The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1946: Captain America #7, May 1997

For information on stopping the spread of COVID-19, and on what to do if you are quarantined, have a look at the World Health Organization site.

 

 

 

 

Another shout-out today to Joe Phillips - if you didn't have a look at his website when I spoke about him last week, you really ought to. Just frickin' glorious art, and so fabulously gay!

I am dying to see a gay Captain America. Can you imagine the ruckus from the fanboys? There's an interesting moment in this comic, one that has played out in numerous Captain America stories from the past, in which Cap questions whether his allegiance is to a government or to a country. I wonder if the choice has to be muddied a bit with a third option: an ideal. It has always seemed to me that Captain America stands for the ideal of America, not the brutal, racist state that currently exists. But once we go back and interrogate the Founding Fathers and their notions a bit, can we even begin to talk about an "ideal" America? If disparity and inequality are baked in at the most fundamental, original levels, how does one go about dismantling that system? More likely, and more what we're seeing now, is the tearing the system down as unrecoverable, and starting again.

I am dying to see what happens, even more so than I am for a gay Captain America. But that's the thing, right? If Cap is to stand for the ideal of America, then he ought to be queer. And of mixed descent. Child of immigrants. The blond haired, blue eyed ubermensch is a bit Nazi ideal, really. In fact, were I to have my way, I think I'd rewrite Captain America as a team of individuals, or have it as an identity that floats from person to person, always where it is needed to right one of the injustices that have become the fabric of daily American life.

But seriously, go have a look at Mr. Phillips' work. It's so great.

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

Here's a few more things that I've written about Captain America.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 783: WildC.A.T.S. Annual #1, February 1998

Upon beginning to read this comic, I was very confused, and figured that I'd missed a previous issue or something. Not so. It's one of those times that James Robinson reminds us that he's actually a pretty good writer, Captain America v.2 notwithstanding, and that we've been dumped unceremoniously in media res into this little tale of mad aliens. And not the aliens you'd think. A virus is infecting all of the Kherubim and Kherubim hybrids on Earth, and right now Mr. Majestic (basically the Wildstorm Superman) is headed toward Earth, ostensibly to destroy it. Stormwatch holds him off on the Moon while the rest of the WildC.A.T.S. team searched for a cure. Oh, and various members start to lose it during the mission. Though it's maybe a bit of an old set-up, the way in which the story is pulled off lends it a sense of urgency that's fun to read.

Today's featured creator is Larry Stroman, penciller of today's comic. I will tell you the thing that leapt out at me immediately about Mr. Stroman's work: the women in the comic have...wait for it....*gasp*....varying body sizes! Rather than a Wildstorm Universe populated by supermodels, we actually have characters who look like they might need to wear size 8, or even 10, jeans. What gets me about this realization is how strange it looks, how much it actually stands out, when one is reading a superhero comic. We become, as readers, so trained as to what to expect from our comics that when we see something even slightly different, it's quite a marked difference. And for it to be something like this lets one recognize the "normalization" process that's been working on readers for decades within the hobby.

That aside, Mr. Stroman has a strange idea of what Voodoo's hair does. But, as his style is very stylized, one can look past such things as unrealistic depictions of hair.

To be continued.