Secret Empire #9-10

[laughing_tree]

When white male legacy characters appears, interesting story. PoC/female? It's a PC agenda. -- Nick Spencer

Comments

[stubbleupdate]

Referencing a very delayed and incomplete miniseries from half a decade ago is a very strange move.

[thanekos]

This and Doctor Strange and the Sorcerers Supreme's use of Newton were something, at least.

[aperturedreams]

There have been plenty of comics that referenced Hickman's SHIELD, this isn't the first. Besides, they finished the first miniseries, it's the second that's incomplete.

[jgeils]

Which one are you referring to? I almost thought you meant "Infinity Gauntlet", but that was a quarter-century ago and only unfinished if you're George Perez.

[informationgeek]

"But she left the scars and the wreckage. ...A reminder of our promise: Never Again."

That a real line from the comic? Because if that's the excuse Kobik is giving for not reviving Las Vegas and everyone who die, screw you cosmic cube brat!

[every_spiegel]

My thoughts exactly!

[glprime]

Yeah, that seemed awful.

[byc]

So Sam is going to be replaced by Steve, and then Steve will hit Steve with Mjolnir?

[sarahnewlin]

Widow in the pool. Hopefully its an illusion that she is really dead

[lucean]

I'm utterly confused by that quote as isn't the ending of the Secret Empire that a white guy comes back and defeats the evil by himself before taking back his mantle from a PoC? It just feels liek a really tonedeaf statement considering the literal story he was telling.

As for the crossover itself, I feel what made it so questionable was that they wanted to do a story of an evil Captain America, but they didn't really want to do a story about evil Captain America. So it never really delves in that dark side what Steve could possible represent or truly struggle with those questions. I think that is what makes it so lackluster because it seems to want to feel really deep, but is afraid to actually be that.

[cyberghostface]

Willing to bet they took that quote from a while ago.

[starwolf_oakley]

Like, what, we somehow can't accept Steve Rogers has a dark side? He can get seriously angry on occasion, and was ready to decapitate Tony in CIVIL WAR #7.

There was speculation Hydra!Cap wasn't just Steve Rogers with new memories, but Steve Rogers who wished people would just listen to him and do what he says without all the drama.

Or as Homer Simpson once said: "When are people going to learn? Democracy doesn't work!"

[laughing_tree]

"I'm utterly confused by that quote as isn't the ending of the Secret Empire that a white guy comes back and defeats the evil by himself before taking back his mantle from a PoC?"

It is not.

[every_spiegel]

I really liked some moments in these issues but the 'grand finale' was beyond predictable and mind-numbingly safe.

[wizardru]

Motto. I think that's probably the thing that most bugged me, here. So much of it felt rote and worse, unearned. Individual moments are great, but for the two years of build-up, so much of this just felt rushed and unimportant. It's like they knew they had to do some of these scenes, but were as bored writing them as we were reading them. Sam has to give a speech now...yadda yadda yadda...Bucky has a plan...blah blah blah...Steve has a showdown...and so on.

[cyberghostface]

That quote from Spencer of all people is rich since he's basically the poster child for making a big deal in-universe that his Cap is black and using it as a vehicle for his politics.

Compare how Cassandra Cain was written or even Miles Morales for that matter.

[starwolf_oakley]

And they kept Sam's politics rather vague. It was enough for people to call him a communist, but still vague to the readers.

Even something as simple as "Police brutality is bad" was mixed, since most of the bad stuff was being done by the Americops. Which (I think) are robots.

[coldfury]

So, you're saying that it wouldn't be a big deal, in-universe, that Captain America was suddenly black?

I'm not sure what you're accusing Spencer of, here.

[balbanes]

Wait... most people don't remember how Cap (futilely) faced down Thanos during the Infinity Gauntlet, because those 24 hours were erased when Nebula got the Gauntlet. And pretty much everyone from Earth was dead at that point-- hence the time unwind-- so there weren't any witnesses in any event.

Couldn't they have picked an in-continuity scene from one of the other 1000s of cross-overs?

[thatnickguy]

The Washington Monument. Now ribbed for YOUR pleasure.

[balbanes]

Oh good, it wasn't just me.

[lordnorj]

Hydra might be evil but they do have a sense of humor.

[dr_archeville]

So at the end, Evil!Steve is still around, and he is the real Steve (but altered by Kobik), and Good!Steve is Kobik’s memories (or maybe a collective memory/Akashic Record) of pre-Kobik’d Steve given form by the Cosmic Cube? Is that where we are now?

[beyondthefringe]

What upsets me about the way this ending played out is that once again, it pulls a comic book move of inflicting mass casualties and destruction upon the world, and expects us to accept it and move on.

Take Las Vegas for example. In The Champions, I believe, they explicitly stated the death toll, and it was monumental. Hundreds of thousands of residents and tourists. An entire city wiped out, with much, if not all of it, leveled and turned into rubble. And yet right now, we have a series taking place there, the new Scarlet Spider.

Can you even imagine how fucking traumatizing this should be? And yet... Las Vegas will be rebuilt, as good as new, before you can say "reboot." Just like always. Because the prime Marvel Universe always returns to some kind of status quo, and destroying a real life city doesn't fit that status quo. Sure, you can level Atlantis repeatedly, it'll just get better. You can destroy Latveria, it'll get better. You can slaughter the entire population of an Eastern European country (Slovenia? Slorenia? Whatever) and no one will ever speak of it again...

So Vegas is destroyed, along with untold thousands of people. Life will go on. This issue specifically states, "In the weeks that followed, a surprising sense of normalcy returned." So I guess we'll also forget about all the people who happily Hail Fucking Hydraed, rounded up the Inhumans, deported the mutants, and so on. We'll forget and forgive, and move on to the next big thing.

Meanwhile, Rick Jones won't stay dead, if he's even still dead. Same with Black Widow. Same with Coulson. They'll all be back. And who cares if Nighthawk died in Occupy Avengers? He was just an interdimensional doppelganger anyway. Pffft.

And now and forevermore, I guess we'll have Captain Hydra, occupying the real Steve Rogers' body, running around to occasionally bedevil good Steve. Yay?

Wow. So... the ending of this series really has annoyed me. Go figure.

[thehood]

It also screws over the current Scarlet Spider book, which is set in Vegas.

As for Widow staying dead, unfortunately female characters tend to stay dead longer than male characters. Look at Jean Grey, she's been dead for over a decade now.

But in the case of Rick Jones, he's been dead before, it's hard to take his death seriously.

[captainbellman]

As with the movie "Avatar", the disappointment for me stems in the solution to problems being caused by white people taking the form of...(drumroll)...a white saviour!

[laughing_tree]

But Sam and Bucky are the ones who play the crucial role in saving the day, much more so than Steve. Though one of those two is still white, admittedly, though I think Jewish? Bucky's Jewish, isn't he? I remember reading that somewhere.