Captain America, a character created by two Jewish Americans to be a beacon of hope with an almost immovable sense of duty and honor, has now been revealed as a Hydra-Nazi sympathizer/secret agent all these years.
Talk about writing yourself into a corner Marvel.
This twist is akin to finding out that Brother Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. was a secret KKK member.
Of course, the obvious move it that Steve Rogers joined as a child and has been a "member" his whole like as a reminder of how bigotry, racism, and hatred can seduce any person...regardless of how "good" they appear to be.
An excerpt from Time magazine's interview with Marvel executive editor Tom Brevoort:
How long has this been in the works?
Almost since the beginning of when Nick started writing the Captain America titles, which would have been the end of 2014. So right around there the conversations first started about this. It’s been in the works for more than a year.
What does this mean for the Marvel Universe?
It means on the most fundamental level that the most trusted hero in the Marvel universe is now secretly a deep-cover Hydra operative, a fact that’s really only known to the readers and to him. That makes every interaction he has with anyone take on a second layer, a second meaning.
In the comic the Red Skull of Hydra talks about “criminal trespassers” who “make a mockery” of America’s borders and calls the refugees in Germany an “invading army” bringing “fanatical beliefs and crime” to Europe. Obviously, this hate speech is nothing new for the organization, but it sounds like rhetoric we’ve been hearing this election. Is that purposeful?
We try to write comics in 2016 that are about the world and the zeitgeist of 2016, particularly in Captain America. Nick Spencer, the writer, is very politically active. He’s a Capitol Hill head and following this election very closely. So we can talk about political issues in a metaphoric way. That’s what gives our stories weight and meat to them. Any parallels you have seen to situations real or imagined, living or dead, is probably intentional but metaphorically not literally.
Popular culture is politics and politics is popular culture. It would seem that even Captain America is powerless to resist the zeitgeist allure of Donald Trump and the ascendance of Trumpmania.
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