Hail Hydra

[Something Amyss]

To me, Marvel pulling a 'Captain America was a Hydra agent all along' stunt really got to me, and not in a good way.
I mean ... and I quote from Wiki (yeah not the best reliable source but it's usually accurate).

Simon said Captain America was a consciously political creation; he and Kirby were morally repulsed by the actions of Nazi Germany in the years leading up to the United States' involvement in World War II and felt war was inevitable: "The opponents to the war were all quite well organized. We wanted to have our say too."

Then you read more of the article, which points out how in the 1950s, Captain America became a psychopath that went after communists because that was where the money was, and things don't seem quite so sacred anymore. The fact that this was later retconned to change it to someone else in no way undoes the bit where these characters are not so immutable as people make them out to be and it is absolutely ridiculous to call anything after "Captain America...Commie Smasher" a slap in the face.

Captain America was created as WW2 propaganda for disposable funny books. And then he became...whatever the hell else his writers wanted him to be at the time. At that point, the creator's intent borders on irrelevant.

The problem seems to come up only when one's personal idea of a character is infringed upon. Now, this may be something in common consciousness (Superman doesn't kill, Batman doesn't use guns), but the problem is it is betrayed by the fundamentally mutable nature of comic books. And the thing about Captain America is that even as an icon of the cultural zeitgeist, he is someone where opinions divide. Some people think he should be a Christ figure, and some people think he should be out there punching Muslims and hippies. That's how we got "Commie Smasher" Cap in the first place.

...come to think of it, both are technically Christ figures depending on who you ask. Some people want Jesus to be Hippie Dave, all Chillax and such, and some want him to be out there slaughtering the infidels...whoops, wrong word. Point remains, this is what happens when you're talking about a vague idea. There's that whole Team America "America Fuck Yeah" thing, but the reality is that's parodying actual people. Actual ideologies. Captain America can very well stand for imperialism and militarism and a ton of other things that really are part of someone's "American Dream." And to some extent, he has. And Marvel pissed people off when Cap went the other way, too, and renounced his title.

Same thing happened with Superman. The problem with these characters is that their implementation will always step on toes and always "get to" people.

But I say all this knowing it's pointless, because as I do I'm watching people complain that Peter Capaldi is the worst Doctor because he used a gun and the Doctor never uses a weapon. Unless you're Matt Smith, David Tennant, Christopher Eccleston, John Hurt, Colin Baker, Peter Davison, Tom Baker or Jon Pertwee. But dammit, their idea of the character is more important than anything else. Even facts.

I don't understand it, but I do know it's a thing.

 

[Therumancer]

The point a lot of people seem to miss in this is that Marvel just nuked it's entire universe and re-launched it as "All New, All different". This Captain America isn't the one we have the previous history with, he's a complete reboot with this as a #1 in his own series. Don't forget that the entire universe basically imploded, got turned into Doom's "Battleverse" and then was split apart again with different aspects of various universes prevailing.

It should also be noted that they did this weird thing with Captain American where the more nationalistic comics published about him post WW-II were retconned as having been a guy called "William Burnside" (it's been a while, I think I have the name correct) secretly holding the mantle, the more PC "Steve Rogers" was only really Steve Rogers when he was recovered later on... it's really weird.

Right now Marvel is trying to be controversial, and it's working, whether it turns out this whole thing is some giant misunderstanding and Cap is a double, triple, or quadruple agent, a clone, that universe's "Burnside" or something similar remains to be seen. It's also quite possible they want to experiment with this as a way of having a purely modern Cap when someone takes the mantle from him post-defeat to live up to the ideal that was represented, knowing the way it was tainted, or whatever else.

Most arguments about how Captain America could not possibly be a Hydra Agent sort of fall flat when you consider Marvel just flattened their universe and there is no evidence of any particular storyline or set of events ever having happened in the new one.

I'll also say that it's an experimental phase and I half expect Marvel will be rebooting again in another couple of years. I'm looking at how DC has gotten away with re-doing all their lines every few years. "New 52" coming to an end later this month for yet another complete DC reboot.

Now that this has been said, I'll be honest in saying I think the whole idea is a stupid attempt at grabbing some publicity. People running out to buy the comic book are just going to encourage more of this kind of "shock gimmick" than putting time into writing good stories.

 

[Therumancer]

The only problem with this is that, as usual, it's a comic book ass-pull that makes no sense. Such is life in a comic book. Next, he will have either been revealed to havbe been brainwashed, fooling the bad guys on purpose, or an evil twin. Calling it now.

Well the thing is that they just rebooted the universe, and did the reveal in such a way that it sets the new Cap's history as having been a Hydra agent all along. The previous continuity that makes this impossible (as opposed to simply improbable) no longer exists after the whole universe destruction, "Doom is God" Battleworld, etc...

Prior to the universe reboot they were tinkering with the idea of having the whole mantle passed permanently onto someone who was black, gay, etc... and to be honest Steve was re-written into being frail as the Super Soldier serum started to fail in him and the mantle was being passed around between characters like Winter Soldier and Falcon while the real Captain America was largely on the sidelines.

Cap also has a rather complicated history when you consider how real world politics influenced the character, for example the whole period between WW-II and the later "rescue" of the character from a block of ice where Cap was hunting Commies and such (which no longer became as vilified to the American left which was doing most of the writing) was explained by there being another crazy guy who only thought he was Captain America having assumed the mantle, being retired, and then the "Real" cap being recovered later on, allowing for one of the more complicated reboots without actually rebooting in comic book history.

If you ask me what I suspect is going to happen is that they are setting all of this up to have a "permanent" transfer of the mantle to another character, someone who is going to live up to the ideal of the character, an ideal even the original failed to meet since it was all just a scam.

Of course I expect a lot of this "All New, All Different" stuff is going to be around a few years and then we're going to see another huge rebooting event that will largely restore the status quo. I'm looking at how "New 52" rebooted a lot of the DC universe in order to get experimental, and let's just say it wasn't as popular as a lot of people thought it was going to be, so they are rebooting the entire DC universe AGAIN this month and the whole point as far as I've been able to tell is to keep some of the ideas of New 52 while largely bringing back the older continuity, I could be wrong about that, but that's how it's been seeming to me.

"All New, All Different" Marvel should probably be looked at as a sort of comic book petri dish as Disney/Marvel weighs the classic depiction of characters against the shouts of people demanding a different status quo. For example can Miles Morales hold down a book alongside Peter Parker and/or outsell him? I wouldn't be surprised if the new guy holding Cap's Shield once he's outed (I could be wrong about it) is going to be the entire point, to see if people will actually accept that as anything other than a temporary arrangement (spoiler: I won't, Steve Rogers IS Captain America).

Complicated, but that's my thoughts on the subject.

Personally, it seems right now comic book writing has gotten increasingly about "shock writing" and upsetting a status quo people like in an ongoing continuity. There has always been this happening in comics to a degree (your not wrong about that) but like it or not what were once occasional gimmicks seem to be happening with some frequency now where there is always some beloved character or franchise under threat of massive changes. You keep giving them money for this kind of thing, it's just going to continue. Today it's "Captain America is being turned into a bad guy" (I can't really say he's being retconned since they blew up and retconned the whole universe), the days following will be reveals about beloved characters to fill a decade of "Jerry Springer" type episodes. "Reed Richards and Susan Storm are secretly the same person, and their entire relationship was this odd 'fight club' derangement inside of his head!", "Galactus pooped out the remnants of the "Impossible Man's" planet into a timewarp and the result was the Inhumans!"

 

[Nazrel]

Well the thing is that they just rebooted the universe, and did the reveal in such a way that it sets the new Cap's history as having been a Hydra agent all along. The previous continuity that makes this impossible (as opposed to simply improbable) no longer exists after the whole universe destruction, "Doom is God" Battleworld, etc...

No. It's still 616, it's still the same history.

It's not a reboot.

The only thing secret wars did was get rid of the ultimate universe, drop in a bunch of extra dimensional exiles and fragments, fold in Miles Morales, and leave those obnoxious deus ex machina cosmic cube shards lying all over (The latter likely being responsible for this.)

That and the Richards family are now multi dimensional creationist gods.

 

[Winnosh]

Well the thing is that they just rebooted the universe, and did the reveal in such a way that it sets the new Cap's history as having been a Hydra agent all along. The previous continuity that makes this impossible (as opposed to simply improbable) no longer exists after the whole universe destruction, "Doom is God" Battleworld, etc...

No. It's still 616, it's still the same history.

It's not a reboot.

The only thing secret wars did was get rid of the ultimate universe, drop in a bunch of extra dimensional exiles and fragments, fold in Miles Morales, and leave those obnoxious deus ex machina cosmic cube shards lying all over (The latter likely being responsible for this.)

That and the Richards family are now multi dimensional creationist gods.

Steve did sort of just get rebooted via cosmic cube shennanigans. And it's awefully suspicious that all of the memories we see in he issue are tinted red. It just smacks of Red Skull infiltrating his mind or affecting the reality.

I also say the anniversary is the perfect time for a story like this, put him through his worst moments only for his triumphant return before the year and anniversary are over.

 

[Nazrel]

Well the thing is that they just rebooted the universe, and did the reveal in such a way that it sets the new Cap's history as having been a Hydra agent all along. The previous continuity that makes this impossible (as opposed to simply improbable) no longer exists after the whole universe destruction, "Doom is God" Battleworld, etc...

No. It's still 616, it's still the same history.

It's not a reboot.

The only thing secret wars did was get rid of the ultimate universe, drop in a bunch of extra dimensional exiles and fragments, fold in Miles Morales, and leave those obnoxious deus ex machina cosmic cube shards lying all over (The latter likely being responsible for this.)

That and the Richards family are now multi dimensional creationist gods.

Steve did sort of just get rebooted via cosmic cube shennanigans. And it's awefully suspicious that all of the memories we see in he issue are tinted red. It just smacks of Red Skull infiltrating his mind or affecting the reality.

I also say the anniversary is the perfect time for a story like this, put him through his worst moments only for his triumphant return before the year and anniversary are over.

Again it's less the plot point, (which is more then likely a waste of time.) and more the "Captain America is riding high in mainstream consciousness so lets announce he's always been a Nazi to Time" thing.

As marketing missteps go, this is stepping directly into a bottomless chasm. Sure you'll get the speculators driving up the sales, but you've just alienated how many current and potential fans?

 

[Winnosh]

Well the thing is that they just rebooted the universe, and did the reveal in such a way that it sets the new Cap's history as having been a Hydra agent all along. The previous continuity that makes this impossible (as opposed to simply improbable) no longer exists after the whole universe destruction, "Doom is God" Battleworld, etc...

No. It's still 616, it's still the same history.

It's not a reboot.

The only thing secret wars did was get rid of the ultimate universe, drop in a bunch of extra dimensional exiles and fragments, fold in Miles Morales, and leave those obnoxious deus ex machina cosmic cube shards lying all over (The latter likely being responsible for this.)

That and the Richards family are now multi dimensional creationist gods.

Steve did sort of just get rebooted via cosmic cube shennanigans. And it's awefully suspicious that all of the memories we see in he issue are tinted red. It just smacks of Red Skull infiltrating his mind or affecting the reality.

I also say the anniversary is the perfect time for a story like this, put him through his worst moments only for his triumphant return before the year and anniversary are over.

Again it's less the plot point, (which is more then likely a waste of time.) and more the "Captain America is riding high in mainstream consciousness so lets announce he's always been a Nazi to Time" thing.

As marketing missteps go, this is stepping directly into a bottomless chasm. Sure you'll get the speculators driving up the sales, but you've just alienated how many current and potential fans?

The only thing that should ever really matter is if it's a good story. He's a good writer so I'm willing to wait and see what he has up his sleeve.

 

[Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)]

Funny thing is, with how Red Skull has been portrayed recently, there is a legitimate argument to be made that Hydra is now the good guys fighting the good fight against a tyrannical government, and that Steve's turn is completely legitimate and in character. Of course Marvel Comics doesn't have the balls to be that subversive in their propaganda stories, so that won't be the case, but it will be in fan fiction with far higher quality writing.

okay off-topic

Why is anyone taking Hydra's opinion seriously on these matters? no matter how right you may think they are on these issues they still killed millions of people and how they've almost taken over the world several times. The pretty much the equivalent of people listening to Hitler's political beliefs and allowing him to run for office again.

Norman Osborn was one thing but Red skull is pretty much Hitler lights.

 

[Zontar]

Norman Osborn was one thing but Red skull is pretty much Hitler lights.

But this is a comic book universe we're talking about, you really think people remember what happened more then 5 minutes ago that doesn't directly relate to the current plot? Hell, most people probably forgot that Nixon was replaced by an alien and when said alien was exposed it blasted its brains out on national television. Or that time that New York was literally sent to hell. Or the fact that alien invasion are so common it's not even an annual thing, it's a monthly one.

But at the end of the day the real world reason anyone is taking Hydra seriously is because the writing staff at Marvel Comics are hacks who are more interested in pushing their political views then they are in making good stories (though I'm not sure if it's due to wanting to do so or because it's all they are capable of doing). Trump is not only popular but the most popular presidential candidate at the moment with as realistic a chance of becoming the next president as Clinton, and Marvel Comics' writing staff doesn't like that one bit. So who better to be the in-universe representation of this then literal red Hitler?

Of course, by trying to vilify Trump by proxy this way they've ended up making the Red Skull look like a reformed man due to his speeches being fairly reasonable if you remove the call for suicide bombing (yeah, the writers equate supporting Trump with suicide bombers. And they wonder why a once top 20 comic is now at risk of falling out of the top 100)

 

[Stewie Plisken]

I'm not invested in Cap and my reaction to the twist was "been there done that". I guess it becomes somewhat worse for fans, because there is an entire set-up in that book that dates back to Steve's childhood. Kinda hard to pull the 'pretender' trick again, though not impossible.

Also, it would probably have been received better, if the hack that was writing the book didn't have the nuance in politics of -ironically- a Trump supporter humping his "Make America Great Again" hat during the live broadcast of the Pope's funeral. Too much dialogue, Red Skull is absolutely Donald Trump and there is a Mary Sue reference in that issue. Because that's what the kids these days do, right? They play gender politics on the interwebz and know what The Mary Sue is. When the entire book is framed as a political statement, it's harder to take such a ridiculous twist in the 'comic book fun' kind of way.

Also, methinks someone plays Bastion.

 

[Grahav]

Norman Osborn was one thing but Red skull is pretty much Hitler lights.

But this is a comic book universe we're talking about, you really think people remember what happened more then 5 minutes ago that doesn't directly relate to the current plot? Hell, most people probably forgot that Nixon was replaced by an alien and when said alien was exposed it blasted its brains out on national television. Or that time that New York was literally sent to hell. Or the fact that alien invasion are so common it's not even an annual thing, it's a monthly one.

But at the end of the day the real world reason anyone is taking Hydra seriously is because the writing staff at Marvel Comics are hacks who are more interested in pushing their political views then they are in making good stories (though I'm not sure if it's due to wanting to do so or because it's all they are capable of doing). Trump is not only popular but the most popular presidential candidate at the moment with as realistic a chance of becoming the next president as Clinton, and Marvel Comics' writing staff doesn't like that one bit. So who better to be the in-universe representation of this then literal red Hitler?

Of course, by trying to vilify Trump by proxy this way they've ended up making the Red Skull look like a reformed man due to his speeches being fairly reasonable if you remove the call for suicide bombing (yeah, the writers equate supporting Trump with suicide bombers. And they wonder why a once top 20 comic is now at risk of falling out of the top 100)

I visited only to comment on this, you are pretty much spot-on.

 

[Overhead]

To me, Marvel pulling a 'Captain America was a Hydra agent all along' stunt really got to me, and not in a good way.
I mean ... and I quote from Wiki (yeah not the best reliable source but it's usually accurate).

I also say the anniversary is the perfect time for a story like this, put him through his worst moments only for his triumphant return before the year and anniversary are over.

I am hoping that the "Cap was always HYDRA" bit is a big fat lie, and Marvel's editors are just screwing with us.

Captain America isn't a Hydra agent and this is not some new awful radical type of story that modern writers are trying to do to shock you. Just like the other half-dozen times he's somehow been mind controlled to be a nazi that you don't know about and never cared about, he isn't really a nazi and will be reverted back to normal by the end of the story arc at which point he will punch Red Skull in the face.

The only problem with this is that, as usual, it's a comic book ass-pull that makes no sense. Such is life in a comic book. Next, he will have either been revealed to havbe been brainwashed, fooling the bad guys on purpose, or an evil twin. Calling it now.

You have Red Skull, who has massively powerful telepathic powers and was just around with a reality warping cosmic cube, basically stroking his chin while laughing manically and going "Ahaha, my manipulation of Steve Rogers is going perfectly to plan, Bwahahaha" and you can't work out any way Steve could be being manipulated?

Of course, by trying to vilify Trump by proxy this way they've ended up making the Red Skull look like a reformed man due to his speeches being fairly reasonable if you remove the call for suicide bombing (yeah, the writers equate supporting Trump with suicide bombers. And they wonder why a once top 20 comic is now at risk of falling out of the top 100)

So when he's a massive racist and calls millions of people criminals and scum based on their race and preaches the facist values of preserving a singular culture through strength, you're like "Yeah, right on" and it's only when he gets to the suicide bombing you think "Hmm, maybe a bit too far"?

 

[Piorn]

Wait, isn't the point of Hydra that they're essentially Nazis_2.0 without the awkward real-world politics that would result from them being Nazis?

What's the point of Cap being a Nazi now?

 

[Overhead]

Wait, isn't the point of Hydra that they're essentially Nazis_2.0 without the awkward real-world politics that would result from them being Nazis?

What's the point of Cap being a Nazi now?

The same point it was the last half-dozen times it happened to Cap or that any superhero gets mind controlled by their enemy to turn evil.

Act 1: "Oh no, Superhero A has turned evil"
Act 2: "Yay, we've broken the mind control/stopped the evil clone/changed rality back to normal/whatever"
Act 3: Superhero A punches Super-villain Z in the face

It's not exactly a fresh new type of storyline, but with comics being printed for decades you can't just have "Superhero punches super-villain in the face" again and again and again for 70 years. You have to do stuff to add drama. Maybe the superhero's girlfriend is captured, oh no! Or maybe it looks like the superhero has really finally been killed, oh no (hint: they haven't if they're anywhere near a-list)! Or maybe they've turned evil, oh no!

You've got to come up with a hook that adds drama to the storyline and gives the reader a reason to care more about the story... and THEN the superhero punches the super villain in the face. Captain America isn't really a Nazi, buts the idea is to make people want to read to find out what's going on.

 

[Zontar]

So when he's a massive racist and calls millions of people criminals and scum based on their race and preaches the facist values of preserving a singular culture through strength, you're like "Yeah, right on" and it's only when he gets to the suicide bombing you think "Hmm, maybe a bit too far"?

He made factual statements about illegal immigrants, stating he did so based on their race is factually incorrect. Any "massive racist" claims he's made, they're ones both the media and social media seem more then happy to complain about them without actually ever pointing them out.

Also, what the hell is wrong about promoting the dominant culture of one's nation of which said nation was both founded on and has it be the single connecting piece of identity the nation has in common? Hell, if anything the American cultural/national identity is the least fascistic thing about it because unlike most nations it has no connection to race. Which is why finding minorities who identity with that culture is not only the norm but what most of American society expects. The US never made the mistake of making multiculturalism policy, and the nations that have forced that upon their people al stands testament to its failures. I can even see this in my own nations where despite multiculturalism being official state policy, outside of our three largest cities we are de facto assimilationists and no one has a problem with that. In fact we're the better for it.

And yes, it IS when he gets to the suicide bombings that things to "a bit too far" given how that's an explicit comparison to the 40% of Americans who currently support Trump and the majority of all other Western nations who oppose the failure of multiculturalism to radical Islam. Ironically the very thing that the failure to acknowledge as a problem and to respond to is responsible for this blue collar political uprising in the first place.

That whole scene was a perfect example of ivory tower elitist pricks disconnected from the society they have made it their job to look down upon and insult doing exactly that.