Tilting at Windmills on the Captain America 600 story
Long but interesting piece on how Marvel intentionally kept information from its retailers in the hopes a slow news day would sell comics, despite the retailers not knowing how many issues to order.
Upon yesterday’s unveiling of the new Captain America’s costume, I remarked that most of the great iconic superhero costumes belong to DC. While Marvel has lots of great characters, few of them display the same design flair found in DC characters like Superman, Batman, Hawkman, The Flash, or Green Lantern. Primary colors, chest symbols. These are the staples of superhero costume design. None of the X-Men, in my opinion, have this sort of classic image. Spider-Man does, The Incredible Hulk, with his bare chest and purple pants does, and Captain America does. Designed by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon in 1941, Captain America’s look has remained virtually unchanged ever since (though Steve Rogers has at times worn other costumes). The stars and stripes perfectly capture who he is.
Here’s the “Cap punches Hitler” Jack Kirby cover to Captain America 1, courtesy Wikipedia:
Over time his mask grew into a cowl covering his neck, and the shield went from triangle to circle. Here’s Kirby’s famous cover to Avengers 4 (IBID):
John Cassaday’s cover to Captain America volume 4 number 1 plays up the “iconic” take (IBID):
One interesting thing I learned recently about Cap’s costume comes from Marvel editor Tom Brevoort. Stan Lee had a rule regarding how it was drawn:
The stripe directly below the center star on Captain Ameica’s [sic] costume is red. This was the way Cap’s costume was approached for the longest time— though, again, certain artists in recent years have done it differently. Similarly, Captain America was the one Marvel character who possessed a cleft chin.
Cassaday breaks that rule above.
In March 2002, Marvel launched a book called The Ultimates. Part of their new “Ultimate” line, it featured a re-imagining of the Avengers, now cast as a government-sponsored superteam designed to combat the rising threat of supervillainy. Ultimate Captain America is here depicted as more of a soldier than a superhero. He’s often seen carrying a gun and substitutes his mask for a helmet. Designed by Bryan Hitch, his costume has a kevlar look to it rather than the chainmail design, his belt includes pouches for weapons and supplies, his boots are no longer cuffed, and his mask doesn’t have wings on it. Here’s Hitch’s cover to The Ultimates 11:
Ultimate Cap is sometimes drawn wearing olive drab pants instead of his combat uniform.
Captain America volume 5, written by Ed Brubaker and penciled by Steve Epting, has been one of the finest runs on the series in its 65 year history. This series featured the shocking death of Steve Rogers in number 25. Since then, the book has followed Cap’s supporting cast as they investigate and deal with his death. In 34, a new character will take up the mantle, wearing a new costume designed by Alex Ross. Brubaker hasn’t said who it will be, but the look of the costume portends a rougher, more militant Cap, possibly similar to the version seen in The Ultimates. The new version incorporates a chrome finish, lots of black, and adds a triangular motif to the character’s chest reminiscent of the original shield carried by Rogers. Here is Ross’s cover to Captain America 34, from Marvel’s PR site:
And here is the cover to the same issue drawn by regular series artist Epting:
Here are some sketches by Ross:
It’s actually a pretty good design, but it feels like pulling on the Lone Ranger’s mask, the original Kirby/Simon costume being so perfect. The bright top set against the dark bottom is a striking contrast, but could end up looking top-heavy. We’ll have to see how it looks in the book to really be able to tell. I do like the visual of this new Cap with a pistol in one hand and a shield in the other. There’s some stuff from Brubaker and Ross in the above-linked article on Marvel.com, and Newsarama has posted an interview as well.
Captain America, in his World War II stories, had a sidekick named Bucky Barnes. Bucky’s costume is no where near as memorable as his mentor’s, but it was a nice contrast to Cap’s, using blue and red but containing no white nor any symbols. Bucky didn’t appear much after the mid-50s, and in Avengers it was announced retroactively that he had been killed at the end of WWII. Sixty- five years later it would inspire one of Marvel’s best new character designs, and Bucky himself would be brought back to life. Here is the classic Bucky, as drawn by Eric Wright on the cover of the Captain America 65th Anniversary Special (via Wikipedia):
Brubaker and Epting brought Bucky back to life as the Winter Soldier a few years ago, revealed to have been brainwashed and forced to work as an assassin since his apparent death. His look isn’t anything terribly fresh, but he’s designed to look badass and stealthy, and the design accomplishes this nicely. He retains the domino mask from his original outfit, picks up a bionic arm with a Russian star on it, and carries large rifles (IBID):
In 2005, to great confusion from the fans, Marvel announced a new titled called Young Avengers. It seemed to be a very DC Comics idea: a team of seeming sidekicks dressed like established characters. In execution, however, defied expectations and was one of Marvel’s best books of the year. Patriot, the leader of the group, appeared to be styled after Captain America and Bucky Barnes, though his actual origin is tied to the Truth: Red, White, and Black miniseries which revealed that the US Army had experimented on black soldiers before turning Steve Rogers into Captain America. Patriot is the grandson of the only surviving member of these experiments. Here Jim Cheung’s cover to Young Avengers Special 1:
I absolutely love Cheung’s design. Patriot’s costume invokes some of Bucky’s image, namely the jacket and domino mask, but has an embossed diamond pattern that recalls the chainmail on Captain America’s uniform. Patriot carries Captain America’s original shield, and also uses throwing stars. Sadly writer Allan Heinberg has been too busy with his day job writing television to do another run on Young Avengers.
Marvel has unveiled a new costume for Captain America designed by Alex Ross, set to debut in number 34. It will be someone new wearing the costume. An easy guess would be Bucky Barnes, but I’m kind of hoping for a new character entirely, Kyle Rayner style. As for the costume, I’m not wild about it. The black fits the darker concept of him carrying a gun like a soldier, but Captain America’s costume was one of the truly great, iconic costumes, most of which are worn by DC characters. I’m very glad he kept the round shield, but I wouldn’t have been sad to see the cuffed boots go.
Here’s an interview with designed Alex Ross and Cap writer Ed Brubaker.
Captain America Killed | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source
“But who will avenge him? If only there were a group of ‘avengers,’ if you will, organized for that purpose.”
I went to the comic book store last night to get my books. I usually go every 2-3 weeks and was planning to go last night before the big news broke. I’ve been reading Captain America as it gets collected in paperback format, and it’s honestly one of the best single character books Marvel is publishing right now, if you like the character. Anyway, the man at the store said that he’d had quite a day, and that the phone had been ringing off the hook. This was about 5:45 or so, and he already didn’t have any copies of Captain America 25 left on the shelves. He said if I really wanted one he had a stack of about 10 left, but they were otherwise being held for people who’d called in earlier that day. I said I’d wait, as I’ll end up buying the trade, anyway and I already knew what happened. (In addition, this week’s Civil War: The Initiative reprints a portion of the issue, but I wouldn’t recommend buying it overall.) He said that Marvel had overprinted this issue, but at 9:00 that morning had announced they would not be doing a second printing. By 3:00 they’d changed that to “probably not” be doing a second printing, so it’s quite possible that they’ll have more on the shelves but not until the hype has already blown over.
Brian Hibbs, comic retailed blogger, has this to say about it:
I wish Marvel had laid out the score for us a lot better — certainly when Superman was killed, we knew MONTHS in advance, and it resulted in millions of copies ordered. Even with the supposed generous overprint, I’ll be surprised if we end up with even the same number of copies of CAP #25 on the market as CIVIL WAR (ie, nowhere near enough). The REAL problem is, because (I’m guessing) the reorders are going to fill from newstand copies, and because of the way that Diamond and Marvel work with OSDs (over-short-damage), it seems likely that reorders won’t arrive for 2 more weeks. That’s going to be way too late, I think.
A slow news day meant that the book got lots of media coverage, and Captain America’s an old school wartime hero, so interest seems to be higher than it would otherwise be. Still, I like to see how these things look to people who don’t read comics. For one, it’s common knowledge that characters don’t stay dead. All of the major media coverage of Steve Rogers’ death include comments about how characters come back from the dead frequently, and Joe Quesada remains flippant about it in each story. I’d say it’s quite possible he will stay dead, but it’s also possible in the very next issue we’ll see that the assassination was a cover to get him back into the field and escape trial.
Also, it’s interesting to see which characters in each publisher’s stables are big enough for people to even know who they are. In terms of public consciousness, DC Comics has Batman and Superman, then Wonder Woman, and that’s about it. Some people know a few more from Superfriends or more recently Justice League. For Marvel, you’ve got Spider-man and the X-Men on the top tier, then the Hulk and, I guess the Fantastic Four. Iron Man’s getting a movie next summer (which might actually be good), but Captain America hasn’t had any film coverage in years, excluding a few direct-to-DVD cartoons, which is odd because, in my opinion, he’s really their third-best property after Spider-Man and the X-Men.
Status: True. Before the US got into the war, Captain America’s debut against Hitler rankled Nazi sympathizers.
Talking Captain America #25 with Ed Brubaker
Interview with the writer.
Pick up your copy of Captain America 25 fast. The New York Daily News has already spoiled the ending, and I’d suspect some other news sources to follow suit. If you really want to know what happens, here’s the article.
Edit: CNN has the story now, too.
It should be noted that Marvel intentionally seeds these stories to hit the day they hit stores to draw people into retail stores. Naturally they want to sell books, but it sucks that surprise endings are often ruined. The problem is that most retailers are small independent stores that have to manage their inventory very tightly. They’ll order enough copies for their regular customers, and then a few extra for walk-ins. Marvel’s been hyping this issue as an important one, so it’s probable that stores knew to over-order it, but chances are it’ll sell out and take a few weeks to restock, ruining the buzz.
