What is Marvel Doing to Captain America this Week?

There is a certain comfort to be found in having no hope whatsoever.  

Stoicism as a philosophy has its place because there are some things that you simply have no power to change. You can rage against the rising of the tide, or you can accept it but I assure you it will make no difference at all to the tide either way.  I am not saying be a fatalist and that the motherboard will work whether it’s plugged-in right or not because Allah wills it.  What I am saying is that Stoicism allows for a greater focus of effort on the things that you can and indeed should change.  Strive with all your might for a few percentage points of difference if that is all efforts will allow.  If little “w”s are all that is available to you then go get them and don’t stop until you do.

However, there are some walls that you can’t climb over or breakthrough.  

Marvel comics is one of those.  

Marvel is a lost cause, there is no hope for it while Disney owns it.  I had stated with perfect conviction last year, that Marvel Comics was going to be closed down and its characters licensed out to third-party creators, with just a few brand managers overseeing their work at Marvel.  I was hoping that some of the new guys would be ones who loved the characters and would make decent Marvel Comics again.  

I was approaching this from the direction of, “it makes good business sense.”  And from a business perspective, there is absolutely no reason to keep Marvel Comics around in its current form.  The comic shop market is only surviving in America because there was never a Blockbuster Video of comic book shops.  Their Mom-and-Pop nature is what has kept them going, those shops that have survived were able to adapt just enough to meet local market conditions. 

But it doesn’t change the fundamentals.  The pamphlet form is dying as a market.  There are now two generations that have never taken an interest in it.  DC and Marvel did nothing to futureproof themselves.  And absurd YA vanity projects like Gotham High and I Am Not Starfire were something for the publishers to crow about to their friends, not a serious effort to win younger readers.

Webtoons are the future.  Anybody who is serious about this market knows that by now.

And Marvel doesn’t need to worry about any of that because it is Kevin Feige’s hobby business.  Market forces mean nothing when the biggest producer in Hollywood is protecting and your bottom line is a rounding error to your parent corporation.  Consequently, Marvel will continue to be run as an IP farm, even if the intellectual property in question is Louisiana swampland.  

Things won’t change at Marvel because they don’t have to.  And stoically speaking, there is nothing I can do to change that.  The problem is I was so determined to ignore Marvel that I’ve been deliberating avoiding the comedy goldmine that is the United States of Captain America.

Dragging this Woke incompetence is something that I can do.

Here’s the setup. Steve Rogers, Bucky, Sam and Walker set out on a road trip across America to find Cap’s stolen shield, in the new series The United States of Captain America.

“The United States of Captain America is written by Christopher Cantwell with art from Dale Eaglesham. In each issue, the pair will be joined by additional creative teams who will help introduce new characters in the Captain America role from across the United States. The series will see Captain America’s shield being stolen and him having to travel the country in order to find the culprit. Along the way, he’ll encounter a group called the “Captains,” people who take up the iconic hero’s role.”

The Captains are all excruciatingly horrifying caricatures of Steve Rogers.

Let’s take a look at them!

Here’s our old friend, Male Crack Whore Captain America.  He claims to fight for marginalized people but one look at him and you know in your deepest heart he just dresses that way to service a clientele with very specific tastes behind the dumpster in the back of Stuckey’s. 

I mean look at him, he appears to be about five foot nothing and weighs about a hundred forty pounds.  Fight for marginalized people?  Unless that involves rolling passed-out winos, I think the marginalized people are in for a pretty rough time of it. 

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Damn it, I should have kept some crack whore jokes in reserve.

From the state that brought you Joe Biden comes Nichelle Wright the Captain America of Harrisburg.  

She fights for the Underprivileged, which apparently now includes “tights privilege?” 

Folks are so poor in her ‘hood’ they can only afford one “pant.” Owning a pair of pants is an impossible dream for Nichelle’s people.  You can see the smoldering anger in Nichelle’s eyes when Whites go strutting around conspicuously rubbing their wealth in the faces of the poverty-stricken by wearing their “trousers.” Every rustle of their privileged, fabric-encased legs making her tree trunk thighs tremble with rage.  She remembers how her father looked when he died, his face an anguished reflection of his life of failure as he slowly shook his head while staring at his one bare leg.  

“Damn you Joe Biden! You’ll never know what you cost my Papa, Cornpop.”

Credit where it’s due. It does look like it would hurt if this one kicked you in shins.

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Meet Joe Gomez, the Captain America of the Casino floor. The champion of pit bosses and the bane of card counters and dice mechanics everywhere.  Joe is the secret terror in the hearts of railbirds looking to swipe a dealer’s hard-earned toke or pick a whale’s pocket.  A friend to any ploppy or pigeon just learning how to leave their kid college fund on the roulette wheel for the first time and an enemy to any disguised “gambler” in the Black Book trying to sneak into his carpet joint.  He fights for truth, freedom, and great comps for first-timers. His mortal enemy is the Tran Organization, which got him trouble with Gender Dysmorphia Captain America, who thought he’d said, “trans.”

“This kind of an outfit is like dress blues for Indians who are still serious about this stuff. You f***ing don’t wear it to street fight.”  – MSgt. James Redelk USMC (ret.) who wouldn’t stop laughing when I showed it to him, until I convinced him it was for real.

LAST

At least this one launders her costume.  

Meet Arielle “Ari” Agbayani, the Filipina Captain America of her college campus. 

Arielle is the only Captain America on this list that genuinely frightens anyone.  White male professors who don’t have tenure yet and made a joke she didn’t like.  The hot guy from Alpha Zeta, who turned her down for a date and now she’s gathering information from every single girl he’s broken up with. Her parents when she told them she is moving back in with them after graduation.

The funny thing about this girl is that when I look at her I can’t help but ask myself, what is tattooed on her left ass-cheek? Star or butterfly?

It’s gonna be one of them but which one?

There are two more of these vomitable creatures coming down the pipe.  I assume each one is going to be worse than the next.  There is a reason for that.  Marvel knows perfectly well no one will buy these comics.  The only reason these things have been created is so WE will roast them for it. They do this to make us talk about Marvel Comics. They are trying to convince themselves that we are still in a very sick relationship with Marvel long after we packed our bags and left.

We’ve moved on to things like Arktoons and this is the only way Marvel can still get our attention.

Okay, I’m done here.