Commentary: America Rises Again

February 5th, 2008 | by admin |

Original Post here: Snikkkt!

Welcome back, Cap. Well, sort of. Marvel Comics brought Captain America back to its pages this past week after almost a year of the character’s inactivity. It’s good to see the Sentinel of Liberty is back in action, even though the alter ego behind the character is no longer the beloved Steve Rogers, but instead his old sidekick, Bucky Barnes has taken the reins.

If you don’t know what happened to Steve Rogers last year, you’ve probably been living under a rock. It didn’t take a geeky comic book nerd to notice the storm of media coverage when Captain America himself was killed and taken from the pages of Marvel Comics after 66 years. In case you were under a rock, I’ll give you a quick rundown.

As anyone who has taken a Comics as Literature course (or who is just a plain dork such as myself) will tell you, comic books usually have some sort of underlying socio-cultural meaning. When Marvel decided to kill off Captain America, they did so amidst what they dubbed Civil War in the Marvel Universe — it was a fight between civil liberties and national security. Editor Joe Quesada wanted to ask the question, “Which is more important?”

That’s where the death of Captain America came in. Two rounds to the chest killed off Steve Rogers, a true American hero, a character symbolic of all our great country stands for. America died. During a time when America was involved in a civil war in the real universe, one between Muslim extremists where our servicemen and women do not deserve to be taking part and dying, Americans saw the symbolic death of their country in the funny pages. But there’s nothing funny about what it all means.

America’s honor and image around the world has taken one in the chest itself as we fight for people who refuse to quit fighting amongst themselves. We’re not defending America; we’re trying to force democracy in a place it doesn’t yet want to exist in the hearts and minds of stubborn extremists. Still, almost a year after Cap’s death, and five years after the start of the Iraq war, America is involved in that same civil war. Young American men and women die every day at the hands of maniacs who care more about their individual differences than they do establishing democracy. We’ve done all we can for the Iraqis, and we’ve lost our focus of finding Osama bin Laden and avenging the deaths of those lost Sept. 11. We’ve now lost many more American lives in Iraq than we lost that fateful day in 2001, so has the Bush administration not shot itself in the foot, so to speak? We’ve caused more Americans to die by responding inappropriately to the attack on our country. This is not to say we should not respond — but the response has lost its focus, and the plan was ill-conceived.

So what does the return of Captain America mean? Quesada hasn’t said as much about parallels between this momentous event and the current world situation, so I’ll put some words in his mouth. If Steve Rogers still rests at Arlington National Cemetery, but Bucky Barnes is able to take up the mantle of Captain America and give it new life, then perhaps there is new life coming to America that will bring an end to what has sent so many Americans to rest at Arlington in the real world.

The rise of Captain America can be interpreted as a symbol of the forward progress Americans can make this year. Voters must pressure candidates to be clear about their stance on Iraq and vote for the candidate who will end the war most quickly. As the character symbolic of real American values stands up to fight for peace, so must we as Americans. Stand up, grab your metaphorical vibranium shield, and head to the voter’s booth this November to vote for what is right.

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