jayleeg:

I was wondering when a soldier was going to chime in on this whole mess…

I live in San Diego, California. A huge military city. And Cap is extraordinarily popular here. You can’t walk through Balboa Park without seeing at least a dozen Cap shirts. I’m not kidding. My daughter and I make a game out of counting them, whenever we’re out and about, something we started last year during SDCC to kill the time as my husband went through the Ash vs. the Evil Dead cabin line ten dozen times with the hopes of winning a t-shirt (we kept getting bottle openers and drink koozies – it was a raffle type thing).

Moreover my father was Air Force, my uncle, Marines. My uncle, a purple heart recipient now in his 80′s, is a huge Cap fan. So much of what the author of this article is discussing, how Marvel making Steve a Nazi effects the morale of soldiers, is so, so on-point and it’s a perspective that hasn’t been discussed too much yet. What the author of this article points out I’ve spoken about, at length, with my military friends who are also Cap fans. All of what he expresses here is an accurate representation of the overall sentiment.

Excerpt:

Full disclosure: I’m well-known in my circle for my deep love of Captain America. I loved Cap when I was a kid and his main appeal was the cool costume and shield. In my Army days, I would tag along on trips to the main base in hopes that one of the new cheesy-but-awesome special military edition Marvel comics was out. When the MCU got to Winter Soldier, I fell in love all over again from the way they portrayed Cap: torn between loyalties, faithful to his country but uneasy at the direction it’s taking and no longer sure what’s wrong or right.

A lot of my fellow veterans feel the same way. We feel this way because to us – to the military and to veterans – Captain America is one of us. Steven Grant Rogers is a symbol of every soldier who gives their all to a government that plays fast and loose with that loyalty.

You’ve taken Steve away from the vets, Marvel. Are you freakin proud of yourselves?! One thing they had to cling to, one thing they had to identify with and you took him from them (and after giving him to them with your special edition military Cap comics for years).

What’s more, the author of this article went to C2E2 to call Spencer out on this mess, and these were the types of comments he received…

I brought my concerns up at the C2E2 Secret Empire panel. Everyone hurried to reassure me that that wasn’t the intent. Nick Lowe, who is a sunshiney dude you could easily picture hanging out with on Read Comics In Public Day, told me his grandfather was a Vietnam veteran. Margaret Stohl explained at length about how offending veterans wasn’t the point and how it was about the growth of the character that mattered. Everyone swore the payoff in the end is worth it. Nick Spencer came in with a pointed statement along the lines of, “This isn’t Cap’s fault. There was nothing he could to do prevent this, he had no choice, it wasn’t his fault.”

That last part, spoken what felt like directly to me, actually made me feel better for a few minutes… until I sat on it for a while and realized that didn’t answer my problem. It was my problem. What Marvel meant to do doesn’t matter. What matters is that Captain America doesn’t have a choice. He’s a pawn, available for whoever wants to play with him and easily manipulated to do even the worst things in the name of his chief virtues. He is without autonomy in this arc. This is how people see soldiers – wind them up and they do whatever you want.

And honestly, f–k that.

No words.

Secret Empire #1 Puts Shock Value Above Soldiers And That’s A Problem – The Geekiary