scans_daily | Sam Wilson: Captain America #21

It still just seems like he's quitting because he doesn't say what he's going to do next. He could use this opportunity to announce his new project, to try and rally people around a particular cause, but nah. He's just leaving.

It's like his speech at the beginning that set everything off - we never find out what he said. And that's an okay joke, but if you're going to keep coming back to it as a formative moment for the character, you're sort of admitting he's a blank slate. What's he going to be doing after this? What's he going to be standing up for? I dunno. He just equivocates and frets and resorts to platitudes and sinks deeper and deeper into despair.

Take Rayshaun - Sam's whole speech is about how he can't be Captain America any longer, how he can't affect the change he wants while serving as a mascot of the USA. So why is this kid inspired to design a red, white and blue outfit and start calling himself "The Patriot"? It doesn't make sense, but that's the only legacy Sam left behind to hold on to. There's nothing else there.

Consider how Rayshaun's been portrayed up to this point. Consider what he's acted to do. I think that points us to what Sam stands for.

Is that what Sam Wilson stands for? Or is that just what Reyshaun stands for? When did Sam's actions ever encourage him to do anything like that? Why would Reyshaun want to dress in a red white and blue outfit and call himself a Patriot, when even Sam doesn't want to do that anymore?

The real answer is because Sam Wilson is the star of the book, and we're trying to make-believe that he's inspirational so this all doesn't seem like a total downer. But if you just think about it for a second, there's no reason Reyshaun would be listening to him at all by this point.

I don't think Rayshaun idolizes Sam or anything, like Kamala with Carol, but there's that a significant overlap between what Sam publicly fought on behalf of and what Rayshaun stands for, and I can see how, for Shaun, seeing a Captain America who looks like him, who's fighting for those same things, can be meaningful.

What the heck man. Captain America gives speeches about how violence is never the answer, scolding both protesters and Americops. Captain America is conflicted about releasing a tape of an innocent man being beaten by the police because it might cause conflict in the community. Rayshaun puts on Rage makeup and throws molotovs at banks.

The only way I can imagine Sam inspiring Reyshaun is as an example of one-upmanship: "Boy, this guy sucked at being a patriotic hero, I could probably do better!"

Well, sure, if you focus on the edges of the Venn diagram and not on the overlap. Captain America took a public stand against the Americops. He took a pubic stand in support of Rage and worked his ass off to try to help him.

Yeah, dude, and if you focus on the overlap, we're all human, ain't we, so naturally we all support each other and are cool all the time. I love people who use violence to support any of my causes! And I'm sure they love me when I denounce all use of violence! As long as we're on the same side of a single issue, even though our methods of resolving it are polar opposites, we'll get along just fine!

Seriously though, even if Reyshaun did respect Sam on a personal level, the only inspiration Sam could serve is as an example of what doesn't work, of ineffective methods. There would be no reason to emulate him.

Regardless of their different methods (and I think you're overstating that difference), Captain America was out there loudly working his ass off on behalf of this cause Rayshaun felt passionately about, and I can how that'd be meaningful to him.

I think you're understating the difference! What do you even think is happening here? Do you think Reyshaun has somehow been inspired by Sam's failure and resignation to give up rioting and become a good clean patriotic superhero? Or when you said "Consider how Rayshaun's been portrayed up to this point. Consider what he's acted to do. I think that points us to what Sam stands for." did you mean that Sam's actually stood for violent revolution this whole time, and that the new Patriot's going to be out there firebombing more buildings?

Sure, it's 'meaningful', everything has a meaning, but what do you actually think Reyshaun is going to do now?

That's not what I meant, no. I was referring to their common cause. To, again, the overlap of the Venn diagram. Which you see as dwarfed by the edges. But I don't.

What's he going to do now? No idea. All I have to go on so far is a costume he draw on some paper. I look forward to finding out, though!

I mean, you have Rayshaun's history and actions up to this point, you know:

He watches the whole controversy of Rage being convicted of robbing a pawnshop, despite Captain America's best efforts to defend him. This enrages Rayshaun so much that he puts on Rage facepaint and joins the riots, firebombs buildings. Captain America calls for peace, obviously Rayshaun does not listen. Then later, he watches Captain America resign because Sam's given up on his methods and doesn't believe in wearing the flag anymore.

And then I ask you if you think Rayshaun's going to give up rioting and be a good clean patriotic superhero, or if he's going to continue on his path, and you just don't know. As if both options are equally likely to you.

Why do you do this, why do you reduce all things to their most generic formulation? The diametrically opposed methods of Reyshaun and Sam don't matter, what's really fundamental is that they're both fighting against the same thing, so maybe they agree - or then again, maybe they don't. At this point, why even bother reading a story then, when anything can happen next and make sense, where there's no momentum of the story leading in one direction or another? A tyrant can pardon the rebels or execute them immediately, and they're both equally sensible options. A villain can want to prevent a force field from being built, or depend on the force field being built, and they're both part of his master plan. A teen rebel can either reform, or keep going down his path, and based on the story so far I have no idea what's going to happen next! Why even bother with plot and buildup? Just flip a coin!

"This enrages Rayshaun so much that he puts on Rage facepaint and joins the riots, firebombs buildings. Captain America calls for peace, obviously Rayshaun does not listen."

He firebombs a single building. And we have no idea whether or not he listened. Did he even show up again before the Patriot scene? And throughout it all, he had how many lines? Three?

I don't know what he's going to do next because he's a blank slate. Does he have firm conviction that violence is the only solution, instilled in him by a revolutionary dad? Was the Molotov cocktail something he did while caught up in the emotion of the moment, which he immediately regretted? How should I know? This isn't some character we've been following for years or even for a single arc or even a single story. Build up? What build up? He's someone who up until just now was a glorified extra.

There's a saying Kurt Busiek likes to use when asked "Who would win in a fight?" questions. He answers that it's whichever makes for the better story. "We rig the fights." Same here. That he's a blank slate, that we know so little, means there's room for all sorts of rigging. Maybe they will give him the revolutionary dad. Maybe they'll reveal someone was injured in his explosion, crippling him with guilt. Who knows! Whatever will make for the better story.

I don't know who he is yet and I look forward to reading the stories and learning.

"A tyrant can pardon the rebels or execute them immediately, and they're both equally sensible options. A villain can want to prevent a force field from being built, or depend on the force field being built, and they're both part of his master plan."

They can both make sense in the right context. Execution is everything.

A kid firebombs a bank and you say "he's a blank slate," okay. We're not seeing random glimpses into this guy's life. We're seeing the moments Nick Spencer chooses to show us to characterize him. If your response to a character doing something is "maybe he immediately regretted it off-screen", then you have given up on the craft of storytelling. If you sincerely view characterization is as arbitrary as rigging 'who would win in a fight' - it depends on what's convenient to the plot - then characterization doesn't matter.

"The right context," you say, "execution is everything" you say, and yet here you are ignoring what actually happened in favor of all the possibilities that might have occurred. We could have seen nothing but scenes of Rayshaun going to school and doing his homework, we could have been shown scenes of him killing a dog, we could have been shown scenes of him defending a protester from the cops, and you would still be here using the same argument, that he is unknown and unknowable, separate from everything that has actually happened.

Sure, yes, Rayshaun could be anything, these are comic books after all, but you're allowed to say, "I think there was a change of plans, I think there was a soft retcon here, because this certainly doesn't seem like this was what they were building up to when they introduced him."

'If your response to a character doing something is "maybe he immediately regretted it off-screen"'

My point is he's barely a 'character' there. No interiority, no lines, no aftermath. This isn't some protagonist where we're following the throughline of his life, so that we can reasonably expect we're getting all the relevant information. He's hi-then-bye glorified extra. This isn't like revealing Peter Parker has a split personality we've never seen. It's revealing that a guy from a single scene has a split personality. In the circumstances, new heretofore unseen dimensions would hardly be a cheat. Rather, they'd pretty much be obligatory.

Even as a background character, an extra, Rayshaun's purpose is to help set the tone of the scene, right? In his case specifically, it's to show that Sam is losing control of the situation. Elvin's been convicted, and despite Sam's constant pleas for non-violence, the community is outraged and breaking out into rioting. Rayshaun's purpose is to illustrate that.

Sam continues to call for non-violence, but the riots continue and his words start sounding increasingly hollow even to him, until he finally resigns as Captain America. This is the story we are being told, of Sam's methods failing until he gives up on them.

And then you come in and say, hey, maybe this rioter listened to Sam off-screen. Maybe he regretted his actions, off-screen. Maybe Sam's methods were actually effective, off-screen. Maybe he convinced someone, off-screen. Maybe he succeeded, off-screen!

Never mind that Reyshaun is listening to Sam's resignation as he sneaks back into his house. Maybe he immediately regretted his actions, maybe he listened to Sam's earlier speech, and immediately stopped rioting way back then. Maybe he's just been hanging around all this time outside his house dressed up as Rage for no reason whatsoever. Sure, that's technically possible. Or maybe you're ignoring the actual text of the story in favor of shrugging and saying, maybe, maybe, maybe.

Even for background characters, heck, even for props, you don't just assume an untold backstory that says the opposite. If we're telling a story about a poverty-stricken town and a broken down jalopy drives by, what's the point in saying, hey, maybe the driver's an eccentric millionaire and he keeps that car around for sentimental reasons!

Seriously, why do you even read stories if you don't care about what happens in them. Why not just stare at a blank piece of paper and say 'Wow! Anything could happen!'

Edited 2017-05-11 23:43 (UTC)

Here's the thing. I don't agree with your take on the events in the first place. Sam doesn't make "constant pleas" for non-violence. He makes a single speech, and it's one he admits to himself he's not really feeling, where he's just saying what he feels he's expected to say. Any failure of this speech that his heart isn't even in to effect change is hardly the main motivator in his quitting. Whether Rayshaun met it with deaf ears or not is not the important plot point you're making it out as.

So I don't think rioting is being framed as harshly as you do, and so I don't think Shaun's involvement in said rioting is determinative the way you do. It is not comparable to the "killing a dog" example you used earlier.

(Knowing you, at this point maybe you'll go digging for every instance in the story where rioting is portrayed in any remotely negative light. Don't bother. I said "not as harshly," not "positively.)

It's the act of a teenager in a specific powderkeg of a situation where emotions were understandably running high all round, not some cemented ideology at the core of his being. Revealing that Rayshaun is always a cool-tempered guy with a philosophical aversion to violence, *that* would be a jalopy-driving millionaire. Having him not go around firebombing banks as the Patriot... not so much.

"Maybe he's just been hanging around all this time outside his house dressed up as Rage for no reason whatsoever."

Or maybe he was out protesting. It's not like the only possibilities are he kept firebombing stuff or he completely gave up the cause.

Edited 2017-05-12 02:03 (UTC)

I mean in the context of this run and this story arc in particular, Sam has argued the benefits of nonviolent resolution. Rage is a foil to Sam, right? Rage would rather run in and punch the bad guys, that's the tension between them. The whole reason Rage allowed himself to be put on trial was because he agreed to try Sam's 'better way', and call attention to this injustice without punching people. And the arc culminates in Rage getting hospitalized and Sam failing to keep the peace and the community breaking out into a riot.

I'm not talking about a strictly causal relationship from a single speech, I'm talking a thematic one, in which Sam spends his entire run trying to keep a balance, trying to find a better way, and Rayshaun and the riots are the evidence of that better way not working. Rioting doesn't need to be harshly portrayed - obviously there's a lot of sympathy with the rioters - it just needs to show Sam's failure to provide a better option.

(My other examples were 'staying home and doing his homework' and 'saving a protester from a cop'; they weren't meant to vilify rioting, they were random hypotheticals.)

You are still saying: maybe this rioter gave up rioting off-screen and was just peacefully protesting like Sam wanted, in a story about Sam's failure. If you want to argue that the story's not about Sam's failure, or that Reyshaun rioting doesn't reflect badly on Sam at all, or some other argument like that, sure, do that. But don't just shrug and throw up your arms and say, maybe, maybe, maybe.

The story's about Sam's failure, but it's still a failure if he convinced Rayshaun, one single individual, to stop rioting. The rioting's just a symptom of the real problem after all, and at that point Sam's heart isn't in speaking out against the rioting precisely because he understands that.

The rioting is painted as an understandable consequence of the people's rightful outrage. The source of that outrage, that's Sam's real failure.

So no, I do not think Rayshaun, one individual among many, continuing to riot is essential to the story's themes.

But look, Rayshaun possibly regretting his actions immediately was just one hypothetical I pulled off the top of my head to illustrate my larger point. Whether he did or not is hardly key. That larger point, again: So far, we know so little about the character that I can't predict how the Patriot's going to operate.

This goes back to the bit about the sympathetic portrayal of the rioters. I didn't think you were vilifying them; I used the dog-killing example because it was useful as a contrast. Because someone killing a dog, that is determinative. A writer's not going to put that in unless the point is, "This guy's a monster." An example on the other extreme, equally determinative and telling, would be if we saw Rayshaun refusing to fight back against bullies even as they were pummeling him because he was opposed to violence. But the sympathetic portrayal of the rioters means the whole point is that these aren't people exceptionally inclined to violent solutions or unusually callous to property damage or whatever; they're regular folks, caught in a specific powderkeg of a situation where emotions are running high all around. And their rioting says little about how they act -- how Rayshaun will act -- outside that powderkeg. So no, I do not think that just because he firebombed that bank, it's a given that he's going to continue to do so as the Patriot.

Because someone killing a dog, that is determinative. A writer's not going to put that in unless the point is, "This guy's a monster."

Hmm, not really though. Maybe a racist sicced their dog on him and he had to defend himself by killing it. Maybe he was caught up in the emotion of the moment and immediately regretted it. Maybe it was an entirely reasonable decision in the heat of the moment. It's a powderkeg, and people will act differently outside of that powderkeg. So who knows?

I'm joking, but I think it's weird that you can rightfully see a guy killing a dog as the writer painting them as a monster, but show a guy firebombing a bank, and you're making all these excuses that maybe the writer intended to portray someone totally different, and that maybe the character regretted it off-screen.

I think the difference is that you view rioting as vilifying, and so you think it would be wrong to judge these people at their lowest point. I don't think that. I think it's a legitimate character trait, a legitimate ideology, that it's a legitimate option at this point to resort to violence after the legal system has clearly proven it doesn't care about them and theirs. I think it would be interesting to see an anarchist superhero - okay, maybe he doesn't firebomb banks specifically, that's sort of cliche - but it would be interesting for me to see a superhero who's opposed to the establishment, opposed to the cops, and not afraid of using violence to attain his goals.

I think the opposite would be insulting - if Rayshaun were to become just another goody-goody patriotic hero who upholds the law, that would be fucking bullshit. Why would he be doing that, when the law has already proven it doesn't care about people like him?

You say the rioting is an understandable consequence of rightful outrage, but you're treating it like a moral lapse.

Edited 2017-05-12 23:56 (UTC)

My opinion on rioting aligns with yours, actually. My point isn't about morality, it's about the exceptional circumstances. The fact is, if you take real world major riots, most of the participants are not people who engage in property damage (justified or otherwise) on a regular basis. Is Rayshaun another of those people? Or is he someone with a greater, enduring commitment to change through violent action? I maintain that we've seen so little of him that we can't say for sure. Just as we wouldn't be equipped to make such a determination about any real life rioter we knew equally little about.

Which isn't the same as saying what we've seen says *nothing* about him (a stance you seem to think I subscribe to, based on some of your comments). I'd be surprised if he turned out to be your "goody-goody" too. But there are plenty of points in-between "goody-goody" and "guy who goes around bombing buildings."

Rayshaun is not an average guy who was at a protest that turned violent, and he got swept up in it. He was sitting safely at home when he heard the news, so he made a firebomb (!!) and put on a disguise, and he snuck down to an apparently peaceful protest and struck the first blow unprovoked. (This was actually really inconsiderate to all the peaceful protesters.)

If a real-life rioter did that, I be comfortable assuming that yeah, he did have a commitment to change through violent action.

I just don't understand your criteria. Why is killing a dog 'determinative', why is refusing to fight back 'determinative and telling'? I might as well say that a fight is an exceptional circumstance, and how a person reacts when they're being attacked in a fight doesn't say anything about them as people. Maybe they freaked out, maybe they froze up, maybe, maybe, maybe. And we're talking about superhero comics here, most of the circumstances are exceptional. The writer chooses which moments to show us, and if he wanted to make a point that Rayshaun regretted his actions, he could have easily shown us that. He didn't. At some point we have to take it on faith that what the writer shows us is what he wants us to see, that despite the exceptional circumstances, the writer isn't deliberately just showing us all the reactions that are out of character.

"If a real-life rioter did that, I be comfortable assuming that yeah, he did have a commitment to change through violent action."

Enough of a commitment that you'll assume he went to do more of the same in his life? Like, if all you knew about a guy was he "struck the first blow unprovoked" at some famous race riot when he was a teen, you'd assume he went on to also firebomb other buildings outside the riot?

"Why is killing a dog 'determinative', why is refusing to fight back 'determinative and telling'? I might as well say that a fight is an exceptional circumstance, and how a person reacts when they're being attacked in a fight doesn't say anything about them as people. Maybe they freaked out, maybe they froze up, maybe, maybe, maybe."

Yes, absolutely true. That's why I specified my scenario as refusing to fight "because he was opposed to violence." And just in case it's not clear, by killing a dog, I meant maliciously doing so in cold blood, not in the context of a fight for survival or whatever. If it was a fight for survival, I would not use it to make assumptions about how the character will treat animals outside that exceptional circumstance.

"If he wanted to make a point that Rayshaun regretted his actions, he could have easily shown us that."

If it's not essential to that particular story, there's no harm in saving it for later. But again, regretting his actions was just one hypothetical off the top of my head. If you don't buy that particular example, okay, but it doesn't change the larger point.

"At some point we have to take it on faith that what the writer shows us is what he wants us to see."

I'm sure he wanted us to see it. I don't draw the same conclusions from the sight as you.

If all I knew about a guy is that he put on a mask / facepaint and snuck down to a peaceful protest and firebombed a bank from the shadows and initiated a riot, absolutely, I would ascribe political motivation and commitment to his cause, and I would expect him to repeat it in the future.

This "because he's opposed to violence" bit - how can you prove motivation? Maybe he's lying, maybe he's dissembling, maybe he's justifying his cowardice to himself - intent is fundamentally unknowable to outsiders, and sometimes it's mysterious even to the actors themselves. You are slipping back into 'everything is unknown and unknowable territory'. Barring any evidence to the contrary, you have to judge people by their actions, and this is especially true for fictional characters, who do not exist at all outside of the page, outside of the thoughts and actions and words we are shown, so we can actually see them in their entirety.

You keep trying to push this into a binary situation where either I believe Rayshaun's definitely going to be bombing more buildings or I believe the scene tells us nothing about him. It's all about the gradations.

Yes, intent is never truly knowable, but that doesn't mean some scenarios aren't stronger indicators of intent than others. Again, gradations. A scene of a guy killing a dog maliciously for kicks is more telling than a scene of a guy killing a dog that has no context. A guy not fighting back is less telling than a guy not fighting back while another character is explaining that his inaction is because of his beliefs. A guy not fighting back while himself thinking that its because of his beliefs is more telling than either of those. A guy not fighting back while the omniscient narrator says its because of his beliefs is even more telling still. A wordless scene of a kid doing homework tells us very little because kids of all kinds do homework.

And I maintain that Rayshaun's scene does not tell us enough to conclude that he's going to be firebombing buildings as the Patriot. That's not me saying we should ignore the scene. It's me keeping it in mind and reaching a different conclusion from it than you. I am judging him by his actions, and this is my judgment.

Sam Wilson: Captain America #21

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