I saw your tag on the Liefeld Captain America run being good. Please expound upon this, my curiosity is piqued and you do such a good job unwrapping these characters.
I'll admit it's been a little while since I read it, and I do think the first half of the title is much better than the second half, as the second half is very much so Marvel running damage control after it realised nobody wanted a Liefeldian relaunch of it's 40 year running continuity, but I unironically think those early issues are some of the best of the Heroes Reborn continuity. It has its flaws, of course, but what makes this run so good is that it really does feel like it's about something.
One of the first moments of the series that sets the tone for the rest of it is Steve's new origin. At first, almost Neo-Ultimates esque, Steve is an ordinary working man with strange dreams of being a costumed superhero who doesn't really understand why this resonates so much with him.
The inciting incident that causes Steve to become Captain America is the realisation that those dreams were in fact memories, and that his wife and children are in fact LMDs created by Shield after brainwashing Steve until whenever they next have use of him. Nick has often had an antagonistic role in Captain America comics, but here he's outright villainous which I think is really interesting.
Basically, Shield have been giving him various false lives to explain away his permanent youth and have been doing this for decades.
And I just think this is really great. The aesthetic of the American dream that Steve thought he had is revealed to be a sham, quite literally put in place by the American government to keep their favourite propaganda piece/bullet in a gun docile so he doesn't question what's happening around him. The allure of a wife, a child, a good career and a house with a white picket fence kept him happy and content and was used against him in a deeply violating way. That American Dream that Steve's always fighting for is false, and is a manufactured tool wielded by the powerful and wealthy. Is this intentional? I doubt it, I do think the writers were moreso going for Wouldn't This Be Fucked Up? If Your Wife Was A Robot? but I think it's accidentally super interesting and really challenges Steve on what he's fighting for if all of his beliefs and desires have been revealed to be false, illusionary.
And I do think the insane Rob Liefeld art really adds to it. Liefeld's art style is so extreme, so over the top and intense, particularly with the sheer size that Steve is drawn with, but it's also fundamentally sexless because it veers so hard into over the top masculinity it has no sense of restraint or intimacy, so Steve is this perfect action-doll with no actual human desires or features. He's a GI-Joe. And that works really great with the theme of the American Dream being a sham, I think. It's so earnestly patriotic that it slips into the realm of parody.
I also really enjoy giving Steve a teenage girl sidekick instead of the standard, particularly a theatre kid. They never really get into Steve being an artist but I like the idea of Steve having a spunky teen sidekick who also is in the arts, I think that's unironically a good change of pace for Steve.
Related to that, I also think it was a good idea for them to focus on American neo-nazis as the early antagonists and actually try and capture that population, because while you might think that's low hanging fruit for Cap comics, other than the Watchdogs of Mark Gruenwald's run and the Secret Empire of Steve Englehart's, that wasn't actually that common. "Maybe they didn't let you in because you're white" is an actual thing folks like Charlie Kirk and Nick Fuentes peddle/d, so I appreciate making it a plot point, and again, choosing to focus on American neo-nazis is great because that again punches holes in Steve's aestheticised, romantic view of America, which was what this book felt like it was gearing up to be all about.
Also, it has Steve Glowing Green Blood being poured into Sam's mouth which is just a hilarious panel so I have to include it here. Why is his blood radioactive.
Anyway unfortunately like I said after the first few issues it becomes very clear to everyone involved that this Heroes Reborn thing was not the smash hit success they were hoping for and that they have to return to their regularly scheduled 616 programming as soon as so they backtrack hard and the last portion of the title when it isn't event tie-in hell is a lot more normative for a Cap run but I do think these early issues were getting at something interesting. In general, Steve being confronted with the idea that the America he's fighting for isn't real is an idea I always like to see explored and this genuinely might be one of the most explicit times that's been handled, which is crazy from a Jeph Loeb/Rob Liefeld comic but it is what it is.
baratheonpilled
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titsay
