And the whole purpose of having a cheap stunt like this is that comic book sales have been morbidly plunging for decades, and it takes a Sensationalist! press release to get people to start buying again. That worked for The Death Of Superman stories, and for the Captain America Is Dead stories, and now, with the Captain America movie making over One Billion Dollars, they’re taking advantage of the situation.
As said above, it’s a well-crafted story, and it’s not permanent. After all, it the first three pages they say “the Red Skull has the Cosmic Cube”, so that’s a dead giveaway. The Cosmic Cube has been used to change the past before.
The old kindly preacher is the Red Skull, who had the telepathic portion of (now deceased) Prof. Xavier’s brain implanted into his own head, and has put the Whammy on Cap which would destroy him far more decisively and satisfyingly than merely killing him.
so i sez.
BTW,
The accidents of science…Peter Parker, Bruce Banner, The Fantastic Four…what if they weren’t accidents?:dubious:
It’s a big enough and implausible enough retcon that it will take gymnastics worthy of a super-soldier to make it even remotely believable, and I just don’t have faith that anyone working at Marvel is good enough to pull this off believably. I mean, we all saw how the Sentry turned out, didn’t we?
Prediction : Red Skull used a Cosmic Cube to alter the timeline. Creating a version of the Marvel Universe where Cap was a Hydra sleeper all along. That will get un-created by the end of the storyline, and be a yawn of a story overall.
IF it’s a retcon and not yet another fakeout, my bet is that he belongs to a third very hidden faction of Hydra that opposes the other two factions lead by the Red Skull and Zemo.
It actually makes sense in a way if the Super Soldier program was either completely infiltrated or Hydra all along.
Wimpy kid wants to join the army and fight the Nazis but is too weak. Suddenly, “Hey kid, wanna be a superhero?” Wimpy kid goes along because for all he knows(and possibly for all the government knows) it’s Uncle Sam doing the asking.
Somewhere during the process he’s told about Hydra and that he’s part of an organization/ agency committed to the Greater Good(the greater good) and for the most part his missions for Hydra match up with his Heroic ideals and issues.
The Red Skull issue is actually a cynical attempt to control both sides of the conflict, so whoever wins, Hydra wins too. When it looks like the Axis will lose,Steve is told that the Red Skull is a Rogue Element that has corrupted his branch of Hydra and must be dealt with or some other convincing half truth, so the emnity and conflict between the two is genuine. Plus he’s working for the Nazis, which is enough for Steve to want to kick his ass.
Steve has always worked for Hydra, but since they were the ones who made him what he was and he always thought they were the good guys(the “bad stuff” being the work of “rogue elements” or necessary disinformation of course) he thinks he owes them.
Status quo will reassert when he realizes just how thoroughly he has been had and after the requisite Heroic BSOD/depression/recovery he will be back to seet things right and be the hero he was puroprted to be.
The comic’s already out, and that’s not how it plays. Details for anyone who’s interested in the spoiler box:
Almost the whole comic is narrated by Cap. It starts with him on a train, trying to stop a Hydra suicide bomber. Cap apparently knows a lot about the bomber, whom he views as a confused kid with a rough childhood, and a series of bad breaks throughout his whole life. He tries to talk the kid down, but fails, and the kid blows himself up.
Cap flashes back to his own childhood, in the early '30s, and there’s a plain parallel between Cap’s childhood and the bomber’s. We see his dad start beating on his mom, until a well-dressed woman shows up out of nowhere and beats up Steve’s dad. Notably, the flashback in all in black and white, except the woman, who has a lot of red highlights on her.
The comicbook bounces back and forth between present day and Steve’s childhood. In the present day, he’s trying to track down Baron Zemo, who has kidnapped Cosmic Cube expert Eric Selvig. In the flashbacks, you see the mysterious woman, who goes by Cynthia, helping the Rogers out by recommending Steve’s mom for better jobs, and making sure Steve gets enough to eat. There’s subtle hints, here, that Cynthia is actually interested in young Steve - oblique comments about how he’ll be a “great man” someday. The last flashback scene in the first comic is Cynthia asking Mrs. Rogers to join a “special meeting” while she hands her a flyer printed with the Hydra logo.
The climax comes when Cap and two other patriotic themed heroes catch Zemo trying to recruit some z-list supervillains into his nascent Hydra cell. (It’s a great scene - I can never get enough of supervillains arguing over dental benefits.) Zemo takes off with Selvig on a jet, and Cap jumps aboard to stop him, telling the other two heroes to stay behind. One doesn’t listen, and helps him defeat Zemo - only to be immediately thrown off the plane (to his apparent death) by Cap, who then utters the infamous “Hail Hydra” line.
This is why I have basically given up on reading mainstream Marvel and DC comics. This kind of nonsensical idiocy comes along every year or so, and it is just stupid and obnoxious. It makes absolutely no sense, and it is only a matter of time before he is discovered to be a clone or an alternate universe Cap or some other stupidity, and they will be right back to the old status quo. It is so tiresome and it makes everything they do just meaningless.
It’s idiotic bullshit, but it’s the same idiotic bullshit the writer subscribes to.
The stupidest thing about this is that Captain America is the perfect character to use to express your reservations about the current state of US society and politics, but you do it by using Captain America as a yardstick by which you measure the rest of us, not by turning Captain America into a literal Nazi. If you wanted to write a Captain America comic about how torture is bad, you do it by having Captain America on one side and torture on the other, you don’t turn Captain America into a torturer.
That observation doesn’t mean much. Yes, Marvel has found new cultural relevance by making generally good movies about their characters, but that doesn’t make the comics’ continued failure to not shit the bed any better.
Well, the second issue of his new comic isn’t even out yet, and the truth is revealed: It turns out that his memories of being a Hydra agent were implanted by the Red Skull.
