Civil War did that for me on the Marvel side. For good.

Just in time for Memorial Day weekend too!

This is going to blow up in Marvel's face big time.

Is it though? I mean what do they have to lose? Captain America probably sells, what, 50,000 copies in a good month? If anything, the sales numbers will probably increase because people will want to see how it's all explained. There's no way Captain America will actually end up being a Nazi for real. People were pissed that Bucky came back and look how that one turned out. And It's not like people are going to stop going to to see Civil War (which is all Marvel really cares about) because of some negative publicity around the comic book.

It seems pretty obvious from the issue that they're setting it up as the Red Skull having used the cosmic cube to alter Cap's past, much like when he created the "Snap" Wilson identity for the Falcon in the 70's. Clearly things will be set right at some point down the line in (probably a year or so), but the fun is seeing how they get there, and in the meantime what it's like having a villainous Captain America.

Yep. Incredibly stupid.

And stupid plotlines like this that completely invalidate 20, 30, 40, or even 70 years of comic history are why I stopped buying Marvel Comics in the mid 90's and never came back.

This is the most ludicrous, absurd, pathetic plot twist they have ever come up with. And that's saying a lot.

Way to go Marvel Comics! You went from being the best to being a total joke.

Come on, do you guys really think this story is somehow going to invalidate 75 years of Marvel history? Really? Have you ever read comics before? This may be a good story and it may suck. I don't know because I haven't read it. But what I do know is that there is no chance in hell that Nazi Captain America is a thing that will last.

Pre-decompressed storytelling, this is the kind of story that would be a one-off issue where the readers are shocked to find out Cap is a Nazi but by the end of the issue we learn that it was all just a scheme by Red Skull. By the end, everything goes back to normal. The difference is that nowadays the story will take a year or two to play out and Marvel will try to generate as much buzz as possible by doing interviews with venerable comic book industry news outlets like Time Magazine.

Yeah, and by now most of us are cynical about it. Of course Cap isn't going to permanently be a Hydra agent, and it will all be revealed to be a twist (he's really a triple agent, it was a clone, Red Skull using the Cosmic Cube, Cap woke up on the wrong side of the bed), and it all feels so routine.

I know some shakeups now have become classic, like Spider-Man's black costume, but for the most part this sort of big deal change to the character is just a gimmick to boost sales, and not an organic part of the storytelling process.

Exactly.
If it's a good story, it's a good story. Comics have been gimmicks and soap opera since the 1930s.

@ the death threats. People are so goddamn stupid!

Right. Go back to a time when comics had actual covers and not just glorified pinups and you'll see that just about every single cover on every single comic ever had some kind of gimmick or pulled some kind of bait and switch. The only thing that makes this story stand out more than any other is the publicity machine behind it and that it's got an easy hook for the the general public to latch onto.

Now if it turns out that this story is actually intended to permanently change Cap's history and will require hasty retcons sometime down the line in order to undo the change (because again, there's no way this sticks), then I will happily eat my words. But I would be stunned if Marvel/Spencer doesn't already have an ending/resolution to all of this already planned.

Thank you! I had read a bunch of classic Cap comics last year and I knew I remembered a story like that. That's exactly the sort of thing I was talking about.

Cap 234

Yup. That's what got you to pick up the title. Now the publicity goes beyond the little blurb they usually do on the last page of the story or letterpage. Now it's national news.

I think it started with the Death of Superman; prior to that I don't think anyone outside of comic book readers gave a shit what was happening in comics.

30 years ago this story would have been a single issue in What If, that is my problem. If you write a story intending it to be retconned, that is a serious problem for anyone that cares about continuity and why Marvel lost me as a reader years ago.

Marvel's mainstream continuity has become a constantly revolving series of What If stories solely designed to grab headlines.

Other than the fact that there are two examples in this thread where similar things happened that were not What If? issues, sure I guess.

I think there's a difference between retconning and using misdirection/plot twists in a story. Retconning is when a writer comes in and undoes or changes the originally intended context of a previous story. That's different to me than writing a story that, for example, posits that Captain America is and has been a Nazi all along, only to have it revealed as misdirection/twist on the truth the whole time by the end of said story.

Without having read the story in question, my gut tells me that we're dealing with the latter. If it turns out I'm wrong, and this story really does affect decades of continuity (whether or not it gets retconned at some point), then I'll eat my words.

Agreed, a one off what if is fun. A year-long story that we all know will be retconned back to the status quo isn't to me.

None of you are taking into account the audience. Yeah, finding out Captain America was secretly a Nazi was a shocking twist to a readership who, on average, was around 12 years old, and still naive enough to think something like that would possibly stick.

The majority of today's readers, however, are on average, probably in their 30s. They have slightly more sophisticated tastes, having grown up reading comics like Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Sandman, etc. On top of that, they know that none of these reboots, or shocking twists will ever stick.

Comic book publishers are in a precarious position. "Creators" are hesitant to come up with new characters and stories, because artists and writers lose all ownership under the work-for-hire system, and the publishers themselves can't permanently kill off a character or making drastic permanent changes because they don't want to risk losing their copyright or merchandising possibilities.

This is why in recent years we've got so many large scale What If?/Elseworlds-type of stories occurring in the regular monthly issues. Writers are reduced to using these shocking "twists" to maintain the remaining 40k readers they still have, and then pad it out for two years. Look at DC's big push: they've announced they're reintroducing the same characters they've been publishing non-stop since the 1940s (pre-New52 Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc), and incorporating characters from a comic book that's been in print, non-stop since the 1980s (Watchmen).

The mainstream superhero genre offered by the Big Two is incredibly limiting in its storytelling potential.


This is why it's not that fun for me as an adult to continue reading these books. Nothing that occurs in these comics has any real significance to the story, everything is retconned either by the end of the story, or when a new creative team gets on board.

I think you nailed one of the big problems at DC and Marvel. Established writers and artists don't want to create new IP for those companies and so we get an endless recycling of old characters. They save all their best ideas for their own creator-owned books unless they are being paid big time like Geoff Johns.

What Marvel and DC should do is offer huge financial incentives if a newly created character makes it to movies or television.

Bingo.

This isn't just a shocking cover blurb like in the late 60's and 70's, this is a continuing storyline that's supposed to be real - and then they'll undo it later.

It's a contrived stunt. Rather than focusing on good stories, great art, and solid action scenes Marvel has (as has D.C.) relied on the retconning and rebooting their series time and again to the point where nothing is real. None of the stories mean anything, none of them have a lasting impact.

My time with comics was done when Marvel allowed the classic stories of Amazing Spider-Man 148-150 to be undone. No, Peter wasn't the survivor, he was really the clone. And then then undid that a couple years later. It's impossible to keep up with what is real and what is a swerve. As such, nothing in the comics matters anymore. Nothing has impact because no one believes any of it is real (within the lasting continuity of the comics universe - because there is no lasting continuity anymore).

So, congratulations to Marvel Comics - they took the greatest Superhero comics company and flushed it down the toilet, and a new generation of writers and artists keep on plunging to make sure it all goes down!

Of course all Marvel and DC has to do is give creators some stake in their creations, but they've gone decades treating their writers and artists like hired hands and they make so much money off of their existing characters that it's not worth it to them.

At this point, with cartoons/animated films, TV shows, movies, and merchandising, the comic books are a minor part of the revenue stream for the big superhero names. Why would Marvel and DC want to share those profits with the people who create new characters for lowly comics?

I never read the original 1970s clone storyline but I remember when the Clone Saga started. Marvel insisted that the Spider-man I was reading about this entire time was a clone (and Marvel really did intend to have Ben Reilly be the real thing, because they felt that a married Spider-man was a turn off for younger readers). To prove it, they had Peter Parker do something un-Spider-man-like and knock Mary Jane across the room in anger, making the character now a physically abusive husband. I stopped reading at this time. After sales continued to tank they made Peter Parker the original again while also bringing back Norman Osborn. I read that issue in the supermarket when it came out. I don't know if Marvel had pulled one too many stunts with the character, or if I was just too preoccupied with girls at the time, but either way, I kind of just gave up on comic books.

Years later, I tried a couple issues of the JMS/JRJR run but stopped for some reason. Gwen getting knocked up by the Green Goblin, and Marvel retconning Peter and Mary Jane's marriage out of existence, as well as Harry Osborn's death, pretty much insures that I won't be buying a Spider-man comic anytime soon.

But you don't know that. That's my point.

I think Marvel has managed to steal the thunder of DC's Rebirth. The general public seems all pissed off with this reveal and I'm sure most aren't comic book readers. I'm guessing it's a win for Marvel.