The Big, um, #695: Captain America

Boy howdy does this issue have some serious work to do. Nick Spencer's run and the terrible fascism-flavoured crossover that it spawned left a terrible taste in a lot of people's mouths. Secret Empire was, according to some industry pundits, the second worst selling event in recent memory. It put a lot of people off the character, some of them off of Marvel entirely, and series that were launched as spin-offs debuted at below the sales level where series usually get cancelled.

The event didn't do what it was meant to do in financial terms, pissed off a lot of the hardcore fanbase that Marvel relies on for sales and word of mouth advertising (the only sort the comicbook industry can afford nowadays).

So now we have Mark Waid and Chris Samnee, both creators whose work I've adored in the past, coming along to try and save Steve Rogers from recent bad creative decisions by taking him on a soul searching road trip across the country whose best self-image he's meant to represent.

So how does it go?

The answer is “okay” with a side order of “oddly business as usual”. The story is absolutely a reaction to Secret Empire and Hydra!Cap but its also not that far afield from the sort of standard issue character primer sort of story you'd usually get at the beginning of a run like this. There's one mention of the events of Secret Empire that sets up the excuse for why people still trust Steve (Hydra!Cap was an impostor pretending to be Steve but we know better, don't we?) and that's your lot.

Except it isn't. The plot of this issue is that Cap is revisiting a town in Nebraska he visited shortly after being pulled from the ice. Back then he fought a small and pretty crap bunch of neo-fascists called Rampart and now he's returned because he's heard they're back and planning to do bad things at the site of their original humiliation and they're more organised and better equipped than they were when he last saw them.

Oh, its getting all political up in those comicbooks, isn't it?

My reaction is this: good. This is exactly the sort of story that should be written with Captain America in an era where fascism is getting horribly fashionable again. He beat them in the Second World War, he beat them when they were crap a decade ago and he'll beat them now. Nice message, I like it. Add to that some heartwarming scenes of people rushing to help others in the aftermath of the attack and we're back to this being a series about the best aspects of people, the aspirational side of the character and the ideals he's meant to represent.

Captain America punches Nazis so nice people can continue to be nice to each other. It might seem a bit basic but a) that's exactly the sort of soft reboot the series needed after banking up so damn much bad publicity in the last couple of years and b) a sentiment that surprisingly needs a lot of explanation in a world where Wolfenstein is considered a risky, politically charged and grossly insensitive computer game for having you kill Nazis.

Nazis. Fuck 'em. Glad to see Captain America's on my side in this again. 

On the imminent conclusion of Hydra!Cap

I have this horrible premonition. I have this awful feeling that we're going to get to Wednesday and the final issue of Secret Empire and Marvel is just going to announce that the series needs to run for another two issues.

Or four.

Or forever.

To be frank, given the exceptional ability Marvel has shown to fuck this thing up at every possible opportunity I would not put anything past them at this point. I would not put it past them to have changed the ending of the final issue so it turns out that the new Captain America (after Miles Morales shanks Steve with a steel rebar) is a clone of Robert E. Lee who fights his enemies by firing Confederate memorials at them out of a bazooka and Sam Wilson is reduced to his sidekick again except he can't fly anymore because of the massive shackles he has to wear at all times “because its important to remember our heritage”. At this point I only find this scenario moderately unlikely, though in part that just can be put down to the nature of comicbook narrative.

I want this done. I want Hydra!Steve gone. I want daemonically possessed hypersexualised Wanda over with so we can actually get some follow up on that excellent James Robinson solo series she had. I would very much like X-Men Blue to get back to its regularly scheduled programming instead of this odd divergence where Tian is suddenly back for some bloody reason and Emma Frost wants to bang teenage Cyclops.

Most all all, I want an end to this business of the Marvel Universe's moral centre being on the side of Nazis and that apparently being the natural state of history and the version where he was a good man who decided to stand up for others was a corruption who only existed because someone else essentially brainwashed him.

Oh, and whilst we're at it: what kind of dick gets their hands on a Cosmic Cube, rewrites the history of the Second World War to favour the Allies and leaves the sodding Holocaust in?

This event needs to end, it needs to die and reside in the lowest circle of Big Event Hell where it will replace the Clone Saga in the mouth of Satan himself. 

Let's talk about this new Spider-Man

(Spoilers for Captain America: Civil War, especially the bits about Spider-Man)

My thoughts on Civil War are complex and we'll get to them once they've percolated a little longer. The short, tentative, early version is that it's a good film. The good bits are amazing but the bad bits are a little too vital to the plot to entirely ignore. Overall I'd say its a better film (certainly a better Avengers film) than Age Of Ultron but not as good as Winter Soldier, there are just a few things I want to work out before I discuss the whole film at any length.

Tom Holland as Spider-Man, though? I know where I stand there. I like him, I'm looking forward to the new movie.

Okay, okay, I know the character is only in this film as an extended trailer to reassure the audience that this reboot will go better than the last one (and let's hope so, if we have to go through this again, Aunt May will end up in her teens) but that doesn't stop it from being very convincing.

So what's to like about this version? Well, for one thing I think Holland's version is the best yet at the half-sardonic, half-hysterical fight banter. For another, he has a couple of moments of utter panic in his first scene which sell how he hasn't been doing this long and doesn't have the coping mechanisms in place for when Peter and Spider-Man's worlds collide, which is a pretty big element of a lot of Spider-Man stories. Seriously, Tony Stark frantically signalling to Peter to be cool by blinking with both eyes would be the cutest thing in this film if not for the Vision trying to cook.

The costume looks better than the trailer led us to believe (and is there an element or two of Ben Reilly's suit there? Just me?) and there are plenty of cool “Spider-Man poses” to keep things visually interesting. The new ebbing also looks great, too. Most of all though, Holland splits the difference between the two previous versions. He's a believable teenager (like Garfield) and he isn't classically “Hollywood attractive” (like Maguire, sorry pardon).

Of course, holding down a couple of extended scenes and holding down an entire movie are two different things. On the evidence, Holland at least has the charisma to stand out in an ensemble piece. Rumour has it, based largely on the title Spider-Man: Homecoming, that Marvel and Sony are going for more of a Buffy-style high school dramedy, which I think Holland would be perfect for.

Time will tell, of course, and for the first time in years I find myself looking forward to a Spider-Man movie.