RIP Cap

Captain America is dead.

I'm almost exclusively a D.C. reader, though I do follow Marvel's general story arcs and remain a fan of Spidey, Hulk, X-Men (the biggies). My favorite character in the Marvel stable, though, is Cap. He's the real patriarch of the Marvel Universe, occupying the same space in their history as D.C.'s Superman (actually, he's both their Superman and their Wonder Woman, but I won't get into that here).

My affinity for Cap was re-energized when Marvel launched its Civil War storyline last year, with its thinly veiled reflections of both McCarthyism and the post-9/11 erosion of civil liberties. When I first heard the Marvel heroes were going to become polarized by the enactment of a “Superhero Registration Act,” I figured Captain America would be first in line to take the loyalty oath. After all, he's the uber-patriot, the ever-faithful Nazi-bashing champion of American Values. He actually wears the American flag as his costume, for crying out loud.

Nope. Instead, Cap became Marvel's leading champion of privacy rights and civil liberties, and the outlaw leader of the anti-Registration faction of heroes, squaring off against that fascist bastard Iron Man. Because he's really an FDR-era patriot, not a W-era jingoist.

And now they've killed him. He finally surrendered, after fighting the good fight for as long as he could hold out, and was assassinated before he could even reach a courtroom. Maybe I'm reading this through blue-tinted glasses, but that's a pretty blunt dig at the current administration and its continued policies of political assassination and dissent=treason.

No doubt Cap will be back, sooner or later. No one ever stays dead in comics. But I hope Captain America will at least remain dead and buried as long as G.W. Decider remains in office. Maybe next year we can give our nation's namesake hero a country worth coming back to.