Starting Over

This blog has been inactive for too long. The difficulty has been that my time is too limited to devote to long discourses. So I've decided to take a new tack here. One posting a week about one comic published that week -- the one I find most inspiring either because I love it or I hate it.

Although I suspect I will eventually be disappointed, I'm excited for now about Marvel's Secret Invasion, despite my general dislike of stories based on suspicion of shape shifters.

When the first issue came out, and the seventies Marvel heroes climbed out of their rocket, I assumed that all of them were the real heroes, and that all the horrid things Marvel has done to these characters over the last few years could be wiped away as it is revealed that the characters we have been reading were imposters.

(One might also assume that the seventies set were the Skrulls and that they had been manufactured several years ago and kept on ice until now, when they broke free, thinking they were the real deal. But you can see I am biased against many of the transformations Marvel characters have undergone in the last few years.)

Of course now that the second issue is out, it has been revealed that while some of the seventies set may be the real heroes, some are not. So Marvel is now in position to tease us for the next few months, making us wonder which heroes will be retro-ed and which will be left in their present sad state.

As a Steve Rogers fan, my hope is that the Captain America that landed last issue will be the real deal. He, Thor and Hulk are my favorite Marvel heroes, and a Captain America that is not Steve Rogers is just a temporary and poor substitute.

(By the way, my fondness for these three is not necessarily due to the stories they have been featured in over the years. I has more to do with their potential, and I suppose their appearance. Over the coming weeks, I expect to have an opportunity to explain that in more detail.)

Considering the condition of this country today, there has never been a better time for telling Captain America stories. Since 9/11 Marvel has tended to put Steve in the role of combatting terrorist inspired antagonists, but I think they have missed the mark. I think that a Steve Rogers, who grew up during the FDR era, would be more liberal, and more likely to be alarmed by the recent actions of his government in suppressing dissent, breaking international law and violating human rights. I think he might be more likely to equate our actions to the villain he fought against during the second World War and be inspired to speak out against his own government in defense of liberty at home and abroad. I think his patriotism is more nuanced than his costume. We caught a glimmer of this during the Civil War series in his dissent against hero registration. In fact the biggest tragedy -- should the Civil War Captain America turn out to be a Skrull imposter -- would be that the amazing speech Captain America made in defense of civil liberties during CW would not have been made by Steve Rogers.

My previously mentioned dislike of stories based on suspicion of shape shifters is, in fact, due to where this story line inevitably leads. It leads to a response very much like the one our country has taken in the last seven years. It leads to fear inspired -- or perhaps only fear advantaged -- intrusions on privacy, suspicion of and intolerance for dissent. I am by no means the first to say this, but in our rush to protect our freedoms, we destroy them ourselves.

Shortly after 9/11 I saw the following quote, offered in a program that had nothing whatsoever to do with the events of the day, but so timely that I wrote it down.

"...And the art of life is to save enough from each disaster to be able to begin again in something like your old image."
Murray Kempton
“Part of Our Time”

This is America's challenge in the 21st century. We have stumbled up until now. I hope that we will pick ourselves up and correct our errors. And I hope that Steve Rogers will return to lend his voice to that cause and that course.