After Nazi Rogers happened, fans acted as if they had...never read a comic book before. It was one of the most bizarre things that ever happened in comics. Steve Rogers, thanks to a fragment of the Cosmic Cube, existed in a reality where he was raised as a loyal agent of Hydra. Avengers: Endgame kind of cleverly played into that in the reprise of the excellent Captain America: Winter Soldier elevator sequence (probably, for me, best moment of both movies, really). But then comic book logic undid it, of course, and Captain America wasn't a secret agent of Hydra anymore.
The whole thing was an exercise in the pointless outrage culture. Of course, a lot of Golden Age comic book creators, including Cap's, were Jewish, so it was considered particularly offensive, even for a storytelling stunt, to create Nazi Rogers. But, again, this is comic books we're talking about. If there's a single mainstream superhero who has never undergone an outrageous crisis, I'd really know who it is.
And Secret Empire was a brilliant story. Taking a paragon of virtue and making him the face of the enemy, it was fresh territory, which is a hard thing to do in superhero comics.
But everyone panicked, and Marvel thought taking an abrupt turnaround was in order. And so was brought in Mark Waid, that guy who made his name being a huge fan who knew everything, but eventually broke out taking existing Flash lore and greatly expanding it. Turns out Waid was only capable of doing that once. So he fell back on being a being a huge fan who knew everything. And basically producing feel-good comics with Marvel properties like the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, and yes, Captain America.
His idea of Cap's comeback tour was literally a tour, in itself not an entirely original idea in comics, of America, just trying to step away from the grind. And of course learning along the way that the regular folk do still love him.
Kind of on the nose, of course, but that's been my impression of all Waid's Marvel work. I don't know if he burned out, like James Robinson did writing Starman, on trying to do big things. The longer he wrote Flash, the harder he found it to hit the high notes, and perhaps as a result, fans today still don't really appreciate what he accomplished. His was basically the template Geoff Johns later followed. And ironically, Johns was doing Waid's Marvel act until he figured out how to do Waid's Flash act. And has never looked back.
Waid continues to grasp for relevance. He did Flash. He did Kingdom Come. He even did Strange Fruit. Fans can believe whatever they like about his best work. But it's really Waid who seems incapable of understanding his best instincts.
The only experience I have with that Secret Empire thing is a volume of Captain Marvel I read off Amazon Prime that took place at that time. I haven't read Waid's run either, though I guess now they're on to Te-Nahsi Coates (however his first name is spelled) so it probably wasn't all that memorable.
ReplyDeleteWell, Waid was just there to put something positive back into Cap's name. The next Sunday Bloody Sunday is a Coates Cap.
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