And that is no small feat. I’ve never really cared for Cap, not because I thought he was a bad hero, I just always thought he was a bit… stale. Quite a bit like Superman, actually. The character itself I never found interesting, it was the way that they affected the characters around them that was interesting. Lex Luthor is interesting because of Superman. The way that Captain America influences other heroes in the Marvel universe was also interesting, take Iron Man for example. The problem with Cap is that all of his villains are all either neo-Nazis or actual World War II Nazis which, at this point, are played out and kind of boring. I’m not making light with the atrocities that Nazis have been responsible for, but as comic book or movie villains, they’re kind of played out and boring.
That said, Captain America: The First Avenger has pretty thoroughly changed my mind. Not that Nazis are interesting movie villains really, but that they do make for a good villain that is apologetically villainous, which, while not necessarily interesting, is a ton of fun. At a certain point, the villain doesn’t have to be tragic and the hero doesn’t have to be flawed. Sometimes the villain can be as evil as evil can be and want to conquer the world and it doesn’t have to be any more complex than that and the hero who is nothing but pure and selfless punches him in the face and wins and that can be tons of fun.
Sometimes you need someone to look up to.
Remember when that was enough when you were watching cartoons on Saturday morning when you were ten? I do, and it was awesome. The Good Guys were good because they were and the Bad Guys were bad because they were and that was enough. Sure, there’s some hidden depth with Cap because he was an genuinely good person who finally got everything he wanted and probably deserved only to lose his best friend and the woman he loved to wake up however many decades in the future and having to start from scratch, but then he joined the Avengers, gets used to the 21st Century, ends up with the daughter of the woman he loved (which is actually kind of creepy when you think about it) and everything is great for him again.
Basically, tragedy and complexity really aren’t a huge part of Captain America’s character (if people actually read my blog, I’m sure I’ll get lots of internet hate for that statement). He’s the big awesome Good Guy punching the big evil Bad Guy in the face and that is good enough. More than that actually, because reconnecting with my childhood sense of good and bad and having good win out in the end gave me this sense of glee that I haven’t felt in quite some time. Sure the dark edgy man fighting criminals from the shadows because his parents were murdered in front of him when he was a child is compelling and makes for good characters and good stories, but sometimes having two very simple paragons or good and evil fighting and knowing that good will win in the end is a good story too.
So relive your childhood for a minute and go watch Captain America: The First Avenger and reconnect with your childhood sense of right and wrong for a couple hours and be happy for it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go look up some Brubaker Captain America stories.
-WC
Captain America in Civil War was pretty awesome. Bendis and Brubaker managed to give him some real complexity and pathos…
I did enjoy Civil War, but the really interesting thing about Cap in that story (I only really read the main story, I’m more or a DC guy and didn’t have time to read 400 tie-ins) was his relationship with Stark. He was fighting against the Registration group because he was doing the right thing, because that’s what he always does. I haven’t read any of Brubaker’s run on Captain America, but I plan to rectify that soon.