Steve Rogers Should Punch Nazis, Not Be One
Steve Rogers’ first appearance was on the cover of his debut issue punching Adolf Hitler in the face. Ever since then, he, as Captain America, has stood as a character that stood for America. Sometimes, it was for America as it was, a severely imperfect imperialist power. At his best though, Rogers always stood for what America should be, even if it stood in direct opposition for what it was. It’s what the creators, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, intended for him. That all changed last year when Nick Spencer decided to make him a member of HYDRA.
For those who don’t know, HYDRA was created as the supervillainy arm of the Nazi Party in Marvel Comics, as if engineering genocide, using Zyklon-B, and attempting to bomb London into cinders wasn’t villainous enough. While the group has been retconned to be as old as humanity itself, its very presence is synonymous with Nazism within comics. As Jemma Simmons (played by the indomitable Elizabeth Henstridge) on Agents of SHIELD said this season, “For the record, HYDRA are Nazis. They’re all Nazis, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” Making Rogers a Nazi at all was a questionable story choice, but at least Spencer and Marvel could’ve written it off as him being brainwashed.
Instead, they doubled down and retconned Captain America Steve Rogers’ existence as a lie. He’s ALWAYS been a HYDRA agent, and the only reason why the Allies won World War II was because they found a Cosmic Cube and wished to erase the Axis/HYDRA victory. So not only was Rogers never a Nazi puncher, he’s only ever been on the side of good because of deus ex machina. What’s even more troublesome, however, is that in the lead-up to this “Secret Empire” storyline, several variant covers were released featuring major players, including this one:
Yep, that’s mutant liberation figure and recurring X-Men antagonist Magneto, shown as part of a story that revolves around HYDRA. Magneto, a villain who also was a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, in the periphery of a Nazi-affiliated villain group. How many red flags does that raise? Of course, Spencer has said publicly that he’s not in HYDRA, so who knows. Still, this event already has the fuckery of Rogers always having been a HYDRA supersoldier and now, according to people who’ve seen the Free Comic Book Day missives of Secret Warriors and the actual event comic, that HYDRA is rounding up Inhumans into internment camps, and that HYDRA Cap at the end of the actual event comic is seen as worthy enough to hold Mjolnir. You know who else saw themselves as worthy enough to claim Norse inheritance? THE FUCKING REAL LIFE NAZIS.
Granted, reasonable explanations can be had for all these story threads. I mean, judging a story before it’s even started can be dangerous. Maybe Captain America here is being shown as a cautionary tale of how easy it is for the US to fall into fascism like it seems to be doing now (even though it could be done without using a character created by Jewish World War II veterans being turned into Nazi symbology, one that is already being co-opted by White supremacist groups and one who’s always stood for what’s right even when it wasn’t seen as “American”). Maybe if Magneto really was joining HYDRA, it could be a fantastic allegory about Israel turning from makegood towards the Jewish people from the Holocaust into an apartheid state where its government brutally suppresses Palestinians.
However, are you going to give Nick Spencer and Marvel the benefit of the doubt? Spencer is on record as saying punching Nazis is bad, and his history writing the Sam Wilson Captain America comic has included a story where he fought a villainous group of college campus “social justice warriors,” a story that would make Richard Spencer and other neo-Nazi/White nationalist wonks froth with joy. Meanwhile, his bosses at Marvel have bemoaned the lack of comic sales and blamed it on “forced diversity,” even though, well, maybe other economic reasons are in play. I am not going to play the waiting game while edgelord dudes with no real inkling of caring about the feelings of real humans play Ricky Gervais WOT ARE YOU OFFENDED MATE with Jewish created characters to tell some muddled story that no one seemingly wants to read.
No matter what fake Vulcan-ass White dudes with money and authority want you to believe, being offended and getting mad are not bad things. Online discourse has poisoned the well to think that if you get offended or mad, you lose, when in reality, those things are your moral barometer. Sure, just because someone is offended doesn’t make them right, but it fucking sure does signify that a conversation needs to be had. Conversations, as it is, are what those in power don’t want to have. Fuck ’em. Make them uncomfortable enough that they have to talk to you.
It’s high time that these flippant content creators start feeling uncomfortable instead of them making marginalized folks feel the same. Maybe Nick Spencer, instead of appealing to the least common shock denominator like a more learned version of Vince Russo, can learn to write a good story in a similar milieu. Hell, the writers of Agents of SHIELD seem to have no problem doing that with its “Agents of HYDRA/Framework” story, and they’re dipping their pens in a similar inkwell. And I thought the network TV arm was supposed to be the black sheep of the Marvel media family. Strange.
