Franchise Fatigue (3)

Sam Wilson first appeared in the Captain America comic book as long ago as 1969: when it was still being directly written by Stan Lee. The two of them rapidly became partners; and the comic was called Captain America and the Falcon (on the cover, if not in the indica) from 1971 to 1978. A young black guy scripted by a middle-aged Jewish guy was always going to be problematic: the Falcon found it hard not to begin sentences with “Well, as a black man in modern day America, I…” But the writers’ hearts were generally in the right places. Steve Rogers personified World War II and the Greatest Generation; Sam personified the America of civil rights and racial equality. If superheroes are symbols then “a partnership between a negro and a caucasian” is a pretty good symbol of 1960s liberal America. And he was never obliged to go by the name of Black Falcon. 

The idea that other people apart from Steve Rogers can take on the nom de guerre of Captain America goes back a long way. Fans can debate “how many canonical Captain Americas have there been?”: but we can all agree that William Naslund and William Burnside took over the role in the late 40s and 50s while Steve Rogers was missing presumed frozen; that Roscoe Simmons and John Walker tried out for the job in the ’70s and ‘80s when Steve was undergoing his bi-annual crisis of faith; and the newly resurrected Bucky took up the shield in 2007 after Steve’s death. (SPOILER: He got better.)

This stuff happens because it’s cool and interesting. Thor has been an alien horse and a frog, as well as a lady. In movie-land, where actors get older and want to move on to new projects, it’s a commercial necessity. The custodians of the Marvel Cinematic universe could have gone down the path of replacing Sean Connery with George Lazenby and hoping that no-one noticed. It could, indeed, have created an endless stream of not very closely related Captain America movies with an inconsistent cast. But having decided that all the Marvel Movies are part of one very long story, it was inevitable that Steve Rogers and Tony Stark would fade away and new Captains America and Iron Men would arise. 

In 2015, comic book Steve Rogers had his super-soldier powers removed [SPOILER: He got better]. And so finally his best friend Sam got a turn at being Captain America. Previous incumbents didn’t advertise the change-over to the general public—the whole point of William Burnside is that everyone thought he was the original Cap. But the All New Captain America had an all new costume—a combination of Old Cap’s and the Falcon’s threads. 

The film universe reflects this development, with Sam refusing to take the Super Soldier Serum and relying on his flying suit and robot drones to beat the bad-guys. I guess that the multiverse meta-plot is building to a total reboot of the universe, and we will eventually have a new series of films in which new actors get bitten by new radioactive spiders, discover new hammers in new caves and get injected with new experimental anti-Nazi steroids, and the whole thing reboots again in, say, 2048. When we’ll all be dead, or at any rate, incredibly bored. 

Anyone saying that they have made Captain America into a black man as part of some nefarious DEI initiative is not only a Nazi who wants punching, but also terribly ignorant of comic book history.

Superheroes are symbols. Captain Democracy fighting Captain Commie with the Mighty Shield Of Liberty is not that far removed from Sir Purity riding out from Castle Chastity to fight the Dragon of Lust. If allegory isn’t to your taste, Captain Democracy can be a real person with a real personality who consciously knows he is role-playing a symbol for the benefit of his adoring fans. But wandering around in a spandex romper suit is not a particularly naturalistic thing to do. 

You may think that I am making a circular argument here. You may think that “all superheroes are symbols” only works if you say that “costume wearing enhanced-individuals with no particular symbolic subtext don’t count as superheroes”. I am cool with you thinking that.

In 1953, while Steve Rogers was still deep frozen, a substitute hero, the aforementioned William Burnside, went into action as, er, Captain America Commie Basher. In 1972, he came out of cold storage and fought Original Cap on the White House Lawn. He was working for a corrupt president, definitely not called Richard, who turned out to be (if I am remembering this correctly) an evil robot. Our Steve quit in disgust, temporarily becoming Nomad, the Man Without a Country. I think that is the sort of at right-angles to reality symbolic political cartoon strip allegory that I’d like to see more of. I am pretty surprised they’ve never introduced 1950s anti-commie Cap into the MCU. [*]

I’ve been reading some old 1970s comics. The Defenders, as it happens, one of the second wave of Marvel comics that came along after Stan Lee ceased to be actively involved. It was sometimes billed as a non-team: Doctor Strange used to call together the Silver Surfer, the Sub-Mariner and the Hulk whenever the world needed saving: they were good friends but had no formal team affiliation. Which meant that writers could play around with an endless stream of guest stars and crossovers. Maybe Daredevil is in it this month and the Son of Satan next month.There are frequent footnotes which say “It happened in the last issue of the Hulk’s own magazine” or “See Daredevil #123, still on sale if you hurry.” 

At one point, Steve Gerber was writing both the Defenders and Marvel Two In One, and didn’t shy away from threading storylines from one comic to the other and back again. He also had the Son of Satan gig and accidentally created Howard the Duck. I pay Marvel Comics some money every month so that every Marvel Comic there has ever been can pop up on my I-Pad at the push of a button; so it is trivially easy, if rather time consuming, to read every single relevant episode. In the actual 1970s that would have been all but impossible, even if you had an infinite supply of pocket money. Comics came into shops in random piles and when they were gone they were gone. Which made them significant, precious objects to be read and reread until their resale value was diminished beyond repair. 

Today-Fans get quite agitated if they are trying to read the Whole Canon and find that a story alludes to material they haven’t got access to. But I think in the 1970s the idea that the story spread out across many different comics and no-one could reasonably be expected to read all of it was part of the aesthetic. That, is, after all, how life works: Duncan’s story overlaps with mine insofar as we are both in Miss Griffiths’ class; but I don’t know that Duncan has quarrelled with Brett because we go to different Scout groups. At no point does Steve Gerber rely on you knowing extra-textual information. Daredevil might conceivably say “I can’t save the world with you today, Doctor Strange, because I am trying to bring down the Purple Prune’s crime empire, asterisk, footnote, see Daredevil issue twenty three, best wishes, Rhetorical Roy, end footnote” but those things were never crucial plot-points. The Marvel Universe was young and a lot of the characters were meeting for the first time. Luke Cage could say “Sweet Christmas, who is this Thor cat of whom you jive?” and Doctor Strange would bring us all up to speed. 

But increasingly there is So. Much. Marvel. Universe. And so much data. So much revision. Echo, on the TV, about a deaf Native American who can talk to her ancestors and has previous with the Kingpin. Have we seen her before? Was she in that Hawkeye one I remember quite liking, the Christmas before the Christmas before the Christmas before last? I distinctly remember liking Wandavision, possibly in that era where we didn’t go to work and wore masks and were only allowed out of the house once a day? That was the one which starts out as a Bewitched skit and turns out to be kind of a Marvel Universe version of the Prisoner, only with in-jokes? I am pretty sure that Agatha Harkness was in it, and I am pretty sure that she was in the last Doctor Strange movie three years ago and I distinctly remember when someone of that name was Franklin Richard’s nanny. Agatha All Along seems to be working pretty well as a mystical road movie, nodding its head to American Gods. (Can we still mention American Gods?) The relationship between the witch and the very mysterious kid is rather cool. But I keep having the urge to freeze frame and find out if the next character they meet on The Road is someone I am meant to have heard of. 

And sometimes it matters. I was disappointed with Marvels (the movie) because it seemed to reduce the very believable Kamala and her very believable family into components in a big superhero computer game; where I really wanted three more seasons about schools and mosques and conventions and town planning. But a lot of the time I was simply lost—why is it funny that the cat has tentacles? and what is the other Captain Marvel’s backstory again? And I have watched all this stuff. Me and sofa-buddy pretty much abandoned Loki Season II which seemed to be impenetrable without going back and watching Loki Season I all over again. Which we didn’t quite feel inclined to do. 

I don’t wish to intrude on private grief. I have taken a leave of absence from Doctor Who, but someday I will come back to it… Yes, I shall come back. But the threatened Russel T Davies “Marvel Universe Style” Cinematic Whoniverse would kill my interest irrevocably.

[*] This was a very complex retcon: there had really been a 1950s Captain America comic in which Captain America really fought communists; and then-writer Steve Englehart wanted to incorporate that into official canon despite Captain America having been doing his Rip-Van-Winkle routine all through the 50s. The 1950s Cap wasn’t actually named as Burnside until 2010.

This is the third part of a long-form article. Join my Patreon to read the whole thing right now.

patreon.com/rilstone