Captain America Killed by Sniper
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James Joyner @ Gone Hollywood | Wednesday, March 7, 2007 |
Marvel is killing Captain America. Again.
So reports the AP.
Holy homicide, Batman!
Captain America is dead!
Assassinated, in fact, as he walks into a federal courthouse in New York, under arrest and in handcuffs, headed to his arraignment for refusing to sign the government’s Superhero Registration Act and forcibly revealing his true identity.
It all happens in the latest edition of Marvel Comics, which hit newsstands on Wednesday.
A sniper, firing a high-powered rifle from a rooftop, hits the famed red, white and blue leader of the Avengers with three bullets and escapes the scene, leaving the weapon behind Oswald-style, as police and Captain America’s military escort cope with chaos in the streets.
What does this mean? Can the pulverizing patriot really be dead, shot down on the courthouse steps after 66 years of battling villains from Adolf Hitler to the Red Skull? Will the killer or killers be captured?
The only way to find out, says Dan Buckley, president and publisher of Marvel Entertainment, is to “read the book” as the story line unfolds. Buckley will not divulge details of what he describes as “really cool plot twists,” but does not rule out the possibility that Captain America is not really dead or is somehow resurrected. “When you live in a world of make-believe, a lot of things are possible,” he said in a telephone interview.
In any case, readers should not necessarily despair. After all, this is not the first time Captain America was presumed dead. In the last days of World War II, his alter-ego, the former arts student Steve Rogers, was believed killed by a bomb aboard an experimental pilot-less plane, only to have been found later, frozen in a cake of ice, by Sub-Mariner (remember him?).
[...]
Captain America was an early member of the pantheon of comic book heroes that began with Superman in the 1930s. He landed on newsstands in March 1941, nine months before Pearl Harbor — delivering a a punch to Hitler on the cover of his first issue, a sock-in-the-jaw reminder that there was a war on and the United States was not involved. Since then, Marvel Entertainment Inc., has sold more than 200 million copies of Captain America magazine in 75 countries.
In the most recent story line, he became involved in a superhero “civil war,” taking up sides against former buddy Iron Man in the registration controversy, climaxed by his arrest and assassination.
Killing off comic book heroes, only to bring them back again, is a time-honored gimmick in the business. Unless sales have sunk so low as to make the book no longer profitable, I’m sure Cap will be Back.
A Reuters report adds more details:
“This is the end of Steve Rogers, the meat and potatoes guy from 1941,” Dan Buckley, president and publisher of publishing, Marvel Entertainment, told Reuters. “But Captain America is a costume, and there are other people who could take it over. He is iconic, and we’re continuing the comic books,” he added. But he declined to speculate who could step into the hero’s 66-year-old boots.
He said the continuing comic series would initially be focused on the reaction of other characters to Captain America’s death.
This was similar to the death of Superman in 1993, when the leading superhero of Marvel rival D.C. Comics was killed off after about 55 years — only to be brought back months later.
Captain America has appeared in about 210 million comics in 75 countries, but currently his title sells up to 80,000 copies a month in the United States, down from about 150,000 in their heyday.
Unlike other comic heroes such as Spider-Man, Superman, Batman and the Fantastic Four, the Captain has yet to win Hollywood fame, though Buckley said there are plans for a Captain America movie. “He is still popular, but he has not been getting the same attention as Spider-Man and others,” said Buckley. “We hope this will make him more popular in the short-term at least.”
Andy Khouri has an excellent roundup of mainstream media reaction at the Comic Book Resource.
News broke this morning of the death of Marvel Comics superhero Captain America in issue #25 of the character’s monthly series, which shipped today to comic stores everywhere. Interestingly, the story has been covered by numerous mainstream media outlets including CBS News and CNN, operations not known for their coverage of comic book storylines.
“Captain America Killed Outside Courthouse” read the headline on CBSNews.com’s Entertainment section.
“Captain America Killed!” screamed the headline on page 3 of the New York Daily News.
“Comic Book Superhero Captain America Dies on the Page,” said the AP, whose story was run in too many places to count, such as ABC News.
Banner headline on page 3 of today’s edition of The New York Daily News Few of these articles are particularly substantive, with most giving little to no context at all as to the fictional circumstances of Captain America’s death, reporting only that he’s died. Nevertheless, that so many such articles exist at all is quite remarkable for the small comics industry, and will certainly remind long-time comic fans of the media attention generated by DC Comics’ “Death of Superman” event in 1992. “Superman” #75, while similarly controversial amongst longtime readers, sold a great many comic books and gave new and returning fans a place to begin reading stories of the DC Universe. Written by Ed Brubaker and illustrated by Steve Epting, “Captain America” #25 is clearly designed to be accessible by everyone and achieve the same goal for Marvel Comics.
“There is a lot to be read in there. But I’m not one who is going to tell people, this is what you should read into it, because I could look into it and read several different types of messages,” Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada said in a taped interview with CNN, who, unlike other mainstream news sources, actually began their article with a spoiler warning and included a recap of the events of “Civil War.”
These are apparently the two alternate covers of (vol. 5) issue #25:
- Silver Surfer in Fantastic Four Movie Sequel
- Stephen King Ventures Into Comic Books
- Tom Cruise in Iron Man Movie?
- Batwoman is Back — And She’s a Lesbian
- Seriously…O.J. Simpson is a Dumb Ass!
- Iron Man 2008 Movie of Year
- Superman: Truth, Justice, and . . . all That Stuff
- Gone Hollywood Makes IMDB
- Superman Returns Winning Critical Praise
- South Park Mocks Steve Irwin
- You Can Play With Angelina Jolie
- Heart’s Nancy Wilson Responds to Sarah ‘Barracuda’ Palin
- Lindsay Lohan Turns Down Playboy
- Photo of the Day: Ryan Seacrest & Randy Jackson Share a Taco
- Michael Phelps Does Backstroke on Some Chick
- Ghostbusters III - Coming Soon
- Carrie Underwood Calls Jessica Simpson Fat
- Akon Hits A Fan
- Indian Show Turns Into Chaos
- Nastia Liukin Hates Her Fans
Comments are Closed
Killing off a superhero is a gimmick, but it can be a cool gimmick. I read the Death of Superman line and really liked it even though I rarely open a DC comic book. Ultimately it’s the story that matters. I’ll end up waiting for Marvel to bundle up all the issues and sell them as a graphic novel.