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description= Reading Mark Gruenwald s Captain America;
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captain, america, 1985, been, torn, apart, 310, october, 309, september, 308, august, 307, july, all, rise, please, american, history, gru, articles, of, capfederation, latest, amendments,
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l steve from issue 332 onward as the ultimate blasted freelancer gruenwald s cap is clearly on a collision course with reaganite patriotism he just doesn t know it yet cap and nomad are on parallel reasoning paths throughout this issue jack monroe stakes his entire future as an independent crimefighter on the quest to subdue madcap he succeeds by acting against all of the instincts which served him so badly in issue 307 instead of charging fist first into confrontation he elects to wheedle his way into madcap s confidence if that s the right word to use in reference to a person who has no confidence in anything in a wonderfully strategic move jack takes advantage of the fact that even a prophet of absurdity can easily be won over by the pretense of conversion the words you re right are the most powerful tools in a canny fighter s arsenal and what about the object of this quest we first meet madcap this issue cavorting blithely through a pretty clear gay bashing scenario gruenwald s horror of american redneckery is a constant but it s especially prominent here and in the sequences of squadron supreme which focus on the need to reclaim america from red statism by superheroic force if necessary but madcap is just as much a product of the american heartland as pro lifery tea baggism and apple pie he was raised as an evangelical christian but i ll let him explain it he s a pretty sophisticated philosopher a gruenwald trait for a guy who traipses around in yellow toting a fun gun but then again this is the kind of incident that ll make just about anyone into the messenger of meaninglessness and madcap plunges into that new role with all of the fervour that he had once channeled into his faith in christ again and i pointed this out in the entry on 307 nomad offers no counterargument to madcap s claims re the absurdity of the universe what possible response could there be cosmic meaninglessness is a given in a gruenwald book but then again so is existentialist commitment that s what everyone prior to gruenwald had gotten so wrong about cap he s not a blind optimist not a patriot not in favour of life liberty and the american way what he is is a person who believes more fervently than anyone else in the individual s duty to in charles dickens immortal phrasing from a christmas carol interfere for good in human matters before he or she loses the power forever he s the ultimate new dealer minus the cynical political calculation of rooseveltian democrats gruenwald s epic tenure on the book will derive all of its extraordinary dynamism from the confrontation between this unique iteration of cap and 1980s america a most uncongenial place for a new dealer to deal with and as the concluding panels of 309 which remove nomad and madcap make clear he ll have to do it on his own as he always should have been more soon thanks for reading dave 4 comments filed under uncategorized tagged as absurdity bernie rosenthal captain america charles dickens existentialism infinitude jack monroe john byrne liberal democracy madcap margaret fuller mark gruenwald meaninglessness nick fury nomad paul neary ralph waldo emerson reagan america roger stern shield steve englehart march 13 2010 2 18 am captain america 308 august 1985 title the body in question script mark gruenwald pencils paul neary inks dennis janke colors ken feduniewicz letters diana albers editor mike carlin the analysis continues unfortunately there s not a whole lot to analyze this time around the reason my personal motto has always been make love not secret wars and that goes at least double for secret wars ii like all of these disastrously annoying company wide crossovers they were a huge part of the reason i quit buying superheroes in 1991 well crossovers and my growing vhs tape obsession secret wars ii disrupted every title in the marvel line for no defensible reason at least crisis on infinite earths had a high narratological concept going for it this one manifestly did not this one had god in a leisure suit sometimes looking like david hasselhoff which is not to say that nothing of interest occurs in captain america 308 for one thing we do get our first real introduction to gruenwald s take on cap you ll recall that he was pretty much absent from 307 back in new york nomad madcap and bernie rosenthal are patiently awaiting the return of the prodigal protagonist but the sw2 throws everyone a curve by forcing steve rogers to heed the call of the crossover to los angeles california after a conclave with prof x which takes place in the main series cap makes a beeline for west coast avengers hq hoping to score himself a quinjet ride home he makes his drowsy way through the compound s defense system surrounded by a miasma of thought balloons wherein it is revealed that our harried hero has no idea what day it is and frankly how could he then we get some nice interaction with those charming newlyweds hawkeye mockingbird gruenwald does a good job with this stuff and telegraphs his intention of keeping cap s old antagonist from the cap s kooky quartet days of avengers circa 1965 around as an occasional guest star gruenwald had of course written and drawn a hawkeye mini series in 1983 along the way they work in a little plug for the upcoming west coast avengers series which i love by the way i consider it among steve englehart s greatest achievements next cap gets sidetracked again this time by a gruenwald orginal i love a good ellipsis exclamation point combo this orange lummox wants in to avengers hq in the worst way but he fails miserably in the attempt characteristically gruenwald s cap fights only to force his opponent to the discussion table notice that cap is being stalked by some kind of mystery outline and talk the armadillo does this is the kind of earnest dialog that gruenwald does best it s simplistic no question about that i wouldn t want to write this kind of stuff but perhaps what is more important is that i probably couldn t write it i m a pretty jaded fellow and i was annoyed by the armadillo on sight but those two quick panels somehow made me sympathetic to his plight and it s not the paul neary artwork that s affecting me the sympathy is well earned this is a man who agreed to become a mad scientist s guinea pig and now errand boy which is what puts him on a collision course with cap on the off chance that said doctor malus by name might be able to bring his wife out of a coma armadillo is an awfully lovable sap and just the first in a long line of victims at the hands of gruenwald s despicably mercenary 80s style doc frankenstein eventually we get a three way confrontation between cap armadillo and malus that ends in a calculatedly anti climactic stalemate the upshot is that cap leaves for new york with one new friend and one new enemy the malus plot would feed into the larger power broker storyline that would dominate so much of this series during the next few years and just before he makes his way back to the storyline that interests me most we get this wacky stuff followed by this even crazier splash this perfect specimen crap necessitated by the imperatives of an inane x over event will eventually pay off big time in captain america 350 for now though it s just stupid the next issue however will be awesome bonne nuit dave 7 comments filed under uncategorized tagged as armadillo beyonder captan america dr malus hawkeye mockingbird power broker secret wars ii west coast avengers february 27 2010 5 16 pm captain america 307 july 1985 title stop making sense script mark gruenwald pencils paul neary inks dennis janke colors ken feduniewicz letters diana albers the gruenwald era begins strangely remember me that s the inside cover of this utterly commonplace looking issue no baxter paper no mando paper no extra pages no no ads no prestige here in fact there s almost no captain america he boards a plane bound for new york on page 2 has a brief chat with an old raf guy who reminds him that britons remember cap as an anti nazi invader during the big one when they think of him at all and then checks out of the story for good at the top of page 3 i d say that s pretty odd here we have a young writer taking on his dream assignment after editing the title for a couple of years and he kicks things off by stranding the star spangled protagonist in an inane conversation with an old man for the duration of the issue an auteurist move if ever there was one captain america 307 uses the arcs traversed by jack monroe nomad cap s sidekick durign the j m dematteis years and the newly minted madcap basically the joker without malice which makes a lot more sense to me than a joker with malice to trace the outline of its absent eponymous hero in bringing these two characters together gruenwald reveals his intentions with striking economy here s how i see it we start with nomad sleeping on cap s couch he is awakened by bernie rosenthal who lets herself in looking for the man of the house she s annoyed that her boyfriend hasn t turned up and snaps at jack like he s shaggy or scooby doo or somethin o and jack if you ever hope to find a job i wouldn t stay up late every night and then sleep in til noon then she leaves to face her own financial demons in good ol reagan america her glass blowing shop is about to be blown to kingdom come by a massive rent hike meanwhile nomad stalks to the fridge jack slack he resolves to get himself a job any job and man that s exactly what he gets bag boy at a local grocery store the boss worries that jack is overqualified for the position one of his references is nick fury commander or whatever he is of the nation s most prestigious law enforcement organization i uh did some clerical work for them jack explains but nomad scores the bag gig in the end and while our surrogate protagonist is getting to know his colleagues this stuff happens bock bock bock the upshot well first this then this which doesn t do a damn bit of good along the way we learn that the fomentor of fun is indestructible insensible and at war with all epistemes with fungun in hand madcap provokes a general strike against the production of meaning hence the title of this issue new wave cap things get very interesting when we take on the fun gun stung nomad s perspective does cap matter obviously he does jack monroe s little verbal shell game at the end of this sequence no i m mad no i m cap will return with renewed emphasis in issue 309 but for now i think it s significant that one obvious permutation is omitted i e no cap s mad for gruenwald cap and madness are mutually exclusive things his captain america is the embodiment not of some asinine patriotism but of the liberal democratic ideology at its most hopeful in one seemingly throw away story the author lays bare 1 the meaninglessness at the heart of all things the nothing that all philosophers and political founders must erect their systems upon and readers will note that madcap s ideas are never challenged except upon pragmatic grounds 2 the absurdity of life under capitalism in 1980s america i e both jack and bernie are shown to be at the mercy of economic forces that put the lie to the naive idea that character is financial destiny also captain america has to fly home in his chain mail suit because he apparently doesn t have enough money to buy a ticket as steve rogers and has to wangle a free trip with his avengers card 3 the necessity of stopping madcap despite his unassailable philosophical position the spree isn t all chicken noises people are getting hurt on these pages and the certainty that nomad is not the man for that particular job nor it seems is he cut out to be a bag boy he is unceremoniously fired for leaving his post during the shenanigans 4 the implication that captain america will be able to counter madcappian illogic with a fighting rationale which forges the seemingly incompatible dreams of liberty and justice for all into one very powerful ideological shield against mere anarchy capisce next issue another strange detour bon weekend les amis dave 3 comments filed under uncategorized tagged as anarchy bag boy bernie rosenthal captain america chickens glass blowing gruenwald ideology madcap nomad february 22 2010 10 40 pm all rise please hello my name is dave i used to write a lot about superhero comics back in those days i was particularly interested in the role these strange tales have played in the dialogic construction of american identity through the prism of the notional pastime a corollary of the thesis that pop culture has taken the place of the bible as the primary textual touchstone for belligerents on every side of today s socio political scrum the idea being that thinking about contemporary arguments about captain america as analogous to mid 19th century arguments about grace and the millennium could help us to understand what the hell is going on here i ve been doing other things of late writing about montreal mcdonaldland and ronald reagan mostly but then totally without warning came the perfect asstorm that is warner todd huston high on tea and the ink he sniffed out of captain america 602 here s a sample of this sad sack s perspective on ol winghead isn t it wonderful that a decades old american comic book hero is now being used to turn readers against our very political system being used to slander folks that are standing up for real american principles in real life and one called captain america at that the group in question man i can t wait for the overstreet guide entry that reads 602 controversial tea bag panel did you get that these people i use the term with some misgivings are real american heroes like they re practically g i joes man thank god someone has the balls to stand up to these socialists and then duncecaptain america or anyway the creators of the icon s mag has the temerity to suggest these people wouldn t recognize a socialist if they found one in their borscht rally round the flag boys anyway the whole sad affair has generated many intelligent responses you ll note that in the last of these todd returned with an even more damning outburst in which he asserts that he has too read captain america before although not very carefully as this page will eventually show and makes sounds like john wayne little lady when he s talkin out his ass sadly the really important response is the one that marvel came up with a nd man does it ever suck so that s it i don t care how long it takes i m finally going to write the mark gruenwald series i ve promising to do for about 7 years it might take a long while indeed but by golly we re gonna review captain america 307 to 443 1985 to 1995 if it kills us all we ll start soon but first a short personal preamble about my relationship with the series i m not going to make any great transcendent claims for these books in the first place i don t believe in great transcendent claims and in the second place i know that i encountered them at exactly the rig...
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