I was reading some old Captain America stuff the other night. By old I mean somewhere in the 90’s, which I guess since I was created BEFORE the 90’s, I’m also old.
Have you ever considered how fucking old we’ll sound to our kids? Being born in the 19’s? That’s gonna add about 50 years.
I was reading these comics, and there was nothing wrong with them, but there was something missing. Something that’s always missing with Captain America.
And I think I figured it out.
As characters go, he’s boring. Not because he’s old-fashioned and shit. That I can work with. No, he’s boring for a lot of the reasons that other characters are exciting.
Okay, first thing. Captain America and Steve Rogers have no real reason to exist as separate entities.
Think about it. What is the essential difference between Captain America and Steve Rogers? What about the way they think and act is any different? I guess Steve Rogers can go out to the movies or something, but it seems like a big hassle to maintain a secret identity for that.
Let’s look at someone for whom the secret identity and hero identity are very different. Batman and Bruce Wayne. Batman is a crazy motherfucker driven by vengeance and…also more vengeance. Bruce Wayne is a millionaire playboy who holds a charity ball here and there, but for the most part doesn’t fight crimes or give a lot of sermons on upholding justice and crap like that.
One could certainly argue that Bruce Wayne really only exists to serve the Batman character. The only reason Bruce Wayne exists is to throw people off Batman’s trail, maintain the funding needed to continue Batman-ing, and to get a little extra inside info here and there. So while one persona feeds the other, they serve different purposes.
Now let’s consider a guy with only one persona. The Punisher. Frank Castle and The Punisher are different names for the same thing, as the Death Cab For Cutie Song says. I felt that referencing an indie group was appropriate when discussing the Punisher, just in case you weren’t sure how serious this all was.
His separate identity lost its usefulness, and he abandoned it. No backbending to convince people that Frank Castle isn’t the Punisher. Although I see potential here. That psychopath working in an office. He would make it all of three days before getting a scathing email for no real reason and deciding that his family may have been shot in the park all those years ago, but this was eating at the one little piece of a soul he had left.
So do we really need a Steve Rogers and a Captain America? More to the point, what stories are being told about Steve Rogers as opposed to Captain America?
It’s a sure thing that I’m not alone in cringing when we get a Steve-centric story. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good character story. There’s some great Wolverine stuff where the dude barely pops a claw. But Steve Rogers? Once in a while they’ll try to get him romancing some lady. I guess he’s a bit of a stale dude. But on the other hand, he’s something like 70 years old? He has no business going on the kinds of dates you go on in your 20’s. You know, the ones you look back on fondly and would never want to do again. Stargazing at 3 AM on a Tuesday. I can’t do that stuff anymore and I’m goddamn 30 and born 30 years ago. I can only imagine that when I’m 70, the types of dates a 20 year-old would want to go on would not only sound terrible, but they may actually do me physical harm.
The real problem with the dual identity, for me, is that the dude barely has enough identity to fill ONE personality.
Think about it. Try and come up with 5 character qualities of Captain America and Steve Rogers. Not circumstances they’ve lived through, not when they were born. Personality traits.
There are qualities. It’s not impossible. But are any of them interesting?
Look at the Thing from Fantastic 4. He feels hideous. And he also feels torn because in some ways, his hideous appearance has also allowed him to become something more than a normal dude. He has to make choices about looking like a normal man or staying an ugly rock monster, and it’s a choice that’s about self versus the rest of the world. That’s a big choice.
Captain America? His choice was whether or not to get injected with some shit and become the perfect man. How is that a choice?
A character made out of circumstances, it’s hard to tell real stories because all you can do is create obstacles. But the way he addresses those obstacles is going to be less interesting than the way most others would because they bring their own baggage to the job.
I have this saying I cooked up. Boss’ Dream, Reader’s Bed Time Story. Yeah, if I ran a shipping company, I’d want to hire all Steve Rogers-es. They’re never late, they’re loyal as fuck, and they get their work done. They clock out when they’re supposed to, and not once do they complain. But as a reader, I don’t want to read about that guy. I want to read about the guy who decides to start purposely running over wildlife in his truck while he drives because he’s that bored. I want to read about a guy who is delivering packages to his ex girlfriend’s house, and when he figures out they’re gifts from her new boyfriend he starts losing them and replacing the contents with other crap. Jesus, at least give me a Wolverine who the boss is always yelling at about smoking cigars in the truck.
I guess this is a long way of saying I’m not super excited about the new Captain America movie.
Iron Man was fun. And he was kind of an asshole. So there you go.
Thor was headstrong. That’s a real comic book word there, headstrong. I feel like I was more likely to hear someone saying, “Stop being a dick” than “You are too headstrong.”
Captain America? Well, he throws a shield good as shit.