Escaping the Grave

[colonel_green]

Three scans from Black Widow #5 and four from Captain America #609.


After defeating the arc's villain, things in Marjorie Liu's Black Widow story wrap up; included is a bit here that addresses one thing some people wondered about in my post on #4.





Meanwhile, over in Captain America, Baron Zemo continues to be a very naughty boy.  He leaves a message in Bucky's apartment (seemingly written in lipstick on his bathroom mirror) to meet him where Bucky was born, which he interprets as being Fort LeHigh, Virginia, where he met Steve for the first time.



They fight.

Meanwhile, Steve, Sam, and Natasha fight Iron Hand Hauptmann, Zemo's minion through this arc; Hauptmann does pretty well, really, considering he's a nobody fighting three recognizable characters.  Eventually, of course, the heroes close the distance.




That's what you get for calling yourself "Iron Hand", dude.

You'll notice how those two pages look rather different from the preceding one; this issue is a particularly compelling demonstration of how different inking can make an artist's pencils look, because there's one artist (Butch Guice), one colourist (Paul Mounts), and three different inkers on these pages.  The results vary considerably, with some emphasizing the Kirby/Colan-esque elements, others bringing out elements of Guice's more realistic style.

Anyway, Zemo's been Batmaning everybody this entire arc, and defeats Bucky.



Zemo's playing pronoun games and such here; from Brubaker's comments on CBR about how it was good people were speculating about his motives, I'm guessing (based on Hauptmann's above comments) that he dislikes the idea of Bucky escaping his past in the way he's been trying to do, given that Zemo himself has never managed that.  Given how he's avoided killing anyone so far in this story, I'm starting to wonder if this isn't meant to be a Hunter Zolomon-style gambit.


 

Comments

[alexanderlucard]

See, this is my HUGE problem with this arc. Zemo DID escape his past. He became a well respected hero (if not necessarily a trusted one) and even Steve finally admitted he was wrong about Baron and said he was now a hero. Twice. If anything that should have been the ultimate closure of Zemo Jr's past -which was the best "bad guy goes good" arc in the history of Marvel. Brubaker doing this just rubs me worse than anything else Marvel has done in a long time, including OMD. But because it's Brubaker I'm really holding out hope you're right about the Zoloman thing and Zemo is doing one of his "looks like he's evil but surprise, he's actually really good" things out of the second Thunderbolts series.

[colonel_green]

Respected by who? Not the public, as I recall (my knowledge of that is only cursory), and that's really who his campaign in this story has been directed at (well, and Bucky himself, the guy getting away with it). He hasn't tried to make the hero community distrust Bucky.

[icon_uk]

Respected by who?

The respect of the Avengers, at a point in time when the name meant something. And even then, respect really has nothing to do with it, you don't become a hero for the respect, you become a hero because doing the heroic thing is the only thing you can see how to do. Zemo achieved that, and it appears to be being kicked in the nuts for this sake of this story.

He hasn't tried to make the hero community distrust Bucky.

What else do you call leaking information that Bucky was a Soviet assassin for decades? Zemo has set out to make EVERYONE distrust him.

[colonel_green]

I call that being aimed at the public. His backstory is known to people who actually work with him (beyond which, the mere mention of mind control and Steve's endorsement would be enough to quiet anybody in that group).

[icon_uk]

IS his backstory as Winter Soldier known to that many people he works with?

[colonel_green]

It suppose it's a bit hard to say, but we haven't seen him be withdrawn about it once he's actually intoduced to people: apart from the regular Cap cast, we've explicitly seen Iron Man and Wolverine learn about it - it's kind of hard to imagine any convincing explanation of why he's back skirting the Winter Soldier period.

If this was meant to be damaging Bucky's stock with the heroes themselves, I would think we'd actually have seen some evidence of it - this story has been all about the news media (ie, the people who tell the MU public who to hate today), with the only reactions from the heroes being Steve, Sam, and Natasha.

And with the heroes, apart from Steve's say-so, everybody in the superhero community has either been mind-controlled or known and fought somebody who was mind-controlled. It's hard to see this being an effective weapon in the hero community.

[colonel_green]

Oh, and Hawkeye knows.

[terra]

So does Carol. He went into it in a lot of detail, with her, and they aren't particularly close.

[skalja]

When was that, out of curiosity?

[terra]

Uh, I think it was the World War Hulks one-shot. Something connected with the recent Hulk stuff, though.

Carol also joked with Bucky about internet dating, and then he said he didn't know what that was.

[skalja]

Aha! Thanks.

[alexanderlucard]

Pretty much everyone during Civil War. Reed, Tony, Skrull Hank, Steve and of course Hawkeye/Ronin championed him big time. Hell, Zemo was the one that helped Steve break in to the Negative Zone. He gave then-cap the way in and all the pass codes because he was posing as a double agent since Tony's side thought there was no way BARON ZEMO could actually be siding with Captain America.

In Avengers/Thunderbolts, Zemo was shown to be one of the most popular and trusted heroes in the world and the big theme of that min-series was that Cap (who is my favorite Marvel character btw) was actually being the prejudiced and racist one, not Zemo and Steve's realization that the two had flip-flopped and Captain was hating Zemo II simply because his father was his WII arch-enemy and Bucky's murderer and not giving the son a chance to truly redeem himself. He was looking at Zemo II as his Nazi father and not the man (and hero) he strove to become. It was actually pretty epic.

[thehood]

Except Zemo only helped Steve so he as part of his Master plan. You know, where he went agaisnt the Grandmaster to gain reality warping power and take over the world?

Sorry, but Zemo isn't a hero. He's a Zemo.

[terra]

I don't know, I think this plays on a lot of themes found in Born Better in which Zemo was certainly not a trusted hero. Just the opposite, really.

[shanejayell]

It's funny, but at the end of Born Better I thought Zemo had realized his family's 'noble history' was bullshit and was moving on.

Apparently not, sadly. *sigh*

I'm REALLY disappointed with this arch.

[terra]

There's uh, no evidence that Helmut believes his legacy is a noble one. But does it continue to haunt and define him? Oh yes. Even in his rejection of his family, the name Zemo is still a core part of his character. And Born Better was all about that, wasn't it? Blood calling to blood.

I can see how some readers might want his direction to be a different one, and for Born Better to have marked a finality to the whole House of Z thing. But I think, to toss it out, is to throw away a lot of what makes the character interesting. Such is my mileage.

[icon_uk]

And Born Better was all about that, wasn't it? Blood calling to blood.

About it, and about overcoming it too, IIRC.

[terra]

Personally, I found the ending ambiguous. Zemo comes back to a massacre of his relatives, the point is made that fighting against one's legacy is allowing yourself to be defined by it all the same. There's kind of brief speculation about whether or not all this can ever be atoned for. Zemo points out that despite everything he still saved the world, that a binary isn't useful, but it's four issues of THE HISTORY OF ZEMO and literal blood sacrifices and then a few panels of what could possibly pass for hope, but only in a "well, we'll have to see" way, without triumph, surrounded by corpses.

[thehood]

Respected by Who? Everyone still don't trust Zemo, even the Thunderbolts.

After all, the last time he was on the Thunderbolts he tried to take over the world by gaining godly power. That's why Songbird sent him through a portal.

Helmut is still a Zemo. Zemo's are always bad guys, at best Helmut is an Anti-Villain, but still a villain.

[hybrid2]

Zemo had moved away from being is father.
Made peace with Captain america.

showing up to finish what is father started or thinking Bucky being alive is a disonor to is familly is a huge step back. IMO.

I hope there's something else going on.

I still hate what he did to Back Tarentula.I hope he wont ruin another character for me.

[thehood]

he never really made peace with Captain America, it was only part plan.

Songbird didn't trust him, which is why she sent him through that portal to time.

Even Kurt Busiek has said himself that he doesn't think Zemo is a hero. After all, he still tries to take over the world.

At best he's an Anti-Villain, but hero? No.

Besides, Cap's needs Zemo as a villain, otherwise he only has The Red Skull, all the time.

[starwolf_oakley]

Well, fans are putting faith in Brubaker that there's more here than "Zemo goes crazy." And it is not like this faith in unfounded. Brubaker genuinely tried to explore the "There is no Bruce Wayne" idea in BRUCE WAYNE: MURDERER/FUGITIVE. Yeah, he also said "Turns out Krakoa wasn't sentient or intelligent at all" in X-MEN: DEADLY GENESIS.

So, the question is, what's Zemo's motive? Is he sore his father *didn't* kill Bucky after all, or is he mad that Bucky's past as Winter Soldier somehow "doesn't count"?

If it's the first, well then, his behavior reminds me of how the Joker reacted to both Tim Drake's and Stephanie Brown's (fake) deaths (LAST LAUGH, WAR CRIMES). "How DARE someone else kill Robin? *I* kill Robin! IT'S MY THING!!!"

If it's the second, maybe Brubaker wasn't to explore how other people react to James as Cap if "Steve vouches for him" just won't cut it anymore.

[terra]

Zemo's motive hasn't been explicitly revealed, but there are hints.

So far, what we have is more a deconstruction of the Heroic Age, and also how our pasts define us. Basically, after the Dark Reign status quo where the traditional lines between hero and villain were blurred, the world seems to have settled back into a more comfortable black-and-white shape. Which is not a world in which Zemo can operate, so he's revealing the hypocrisy of such a world by exposing Bucky for what he is. Both a hero, and, in the past, a villain.

[tahngarth.livejournal.com]

My main problem with Brubaker has always been that he's extremely prone to writing characters as black or white. His run on Catwoman eventually discarded her casual larceny in favor of a more traditional Gotham vigilante schtick. His writing of Black Tarantula turned him from a mob boss with his own code of honor into Matt Murdock's enforcer of "good". And his heroes all tend to be VERY heroic.

So I'm not all that thrilled with his black-hatting of Zemo, but also unsurprised. Brubaker is a solid writer, but fairly one-tone.

[colonel_green]

That's an...unusual take on Brubaker's writing style, which most people say is heavy on greys.

[tahngarth.livejournal.com]

Do they? I don't see much grayness in it. Matt Murdock's dabbling in the amoral is making him a villain in Shadowland... Bucky has shed himself of his Winter Soldier past in order to become a hero.

What gray areas are you thinking of?

[colonel_green]

Particularly in his creator-owned stuff, he's heavy on anti-heroics, and he's a lot more gritty than most black-and-white writers.

[tahngarth.livejournal.com]

I confess I haven't read any of his creator-owned material. Just talking about his stuff for Marvel and DC. I dunno. I just see a lot of examples of characters which had a bit more complexity to them which have been a lot more "streamlined" into fitting either "hero" or "villain" while written by Bru. It seems particularily obvious with Zemo here, given what his last canon appearance was... But we'll see, maybe he has some surprises up his sleeve and Zemo will be sympathetic after all?

[colonel_green]

From his pre-arc interviews, he's said he thinks Zemo works best as an antagonist (and that he dislikes making great villains into heroes) - that doesn't, of course, mean that he can't have a complex motivation for being an antagonist that can be squared with his character history. He's been pretty oblique with Zemo's appearances so far, so we don't really know what his rationale is yet (from his CBR comments, that's deliberate). So we'll see.

[tahngarth.livejournal.com]

We'll see.

I'm sad to see the great character piece of Busiek and Nicieza be so casually discarded, though.

[thehood]

Except Busiek himself has said he never considered Zemo a Hero. Anti-Villain? Maybe. But hero? No.

Appologizes for necromancy - forgot this was posted months ago

[strannik01]

I assume you haven't read Point Blank or Sleeper, then. Or, as somebody else mentioned downthread, any of his Icon creator-owned stuff.

[ondine]

can't stop giggling at the

[tacobob]

Come on! ALL people who wear a monocle (Even Mister Peanut) are EVIL! EVIL! EVIL!