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jonroxton · 7 years

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sooooo i’m reading n.sp3nc3rs supposed masterpiece that is captain america : steve rogers up to secret empire. here we go, #1-#6

couple things!

1. i’m a dc fan. all the way. it’s not that i dislike marvel comics. i don’t. i can’t. because i’ve never read a marvel comic in my life (wait, that’s not entirely true, i did try hawkeye when it was on comixology unlimited but i didn’t take to it). i very much dislike the mcu tho, barring three movies: incredible hulk, thor and iron man 3 (yea lol)

2. everything i know about the captain america mythos comes from the movies i watched once and fandom osmosis. here’s what i remember: steve volunteered to become a super soldier. he loves bucky barnes for some reason. hydra was created by nazis and the red skull. a tesseract???

3. this little reading project is to satiate my curiosity as a (dc) comics reader who is honestly baffled. marvel seems to think any publicity is good publicity and they keep pushing the hydra thing and i don’t get it. at all. spencer is defending this story on the merits of its narrative so i want to see what great tapestry he’s weaved that validates turning steve into a symbol for nazism. apparently this is not an elseworld story, where Hero Goes Bad stories are common, but part of the main continuity and, he said, not a retcon.

4. i used to only read horror comics and for my superhero faves, superman and batman, stuck only to self contained arcs and elseworlds. ongoings always freaked me out because there was just TOO much to sift through and too many events. rebirth came right on the boot heels of batman v. superman and they were starting from (kinda) scratch, with a #0 book to reintroduce the dc universe for (somewhat) new readers like myself that were intimidated by the vast dc history. they hoped, rightfully, that this would lead readers to follow their favorites without worrying about continuity (that much lol, the superman comic is wild ya’ll). this starting from 0 intrigued me and well, it’s a year later and now i have a comics budget for superman and wonder woman comics. all that to say, CA: SR begins at 1 and my only expectation is that i won’t be totally lost. since this is similar event to possibly lure new readers.

5. so am i lured? um, yea. i am. but i’m not paying for this and i’m going into this arc with the controversy and Shit Spencer Has Said clouding every moment. i also have dc bias that’s been getting strong since becoming a dceu fan (anti dc people are fucking assholes). i just want to be able to read about this and go: i’m informed and know my opinion on it.

6. i was spoiled for the last page of the first issue, the infamous steve lines “Hail Hydra” and have been ???? ever since. I also know that Secret Empire revealed that the Nazis were supposed to win all along, or something to that effect. This naturally has an effect on how I read issue one, but that is literally ALL i know. oh and something about a little girl. the story content itself none of hte articles i read mention what actually happens. this is another factor into my wanting to read this. what IS the story that is being criticized.

ok here we go!

Captain America: Steve Rogers #1

whoa that sounds cool. i live for transdimensional madness. but i also gage from this that after all that went down, things went back to the status quo. not unusual in comics. but since i know steve says hail hydra in the end, then this is just plain old comic fuckery. in dc rebirth (i won’t mention is so much i promise) so far the people performing some of the fuckery appear and tell us there is fuckery about to be performed. rebirth itself is a gigantic neon sign that says: HERE BE FUCKERY and the ride so far has been a lot of fun. this? this is plain old audience manipulation lol

this is interesting. she saves sarah rogers from her abusive piece of shit husband. and it’s one of the first instances of heroism steve witnesses. flash to present with steve kicking ass. stopping a train from doing something idk what yet.

she is? i did not know this! i mean i know the movies pushed this but i didn’t care lol

ok spencer needs to be fired for this alone

introducing robbie dean. feel bad for him. had a tough life. thennnnnn?

all sympathy lost.

“falling” in with white supremacy sounds like accidentally fucking an apple pie.

he loses a girlfriend to drugs. tries to get clean himself. is hopeless. spence tries to invoke even MORE sympathy when robbie can’t get a job bc of his nazi tattoos, and i WOULD be sympathetic to that if robbie was contrite or he was coerced. he’s not and he wasn’t. he’s passive but these are all choices he’s made. then a friend tells him about a ~meeting. and it’s presented as a sort of last hope. but it’s really just red skull in a bad suit, saying everything alt-righters have been saying for months. the narrative is kinda weirdly romantic about it.

again, although robbie is choosing to follow these people, he comes off as passive. these are things that happened to him instead of things he’s a part of bc he willingly joined them. ugh.

it sucks that groups such as hydra (and in rl) take advantage of destitute addicts and people who are lost, but these are all still choices and robbie continues to make them, over and over and over, panel after panel

this is... really terrible, writing wise. the panel that set this little life piece off is robbie watching A LOT of tv while his parents fought. i’m not exactly sure what the connection is, since television was first framed as a GOOD example of escapism. this? this is not escapism. it’s flat out terrorism and robbie is again choosing it, though the narrative still frames him as passive and unwanting. which is. fucking terrible writing lol. at no point is robbie threatened by hydra to do any of this. these are all choices.

this is fugly art. and banter? i guess lol.

jack flag and free spirit are int heir own adventure. and they were out of the loop i guess bc

freudian slip, spence?

this all feels really cheap tbh.

unbelievably, incredibly cheap. he just shrugged his way through a racist terrorism group. and now i’m supposed to feel bad for him?

yup. we’re supposed to feel bad.

i’m kind of questioning if my empathy is askew here. the situation is awful, i feel THAT, but i can’t bring myself to feel sorry for this character. the pages that recount his history don’t show me someone coerced into being a terrorist. robbie literally walked right into it. he was sad about it, but he still walked right in and there’s no nuance in the writing. he doesn’t hesitate. he doesn’t do shit. except keep going.

i think it’s supposed to be ~deep but really it just reads like ~Not All Hydra

is sharon supposed to be older than steve?

oh ok. here’s one of the bits of being lost i knew was coming.

“people fall apart and get let astray” is the sum total of why robbie joined hydra and committed atrocities. that’s just plain terrifying perspective. it’s basically saying that anyone in robbie’s position of having nothing has the potential to become hydra if simply directed towards them. not you know, people choosing to become part of something so despicable. yes, it’s what happens sometimes, but again, robbie continues to choose to be a part of it.

are they really going here? sarah rogers, a battered wife, i’m guessing doesn’t have much, is exactly the kind of prime hydra bait if we’re going by the robbie precedent and that’s fucked up. it’s very heavy handed Seeeeeee Anyone Can Be A Hyyyyyyydra and that’s a gross simplification of why people would join a cult-like group.

lol spence name dropping jezebel. this panel is such a Here’s An Update On What U Missed. I appreciate it if just for the exposition. It doesn’t feel natural tho lol. the art is very uninspiring gotta say. the panel layouts boring.

spence is having his cake and eating it too i see

omg sharon and maria hill argue some more and steve comes in and is like: i knew to come late bc u two always fight. and maria literally says: she started it. when the panels imply that maria was doing some fucked up things and was some kind of badass queen of badass, borderline villain (????). u know how u get me to not care what any character says, by having them say she started it. like that lol

hydra factions? oh man, i thought marvel’s hydra boner was an exaggeration but nope. so this faction is made up of really shitty looking villains. and even they say it. also zemo mentions like five times he wants the cosmic cube, after maria hill just told us that he escaped with kobik? a sentient cosmic cube. he really wants the cosmic cube i think spencer is trying to tell me.

they’re gonna retcon this whole retcon.

ugh sarah rogers was recruited to hydra. she took steve to a meeting. and apparently we’re experiencing the dimensional ripples of that. i think.

the transdimensional madness to explain this is too much for me lol.

since the cosmic cube is involved it means they can retcon this whenever they want really.

also. the way spence and those on his side react like there’s no real world relevance to this, like it won’t have an affect, is just plain weird.

he’s using straight from their mouths alt-right rhetoric and as a plot device and uniting narrative thread to bolster Steve’s arc, with Robbie, using the very serious act of suicide bombers to garner reader sympathy for hydra agents, something Steve is now. But doing the bare minimum in regards to their motivation. i can’t imagine the complex series of events that leads someone to put on a bomb vest and kill themselves while taking dozens of people with them. spence literally boils it down to: he had a tough life. the entire backbone of this arc is: he had a tough life. and like i said it feels hella fucking cheap.

Issue #2

--Nick Spencer and Marvel’s Hydra Boner, which I’m gonna abbreviate to MHB from now on.

red skull waxes poetic about the cuuuuube and how it’s in the form of a little girl. and this mostly goes over my head bc 1) children don’t scare me and 2) is a cosmic cube a tesseract from the movies? because if it is then i’m gonna lol through all of this. the movies made me not give two shits about the glorified macguffin.

MINE I TELL YOU MINE! lol

this is a flashback issue btw, all in nazi red skull’s pov.

if steve’s shield can break a cosmic cube, then what is the point? the cubes powers are undefined and so is useless to me as a narrative device. it literally means anything can happen with it

just cuz u use the word hubris. doesn’t? make? it? hubris? the thing broke. the next logical step is to secure the pieces bc it’s obviously still functioning and this IS the cosmic cube, what is apparently the most powerful thing evarrr (that can break into pieces lol). the next step after that is for scientists to study it. it’s not hubris. it’s fucking a to z logic.

so the cosmic cube created (itself?) into a girl bc?

just bc?

maria hill offer selig? selvig? idk his name yet, a job and

lol same

lol what?

welllll too much potassium kills you so idk what this means. one of those i’m totally lost moments lol

just as a personal preference for stories, i don’t care about evil kids. like i said, i’m not afraid of children. children aren’t scary. they’re innocent, regardless of anything they do. their behavior is learned. learned. and in fiction, usually, it means possession of some kind.

i’m also weirded out by the Too Powerful For Her Own Good trope. And this is both wrapped up in one. Because by putting that much power into a child-like body, then the automatic response is sympathy and innocence. The child is given an out because children cannot choose for themselves. Even if it isn’t a child, the visual element of the child being naturally evokes sympathy.

this is why it’s ~shocking~ when fictional psycho kids so psycho shit, because their innocence is a given. because unlike robbie, things happen to kids and they have no control.

Aka a fucking gimmick.

one good thing i learned tho:

so with what i remember of the mcu, this becomes 100x more interesting. if the cubes/tesseracts are self aware then it means it’s literally been fucking up the mcu just because lol sorry i just really don’t like the mcu lol

spence projecting all over the place lol

this is so bizarre. a powerful being (the most powerful? idk) is being manipulated by a nazi without a nose (y is he called red skull? his face is just fine lol)

red skull is planning all this with the little girl cube’s help.

omg what is this?

i think this is suppose to be sinister cute. like awww isn’t it fucked up. but it’s just weird lol.

yeah it’s a gimmick. it’s all one big joke. kobick can manipulate anybody and change their reality and she’s making everyone Hydra. this is one big MHB marketing joke. making everything hydra inthe universe and trying to make everything hydra in our reality and the mcu universe. that shit about having comic shop workers where the logo? yeeeeah. it’s a joke.

cue on snare drum lol

MHB really went all out here lol. Hydra Is real ya’ll. All over. The ACTUAL truth.

blerg

so that pleasant hill thing (with Maria HIll! OH i get it! lol) was all red skull with kobick’s help.

i just gotta ask this: who the fuck would fuck red skull? rhetorical i mean. i know there are people out there who’d fuck him. also red skull has a daughter! holy shit! but someone fucked him and had a baby girl and now that baby is a woman who works for him. i want to read that story lol

red skull apparently disguised himself as a priest (another innocuous presentation, like kobick the little girl) and manipulated shit inside pleasant hill.

red skull and kobick were behind everything. and that’s whatever.

they’re pretty much laying out the grounds for a retcon. everything that is happening is potentially irrelevant. there are no stakes.

there is no tension for me anymore.

Issue #3

so the art so far has been waaaaay uninspiring but holy shit this variant is dope!

i never thought i’d say this (I DO NOT CARE about jl’s mystique) but holy shit is mystique in this?! not yet! but here’s more positive hydra imagery!

i don’t give two shits of captain america but this is fucked

also the hydra logo makes no fucking sense but i’m sure i’m not the first to say. shouldn’t they be called The Octopus Clan or something? getting their eight fucking hands into fucking everything lol. that logo is so dumb.

u don’t say!

so steve crashes the plane that has zemo and selvig and now he’s responding directly to red skull.

all this zemo stuff reminds me that i forgot literally everything that happened in CA: Civil War the movie.

so sharon is looking for steve and come across some villains

blerg marvel h umor. i get having one or two or even tree sympathetic villains. but hydra is being humanized up the fucking ass so far. the crappy villains at the end of #1 were all unwilling and blerg about being villains. and now this?

get it! cuz she’s old!

just putting this here bc it’s the first time so far the art has illicit any emotion from me.

this issue is really about cementing the fact that steve is hydra now. we don’t learn anything.

steve is fighting his hydraness. that’s good. he fought jack flag and it was framed like steve killed him, but nope jack is alive.

there are no consequences

Issue #4

this is a civil war 2 tie in. nope not reading any more marvel than this lol also, in the preview:

they really love this arc tho

another flasback that has sarah being nervous and cagey. something’s happened and she’s packing and she wants to leave. heavily implied she’s not with the hydra shit any more. she’s probably gonna be killed.

red skull ordered steve to kill selvig and steve doesnt’ want to bc hydra factions and then he’s like do you know what it took to secure this lab? he took it from someone called Ghost, and Ghost is protected by semi sentient giant gorillas!

i love monsters so this is all very ok witih me lol

steve kills all of them and has ghost initiate something. also ghost dr. whatever calls steve a capitalist and then an imperialist and spence, u need a dictionary. steve says something about their plans finally happening, and selvig asks him about Shield. spence goes for more ~deepness with ~they’re going to destroy themselves.

and i believe it because wow maria hill is an asshole.

WHAT? lol spence what what?

she’s legit going I KNOW I COMMITTED TREASON BUT IT DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER RIGHT NOW lol and at the same time calling everyone in the position above her idiots and essentially telling them that she can blackmail them if she wants. i’ve learned more about maria hill in these what three appearances she’s made so far than in any of the mcu movies she’s been in. and i don’t like her in this so far. she’s antagonistic for the sake of being antagonistic but it doesn’t work bc she’s also very fucking right lol.

sharon goes to washington to get a bill passed to fight against hydra. but yea, this is not like a forewarning or anything lol. it’s not like steve’s hydra and intimately connected to shield lol

this new hydra???

sharon’s proposition is basically a surveillance and spy state that can turn into a dictatorship under the right circumstances. only difference is she’s american. she name drops captain america.

you see that? it’s a mile away but it’s there lol

spence getting meta on me. so like the only alternative to this oft repeated storyline is... to... rewrite history so everyone is hydra? that’s the BEST u can come up with?

this is so blerg bc (a) character is built by actions and actions require choices. if you remove the choice, then whatever action the character does is meaningless and the character can be anything. we’re all victims of time and circumstance eliminates any and all blame and consequence.

this is just a werid transition. steve almost killed jack, and now he’s very much alive bc as established, no consequences. going to this just reminds me of that and oooh what if he wakes up? is a question i guess. also is spence really just knocking pots together screaming this is all can be undone.

friendly reminder, marvel and mcu, COMICS AND MOVIES ARE VISUAL MEDIUMS .one of main reasons i dislike the mcu so much is that every fucking scene is full of quips and gags and i can never settle into the world before someone slaps my knee with a fucking Har-Har GET IT joke. thankfully it’s not as bad in this comic so far, but that’s bc spence has a terrible sense of humor.

i mean intentionally his humor is whatever, unintentionally spence is meta madness lol.

ummmm. well. i think i get it now. red skull, with kobik, is turning shield agents into hydra one at a time , eventually working up to change the whole universe into hydra. which is not complicated. just blerg as hell.

seeeeee. how are you so tone deaf you manage to be meta?

bucky is in space with a team fighting aliens and kobik shows up.

MINE MIIIIIIIIIIINE

since this splash page has a lot of heroes i’m guessing this is the part of civil war 2. and that is also about a cosmic cube! right pleasant hill was technically a hyper super cube. idk. this just reminds me why i avoided ongoings before i started rebirth. this issue obviously doesn’t need to tie in to civil war 2, but they stamp the title on it and expect everyone to buy it. superman just did too and it made me blerrrrrg. why do they think fans download everything?

welp

how would this make steve committed to hydra? wouldn’t this just make him hate them more? this brainwashing and character tropes 101, spence

oh man spence is going all out with this. it’s so fucking weird. i keep thinking, because just as a reader i’m really uncomfortable with this and i don’t even care about captain america. what if dc had done this to superman, in the main continuity turned into a nazi, and his creators kept saying it WASN’T a retcon, even though there’s a walking talking time manipulator int he story, and the arc is LONG and continuous and extremely sympathetic to him As A Nazi. What if Superman was word vomiting this fucked up Manifest Destiny rhetoric? I would be fucking scared, tbh. Bc this is not a story in a vacuum. Right now, this story is hella relevant... to the alt-right. And that’s fucking terrifying ya’ll.

so this issue ends with steve wanting to kill the red skull because Not All Hydra. a whole issue to tell us that.

Issue #5

this is fucked. again, children are innocent. they’re making steve a victim. making his choices not count because he is manipulated and brainwashed. MAKING HIM AND HYDRA SYMPATHETIC ugh.

spence’s writing talent:

this is like back to back too, not like it took a whole issue to explain how we get from one point to the next. so this is a wax poetic tie in to civil war 2

but i bet nothing changes.

this issue is steve and selvig working around an inhuman who can see into the future. there’s talk of gamma radiation. sooooo. they’re gonna pull a watchmen to cover their tracks i’m guessing.

and now a few pages later with more civil war 2 stuff that idk about, they say the exact opposite.

oh shit i didn’t realize this was still a flashback!

and yup. hydra is splitting off from red skull.

literally Not All Hydras Are Nazis omg.

comic death! ooh will that stick?

Issue #6

continues to be fucked

death was a fake out, surprise! also the irony of tony stark yelling at carol danvers for bringing in a spiderman child into a war. lol.

this is only interesting bc steve is double agent now. nothing he says can be trusted. he calls out tony for possibly drinking again, and well, it doesn’t fucking matter. he’s a hydra agent. there’s no possible way for him to have the moral high ground here uggggggh

a) yup steve was manipulating tony into being pissed i guess

b) this suit looks like latex

c) I CAN’T EVEN lol

ok so this rick tech guy name drops tv shows and movies every time he’s around. except he literally just name drops them. that’s not a reference, spence. it’s like if someone in a movie yelled out: WOOHOO JUST LIKE IN DIE HARD! instead of saying yippi-ki-ay.

lol what an asshole

is spence trying to convert readers?

another weird thing i noticed: spence’s writing is whatever bland EXCEPT when he has hydra people making speeches. they’re all clear and no backtracking and no dumb jokes. basically, there’s a lot of EFFORT put into this rhetoric and yikes.

ya’ll need to see leah remini’s show about scientology and some of her interviews. she says that when she was a teenager this exactly what they told her, and she believed for so long because she honestly thought she was going to save the world. this is cult brainwashing bullshit. and it’s being presented in a sympathetic light.

like i get maybe doing this for a 6 issue arc, but holy shit this shit is just starting!

#mystuff #long post #VERRRRY long post #not tagging this with anything #i'm not a ca fan #i'm not a mVrvel fan #this is just me reading this to see what the fuck is going on #and if anyone else is curious #i'll be doing it like i did the jw ww script #reading chunks at a time

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