Sam Wilson: Captain America #20

[laughing_tree]

"Righties mad about looting: a nice TV is a small consolation prize for knowing a cop could shoot you anytime for no fucking reason." -- Nick Spencer


















"--God's rage."

Comments

[nyadnar17]

"Righties mad about looting: a nice TV is a small consolation prize for knowing a cop could shoot you anytime for no fucking reason." -- Nick Spencer

Fuck you you stupid piece of fucking shit. You know whats not a nice fucking consolation prize? The only damn convenience store for miles not reopening because the profit it was making wasn't enough to invest rebuilding it.

[coldfury]

I don't think he's justifying looting, I think what he's saying is that instead of focusing on the root causes of the problem, a lot of the more loud spoken individuals on the right deflect focus away from the big problems and towards the symptom of the problem, the looting.

[joetuss]

And I think nyadnar17 comment proves your point

[walkingthroughforest]

Yeah you've just proved his point.

[starwolf_oakley]

This is so depressing you'd think it was a Daredevil story. An Ann Nocenti Daredevil story.

[cyberghostface]

Wonder why Spencer couldn't depict actual police officers in a story about police brutality as opposed to this faceless goon squad.

[lizard_of_aus]

It's part and parcel of the superhero genre to confront real world problems by shifting them one or two degrees away from reality.

[cyberghostface]

Yeah but Spencer is not even using the story as a metaphor for police brutality. It is a story about police brutality just one that dehumanizes the police as much as possible.

[sadoeuphemist]

It's not even about police brutality, really, because Rage got brought into custody alive and un-shot, and was beaten into a coma by his fellow inmates instead of the cops.

I don't understand what Spencer's doing with this. The Americops are faceless fascist figures, and yet the instance of police brutality Sam breaks up in this issue is a single cop wielding his nightstick against two black guys. I mean, my god, can you imagine a reality where a cop's first choice is a nightstick instead of a gun?

[laughing_tree]

Rage was also beaten bloody and unconscious by the Americops at the scene of the crime. How is that not brutality?

[sadoeuphemist]

I'm saying it's not about brutality, in that police brutality is not the focus of the story - the stirring sermon doesn't even mention Rage being beaten! Certainly, the Americops are brutal, but so much less so than famous incidences of police brutality in real life. It's bizarre that Spencer has the Americops looking so intimidating, and then tones the violence way down from the real world.

[laughing_tree]

The most famous incident in American history of police brutality against African-Americans is the Rodney King beating, which did not involve a single shot being fired.

I do get what you're saying, that the story is pulling its punches in not having the Americops actually shooting anyone, but to say that the cops "only" physically beating people makes it not about police brutality... that's one of the most pernicious forms of police brutality!

[raspberryrain]

Yes, I can.

The lazy cowards who pull the gun and just shoot a pedestrian make the news. The ones who beat civilians up don't, because they're far more common.

[laughing_tree]

That's what superhero stories do, take a real world problem and put a domino mask on it. They're Americops instead of regular cops so that the story will have supervillains in it. It's the same tradition as the Sons of the Serpent and the Hate-Monger.

[cyberghostface]

Spencer seeing the police as supervillains would explain a lot about his intent here.

[laughing_tree]

Corrupt police are definitely deserving of supervillain-ification.

[cyberghostface]

If that was his intent than a story where the police are represented with a wholly corrupt fascist force targeting innocent minorities as part of a sinister gentrification scheme probably wasn't the way to go.

[lordultimus]

Wow, I didn't know left leaning people had disparaging nicknames for right leaners like right leaners have for the left. Do they also say that "rightism is the fastest growing religion in the world"?

[mastermahan]

Oh, they do - wingnut is a popular nickname, for example. Not familiar with "righties", though.

[deathcrist2000]

"Violence is never the answer," says the superhero.

Also, man am I not looking forward to Secret Empire. I mean, an event that starts out with a convoluted backstory featuring the Nazis being the real winners of WWII is bit crap to say the least.

[katefan]

From what I've heard of SE #0 you have to buy three other comics to get the fully fleshed out background, and there are three threads running through it. IO9.com did an article about it and a guy on Youtube named Douglas Ernst who reviews comics looked at it, too. Neither review was exactly what you would call overwhelmingly positive.

[laughing_tree]

I'm not the best to judge since I read two of those three other comics, but I'd say Secret Empire does a good job explaining enough of that background to people who don't know it.

The three books are U.S.Avengers, Steve Rogers: Cap, and Thunderbolts. I don't read Thunderbolts, so I can attest that whatever was referenced from that didn't confuse me. I do read U.S.Avengers and literally *nothing* that happens in that title was even referenced in Secret Empire 0, much less necessary to understanding it. That leaves Steve Rogers. A lot of that title has been setting up SE, but I think it's all explained. If anything, I'd say the book goes too far in the other direction. Reading the two back to back, it was a bit repetitive, as stuff that happened in SR practially gets a re-play in SE for the sake of people who weren't reading SR.

And Douglas Ernst is the kind of right-winger who gives right-wingers a bad name, a reviewer who on reading the first trade of MS. MARVEL lamented that it's a shame Marvel isn't willing to also portray the bad side of Islam as well as the good. I give his opinions the respect they deserve.

[kore]

Yeah, I was following all three books that were backup (T-bolts, Steve Cap, and USAvengers) to Secret Empire 0 and it was still convoluted, not least because Marvel was really unclear about the reading order until people started asking on Twitter. Secret Empire 0 was a whooole lot of setup, and people are going to need it to understand the series.

I'm not going to follow it because as far as I can tell the setup is "the Allies used to change the outcome of WWII, so it wasn't that Kobik changed Steve into Hydra, he was always Hydra," and that is....not for me.

[mastermahan]

That quote reads like something a parody of a liberal would say.

[cyberghostface]

A lot of Spencer's writing is like that.