things still ended up not really all that different than they were before.

I can’t even really call it a stunt or a trick – it’s a convention of the genre. It’s like objecting to the fact that Spider-Man and the Hulk got super powers instead of dying of radation poisoning. That’s just how comic books work.

7

I know this. This one just gets me. Just seems like an uber cheap stunt.

8

That was awesome. Thank you. :smiley:

9

This. It’s loutish. It’s offensive, even within the usual comics tropes.

Jack Batty’s link to similar tropes was funny.

It’s a fairly typical Marvel blunder, like when Hercules towed Manhattan Island upstream, or Colossus became Proletarian. Or like the bad characterization in A vs. X and CWII.

I give them this much credit: they’re a deadline shop. They’re under a ton of pressure to churn out product. It’s inevitable they’ll moo it up now and then.

10

They’re stories that go on for months and years. You need conflict so they try different things from time to time. Just keep reading. I am sure it isn’t permanent.

11

I’m ignoring it until they figure it out.

12

A lot of folks I’ve read don’t care when or how it’ll be retconned. They’re kind of offended by the very idea of taking the creation of two Jewish guys, put into existence to fight Nazis, and saying he always was a Nazi.

13

Wait, I believe they’ve retconned back the death of Superman, but have these things been retconned back?

[ul]
[li] Aunt May is dead[/li][li] Peter Parker isn’t really Peter Parker[/li][li] Peter Parker revealed his secret identity to the world[/li][li] Colossus decided that Professor X is mind controlling him to think he’s his friend[/li][li] Dr. Doom helped rebuild after 9/11[/li][/ul]

14

[quote=“Johnny_Angel, post:13, topic:757042”]

Wait, I believe they’ve retconned back the death of Superman, but have these things been retconned back?
[li] Aunt May is dead[/li][/quote]

Yes, in the stupidest retcon ever (the lady who died was an actress. Why? Just…'cause. How come nobody noticed? Look! Over there <— : runs away: )

Undone. He’s back to being Peter after being Doc Ock for a while (in a surprisingly good story for such a rotten concept)

Undone by magic–either Reed/Tony/Dr Strange made everyone forget or Mephisto did or some combo. There’s two storylines that are mutually contradictory out there. And nobody wants to revisit it because it means revisiting it. (It’s the story where Dr Strange, Tony Stark, Thor, Dr. Doom, Galactus and dozens of others couldn’t fix a non-fatal bullet wound (she lived for like a week after being shot. Whatever killed her, the actual bullet-shot wasn’t it) so Spidey sold his marriage and unborn baby girl to Mephisto to force a woman begging to die renewed life.

I think that was in Ultimate X-Men, if so, it kinda trickled off with the implication that…probably not…but how could you ever really, really know? Which worked.

It’s simply never, ever mentioned. Even the issue after.

Back to Cap:
It’s clearly going to be undone

  1. The 0 issue shows Sin and Skull chortling about how their plans are in motion.
  2. Just prior to this storyline, a Cosmic Cube hatchling* de-aged Cap and repowered his Super-Soldier serum.

The objection I have is that it’s…gross? Tacky? Tasteless? for Cap to be a Nazi. I don’t mind the story, I mind Cap as the star.

And the story is so stupidly hamfisted. They’ve got Red Skull paraphrasing Trump** and three (?)senators doing the “See/Hear/Speak No Evil” monkey bit. It’s just…lame. And it’ll be pathetically dated in about 10 minutes.

*Cosmic Cubes hatch into mega-powerful reality warpers (see “Shaper of Worlds”). Most worlds, if they survive a single cosmic cube say “Fuck. Let us all never EVER do that again, 'k?”. Earth is on it’s third or fourth.

**I am NOT a Trump fan, but it’s annoying and relevancy never, ever works. See the Neal Adams GL/GA series.

15

[quote=“Johnny_Angel, post:13, topic:757042”]

[ul]
[li] Aunt May is dead[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]

Died in the nineties (very emotional, quoting Peter Pan and stuff), turned out it was a dying actress paid by Octopus to pretend to be her while he kept the real May in stasis for- reasons?

Yes. Nope, not kidding. I know. Take our time to parse that.

Then she became a smart, modern woman during the JMS run, got a new haircut and found out Peter was Spidey. Then the whole Spideyverse was retconned and got back to being the caricature of a 1950’s granny it was before and to forget it all about Peter having an alter ego. Married JJJ’s father and is now living with him away from New York.

[quote=“Johnny_Angel, post:13, topic:757042”]

[ul]
[li] Peter Parker isn’t really Peter Parker[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]

Oh, God. The Clone Saga.

Yes, he’s the one and only Peter Parker and everything turned out to be a ploy by the scientist guy who was friends with Ben. Ben Reilly died. Then got better. Then died again.

[quote=“Johnny_Angel, post:13, topic:757042”]

[ul]
[li] Peter Parker revealed his secret identity to the world[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]

Yep. Then Aunt May caught a bullet directed at him and he went and sold his marriage to Mephisto-

Yes. Again, not kidding. He sold his marriage to the devil. Apparently Editor in Chief Joe Quesada wanted him single again, but without a divorce. I know.

–He sold his marriage and in exchange Aunt May would be okay and everybody would forget about him outing himself. It’s not that it never happened, it’s just that everyone had magically a veil over their eyes when trying to remember Spidey’s identity, even when they clearly remember him doing the outing. Yeah. Comics, man.

[quote=“Johnny_Angel, post:13, topic:757042”]

[ul]
[li] Colossus decided that Professor X is mind controlling him to think he’s his friend[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]

Don’t remember that- was it before or after he just became out of nowhere a super smart scientist and cured Mutant AIDS?

That 2002 special is pretty much considered out of continuity.

16

This is just one fan’s opinion, but…

I don’t like story lines that go, “You know that character you loved? Well you can’t love him any more, because he’s EVIL!”

I love story lines that go, “You know that character you hated? Well, there’s just a chance he’ll come over to the good side.” X-Men had a beautiful story arc where Juggernaut saw the light and tried being a good guy. It was actually well-enough written it made me a bit teary-eyed.

I can accept story lines that go, “You know that character you hated? Well, he might become a good guy…Oh! too bad, he didn’t quite make it.” And, indeed, in the Juggernaut story, he failed, and fell, and turned back to crime again. Sigh.

I can even cope with story lines that go, “You know those heroes you love? Well, they’re in a moral conflict with each other, and you need to choose sides.” A vs X and CW could have been written well. (They weren’t, but the naked concept wasn’t bad.)

But don’t piss all over my heroes! Don’t take the good ones and make them bad!

17

Which is slightly undercut by the fact that those self-same Jewish guys turned Cap into a Nazi, like, four different times. Also, there’s the fact that Cap’s a picture book character created for children. If someone wrote a story where, I dunno, Elie Wiesel, or David ben-Gurion were a secret Nazi, I could see grounds for offense. But this is a guy who regularly fights this weirdo. His entire universe just isn’t sufficiently tethered to reality to support the sort of “offense” those people are desperately looking for.

Oh, yeah, also: Hydra aren’t Nazis. They’ve been retconned over and over, but in current continuity, I believe they’re a prehistoric secret society started by space lizards.

18

More in the same vein.

19

So are the Nazis. Oh, you mean in the comic…

20

I’m not really a follower of the comics anymore, but I just don’t see how this makes any sort of story-telling sense. I mean, there’s got to be dozens of times where nothing but Cap stood in the way of Hydra fulfilling all its goals (whatever they may have happened to be at any given time). So all he needed to do was just nothing—take a step back, feign a sprained ankle, or something—in order to further his masters’ agenda. But instead, he defeated them time and again.

Double agents are typically meant to further the goals of one agency by sabotaging another. Yet, if Hydra had never installed Cap, they’d long since rule the world.