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that should be “If you believe Batman really dead, I have a bridge in Blüdhaven to sell you”.

Steve will be the once and future Cap…

but shouldn’t there be a role for one James Buchanan Barnes as well? He knows dark; he’s fought on both sides of it. He knows honour, he learned it as a young lad from his Captain; he knows hardship: few of us can imagine what it was like to go through his character arc.

I’d pull strongly for “James Barnes, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” — he doesn’t have to be the director (and honestly, stories of SHIELD HQ can get a little boring) but as an agent in the field — maybe not the #1 agent, but top agent with something to prove and with an admin that purposefully sends him out into the worst assignments — and I think were adding to the backstory of a new hero…

If only someone can think of a new name for him.

I would kind of like to see Bucky stay on as Cap while Steve Rogers takes over as director of SHIELD once Osborn is finally given his comeuppance.

I can’t get past this line:

And here we have a shocking, world-wide event that regular Joes who enter an average comic shop (say, mine for instance) and they will point at a rack of Cap trades and ask, “Isn’t he dead?”

Regular Joes know what Captain America’s real name is? I really, sincerely doubt that any of the unititiated could regularly name off the secret identity of any hero who hasn’t starred in his own movie. Unless you’re saying that they come into the store and don’t understand that a new Cap has arisen in the past couple of years. That, I can see.

While I’m enjoying the hell out of Bucky as Cap, I think Steve coming back is what the Marvel U and Marvel Comics needs. I just hope that Marvel Editorial has a plan for Bucky once the dust settles. I’d LOVE to see Bucky and Natasha working for Fury as a S.H.I.E.L.D. black ops team hunting down the remnants of Osborne’s Dark Reign.

I am perfectly happy to have Bucky as Captain America going forward, and Dick as Batman from here out.

As a title, Captain America is about as tired as Superman. If Marvel had truly wanted to stir things up they’d have gone for Isaiah Bradley as the “new Cap”. Bucky Barnes? Steve Rogers? Honestly, at this point who really cares?

Oh my God, THANK YOU. I hope the Buckster stays as Captain America for a very, very long time. He won’t, obviously, but it’s nice to dream.

Yawn.
Listen, these are fictional characters. It is SO pointless to debate.
Marvel and DC like to make money, nothing else.

See, Steve Rogers IS Captain America. Bucky (and I refuse to call him anything else) is just a guy in a suit. (An ugly, stupid “ooh Alex Ross designed it!” suit.) I was initially outraged when Brubaker brought Bucky back but it was handled well, much to my surprise. The death of Steve, not so much. We ALL KNEW he wouldn’t stay dead, it was almost a case of “why bother killing him?”

The Cap movie will put the character in the public spotlight in a HUGE way. Steve’ll be back in harness by then. I’m not saying kill Bucky again (It obviously won’t stick, for one thing. I LOVED Bucky and always thought he’d beat Robin like a rented mule and then kick him to the side. Bucky had brass knuckles and machine-guns. What’d Robin have? A Stick? A sling-shot? Smoke grenades?) Keep Bucky around. (Give him a new name AND A BETTER ONE THAN “WINTER SOLDIER”. That was what bugged me most about Bucky’s return – ya brought him back ta life, ya couldn’ta given him a better name than dat? Jeez.”) I guess Nomad’s taken and I wouldn’t want to see that anyway. How about The Quiet American, as a nod to Graham Green?

I’ve said this on a few message boards and comments section but; Luke Cage should have been the new Captain America.

Barnes is just a WW2 left over, retconned or shoe horned back into continuity.

Cage was studying under Rodgers, working in the Avengers and has a relevant back story.

Name brand would have evolved into name brand and we could all just put nazis and ww2 behind us.

they should rename this “the day continuity died” and have steve rogers make a deal with the devil so that he never came back to life in the first place

“I am perfectly happy to have Bucky as Captain America going forward, and Dick as Batman from here out.”

Yes on the first one, since Steve’s death had meaning to it and his legacy is an important one, and HELL NO to the second.

Bruce is Batman, pure and simple.

I have to say, it’s the perception that saying you prefer Bucky as Cap because he’s more interesting and the books have been well written is blasphemy is what is probably holding superhero comics back creatively.

A lot of what motivates the business seems to be exactly that, business. Comic book characters are more than just creative material, they’re commercial properties and the suits upstairs at Warner Brothers and now Disney with an eye on profit are generally reluctant to shake up the status quo of a “respected” (re: profitable) character. This is further reinforced by the fanboy culture declaring that certain interpretations of a character (usually the ones that have lasted the longest) are “definitive.”

Still when something happens to shake it up, whether for publicity sake or as part of a writer being given the rare creative license, it’s worth definitely judging on it’s merits, not just how well it jives with the “definative” understanding of the character. I also feel that, as readers, we should be prepared to get outside our comfort zone in terms of of understanding and cynicism. Obviously death in comics is rarely permanent, costume changes infrequently last, and the characters generally recover from devastating revelations with the span of a particular arc (at least to the point where it’s mentioned infrequently. exceptions to this do exist). But the question we as mature readers need to ask ourselves is WHY it needs to be like this. Being a relentlessly cynical fanboy and insisting that all change is impermanent doesn’t serve comics as a ARTFORM, just insulates it from innovation and plays into the largescale commercial enterprises that own our favorite characters treating us like sheep. We need to be willing to watch truly creative-minded people tear up the status quo and start again. Even if we don’t like the result, it strengthens comics as a medium creatively and is the one real shot at getting something new and satisfying.

Obviously I’m not saying in the writing one should ignore continuity or established character actions for the sake of character innovation. Nor am I saying that strong-minded creative aren’t ever given license to do off-the-wall shit with established characters. Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Geoff Johns, and Ed Brubaker are all examples of this happening even now. Final Crisis? That shit was pretty fucking bananas for a mainstream comic event. B-A-N-A-N-A-S. Even Bendis deciding to toss out the “core” Avengers and put Spiderman, Wolverine, and Luke Cage on the team is pretty mindblowing when you think of it from a commercial standpoint (you can hear the suits upstairs scratching their heads trying to figure out how to market a 70s era blaxploitation character who doesn’t wear a costume, swears, was part of his own MAX series and says “Sweet Christmas” a lot.).

Things like that move comics forward. Even in events like Civil War or Dark Reign which, from a concept perspective, are the most crass, overdone thing out there (“LET’S HAVE HEROES KICK THE SHIT OUT OF EACH OTHER!”) can breed interesting ideas and new or at least new feeling conflicts (Spiderman unmasked, registered vs. unregistered heroes, villains being repurposed as heroes).

On the flip side, things like that can also lead to the Clone Saga, where the marketing machine took over editorial and insisted on emotionally unmotivated, noncharacter-driven plot twists. Then again, after reading the excellent account of the whole thing on Andrew Goletz’s http://lifeofreillyarchives.blogspot.com/, it seems the intent there WAS to replace Peter Parker permanently with Ben Reilly (a more care-free, unmarried and thus more “definitive” version of Spiderman) and the suits chickened out.

The Clone Saga was a very imperfect example of this in action, and, having grown up reading it, it’s doubtful it would have been satisfying both creatively or financially. There’s also something to be said for the fact that a creator will never really be given free reign with a character, especially the big, high profile ones, because that character never ceases being property of a corporation.

That said, I’ve liked Bucky as Cap so far because the series has been well done, exciting, and feels like I’m reading something new, not just trying to endlessly reshuffle old villains and plotlines. And frankly, who besides us fanboys who have the context and the endless “STEVE = CAP” driven into our heads since before 99% of us were even born even give a shit? THAT’S why Brubaker can get away with it, because ask the average person on the street is who Captain America and they’ll say something like “the dude with the shield”. The name Steve Rogers doesn’t mean anything more to them than Bucky Barnes than Luke Cage than Dan Rather. That’s why Brubaker got the opportunity to play like he did and THIS IS A GOOD THING.

(on a side note, while I’m enjoying it immensely and think it’s a great twist, how Grant Morrison convinced DC to let him “kill” Bruce Wayne as Batman and replace him with Dick Grayson, I will never know. Batman is WAY more ubiquitous than Captain America and probably 7/10 people when asked Batman’s secret identity could come up with Bruce Wayne. Proof that Grant Morrison can perform low-grade hypnosis…)

The thing that we, as loyal fanboys, need to remember is that just because Bucky IS Cap (and a damn good one, if I don’t say so myself) doesn’t mean that Steve as Cap WAS any less legitimate. We tend to build up this whole system of dogma that says that any change in the character invalidates that what has gone before. I’m of the opposite opinion: stubbornly refusing to let a character change does more to hurt the legacy of a character than having them evolve in as close a simulacrum of reality as one can get with a dude who wears an american flag on his chest and throws around a pizza plate with a star on it.

That’s my take on it.

“And frankly, who besides us fanboys who have the context and the endless “STEVE = CAP” driven into our heads since before 99% of us were even born even give a shit?”

Very true, but it’s much easier for some to be myopic with our view of creative properties.

I would love an ongoing monthly featuring Mr. Barnes, the Falcon and Black Widow.

That being said I am concerned what happens to the Cap dynamics in general once Brubaker has all he has to say with that corner of the Marvel universe and chooses to move on from the book.

“A lot of what motivates the business seems to be exactly that, business. Comic book characters are more than just creative material, they’re commercial properties and the suits upstairs at Warner Brothers and now Disney with an eye on profit are generally reluctant to shake up the status quo of a “respected” (re: profitable) character. This is further reinforced by the fanboy culture declaring that certain interpretations of a character (usually the ones that have lasted the longest) are “definitive.”

Still when something happens to shake it up, whether for publicity sake or as part of a writer being given the rare creative license, it’s worth definitely judging on it’s merits, not just how well it jives with the “definative” understanding of the character. ”

This is what annoys me. I don’t like the insulting way that Marvel does things to get business. For instance, do you think its right that Mavel did a lot of advertising for Captain America’s death, only to bring him back in under 2 years? Is that fair to a customer who bought that story, when its pretty clear Marvel editorial figures “Hey. We’ll make money killin’ him….and then we’ll wait until they forget that happened, and we’ll make money bringin’ him back! THEN….in ten years or so, we’ll kill him AGAIN! They’ll never see that coming!”

It’s an unfair business model, to the consumer of comic books, and also just a BAD business model.

Marvel should concentrate on coming up with NEW ideas; those are the best for business, not ideas that ‘shake up the status quo’. Real comic book readers no longer care whether or not “EVERYTHING WILL BE CHANGED!!!!111 NOTHING IS THE SAME~!!!11 PEOPLE WILL LIVE, PEOPLE WILL DIE…..UNIVERSES AND WOLRDS WILL CRUMBLES!!!!!!” Its been done before, I need a more interesting premise to get me to buy anything.

Bringing back dead superheroes has been DONE to DEATH, so I am judging the premise of this book on its creative merit, and it’s creative merit is SH*T.