March 7, 2007
@ 06:47 PM

Marvel comics has been ticking me off for a few months now with their mediocre Avengers Disassembled, House of M and Civil War trilogy but it looks like they finally found a way to push me over the edge. According to MSNBC in Death to ‘America’: Comic-book hero killed off

Captain America has undertaken his last mission — at least for now. The venerable superhero is killed in the issue of his namesake comic that hit stands Wednesday, the Daily News reported.

On the new edition's pages, a sniper shoots down the shield-wielding hero as he leaves a courthouse, according to the newspaper.
...
In the comic-book universe, death is not always final. But even if Captain America turns out to have met his end in print, he may not disappear entirely: Marvel has said it is developing a Captain America movie.

This reminds me of a headline from the 1990s, Superman killed by falling comic book sales, when DC Comics tried a similar stunt back in the day. The overuse of cross over stories and super hero shockers (like radical changes to a character's history or killing them off) seem to be symptoms of the death of comic books as an entertainment genre. I buy comics from a local comic book store on a monthly basis and I don't think I've ever seen anyone under the age of 25 in the five and a half years that I've been using that store. Well, there was the one time that one of the guys who worked there brought his grandson into work. 

Even though super hero movies featuring A-list and B-list superheroes from Spider-Man to Ghost Rider are making hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office, they are pretty much milking a fan base that grew up with these heroes instead of introducing these characters to a new audience. This is similar to the way that George Lucas milked a fan base that grew up on Star Wars with his series of horrific prequels although in his case I suspect that there probably is a market for Star Wars pre-prequels in another 20 years.

Without a continuous influx of fans who are interested in the source material (i.e. comic books), there won't be a next generation of fans to buy all the overpriced merchandising and special effects laden movies. However I doubt that stunts like this are a good way to get people reading the comic books again, even though it did work when they killed Superman...I was one of the suckers who bought all the books. :)

Although Cap is dead, his memory will live on...on YouTube.


 

Categories: Comics
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Wednesday, 07 March 2007 21:35:16 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I guess the A does stand for France (lame pun on Ultimate Cap's joke).

Seriously though, I think Brubaker's been doing an awesome job with Captain America. Hell, the man got away with reviving Bucky without causing a fanboy uproar. I never really found him that interesting, probably because he was turning into "Cap Wolf" and fighting Wolverine in the 90's.

They're not without their problems, but comics are a lot healthier today, and generally have a lot better stories than they did before the 'bubble burst'. Oddly enough, I find this similar to the Web today vs pre bubble burst :)
Wednesday, 07 March 2007 22:18:00 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Did'ja see the Spider Man where they showed his penis and we found out that his radioactive sperm gives MJ terminal cancer? Who thought that story was a good idea?

Yeah, Marvel has been really hard to read for the past few years.
Wednesday, 07 March 2007 22:50:22 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Scott,
You're kidding right? I stopped reading Spidey regularly after the clone saga and only went back recently to collect all of the JMS stories.
Wednesday, 07 March 2007 23:13:40 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I think it's some kind of alternative world future story or something.

http://blog.wired.com/tableofmalcontents/2007/02/spidermans_radi.html
Wednesday, 07 March 2007 23:14:24 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
BTW, Fry's in Renton has a DVD collection of ALL Spider Man books. It's great, all in PDF format. They've got X-Men, and FF too.
Thursday, 08 March 2007 00:25:45 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Hey Dare,

I had heard about this - I'm only getting into comics now at the young age of 30... my folks really frowned on them. I was thinking about checking out some Cap A after checking out the Marvel Alliance game on the 360.

Although to be honest most of what I've been getting is along the lines of Warren Ellis, Preacher and Y: The Last Man - not exactly the superhero genre... but after playing MUA I am totally into Deadpool at the moment, and I've gotten back into Daredevil.

I do have a mate I work with that has written a comics collection program that he submitted to Microsoft's Express Heroes competition before it went the way of the dodo.

It's called Comicster and you should have a looksee. Totally free, .NET, online db for sharing the comic data between users, skinnable, the works.
http://www.comicster.net/

Anyway, hopefully someone will in time ressurect Cap the way they have done with other heroes in the past and give him a reboot and all will be good with the world again.
Andrew Tobin
Thursday, 08 March 2007 01:58:07 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
It's sort of a pity, because Marvel comics did that thing in the '90s where they totally sucked, and then they started getting good again with Stracyzinski's run, and some of Bendis's stuff, and now, boy howdy, it's going back into the shitter.
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