I once wrote a story about a pedophile.
Not deliberately, oh great googly moogly no. I was still in high school, had never been on a single date, and very likely had no idea that pedophiles even existed, let alone walked and breathed and shopped DiStefano’s and Foodland just like normal people did. No, I had something very different in mind, and it was only after I was a jaded divorcee that I realized just what I had done.
You see, I had a short story due for my creative writing class, and I was on a tight deadline. So when I read James Tiptree Jr’s late 1960’s short story “Beam Us Home,” a lesser work about a bright kid who falls in love Star Trek, eventually joins the space program, and either dies trying to fly beyond the atmosphere or actually ends up on an alien spacecraft, I decided that it was ripe for parody. Instead of a bright kid my protagonist was a beaten down acting coach who found new life through his obsession with Bill Mumy, aka Will Robinson, the star of Lost in Space. I included several very obscure references to both television shows, wrote one good sentence (“The secretary smiled through her lipstick”), and was blissfully unaware that I had inadvertently written a very low-grade, non-sexual, and really, really bad take on “Death in Venice.”
In my defense, I was all of sixteen, had never read a single word by Thomas Mann, and was a typical teenager who had more ambition than skill. I also thought I had written a comic masterpiece (hint: I hadn’t) and so I turned dutifully handed it to my creative writing teacher….
Who praised it as a sensitive character study of a lonely man who finds something to believe in through his belief in an innocent child, and gave me an A.
“Whoops,” as they say in the Common Speech of the West.
Fortunately the adults involved (my teacher, my mother, my aunt Betty, possibly the mailman, God only knows who else) all knew me well enough to realize that I was about as sexually experienced and savvy as a sack of road salt. And though my feelings were somewhat bruised by the lack of hysterical laughter from anyone who read “Your Friend and Mine, Billy Mumy,” I had no problem with getting an A on the assignment. I simply decided that adults were dumb, set the (now lost, thank God) manuscript aside, and went on to something else.
It wasn’t until years later that I realized I had learned perhaps the hardest truth that anyone who writes, sings, sculpts, paints, raps, dances, or otherwise does creative work for public consumption eventually learns: we have absolutely no control over how our audience responds to our work.
That’s right. As carefully as an author might choose every single word, a composer agonize over orchestration, a sculptor hesitate before lifting a chisel, once the work is complete and out in the world the creator’s part is over. It’s up to the audience to decide how to respond to a work, and no matter how much the creator (or, sometimes, the owner/patron) might object, well, it’s too late. Intention is one thing, but unless one is writing a private diary that will be burned upon one’s death, creative work is as much about how a work is perceived as how it was intended.
Consider but a few examples:
- The Nazis despised modern art, which they considered a pernicious, unwholesome influence upon society, unlike the healthy “Germanic art” depicting happy farm families and heroic warriors. They even staged an exhibit of “degenerate” art to show the public just how horrible this modern junk was, only to have thousands of annoyed art lovers flock to see works by Klee, Grosz, Kandinsky, Picasso, and Chagall while an exhibition of acceptable works was basically ignored.
- Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories for money, nothing more, and when he tired of the character attempted to kill him off. He was stunned the public reacted with rage (one letter from a respectable elderly lady began with “You brute!”) and death threats, and eventually had to bring back a character he had come to hate rather than write the historical fiction he considered his greatest achievement.
- Johann Strauss the Younger labored mightily over an opera, Ritter Pázmán, that he was certain would be his greatest artistic achievement. Alas, the critics savaged it as banal and boring, while the Viennese public basically ignored it in favor of the gorgeous waltzes, polkas, and marches set the standard for orchestral dances for years to come.
- Sir Arthur Sullivan had a similar experience with his one grand opera, Ivanhoe, which had one successful run and then faded from memory even as Trial by Jury, The Mikado, Ruddigore, HMS Pinafore, and his other collaborations with W.S. Gilbert became among the most beloved works of musical theater.
- And speaking of The Mikado...what Gilbert and Sullivan intended as a satire of British politics set in a fictionalized version of Japan has been widely viewed as a bigoted slap against Japanese culture, to the point where modern productions have to take great pains to put the work in its 19th century context. Modern productions also omit certainly racially charged language that was acceptable in its time and most definitely is not today.
- Another 19th century classic that’s run into trouble due to language is Huckleberry Finn, as well intentioned school boards and libraries have struggled to deal with one of the greatest anti-racist books in American literature using racist language. And then there was Leslie Fiedler’s "Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey!" which not only pointed out the homoerotic subtext in the Huck/Jim relationship, but in a surprisingly amount of 19th century America literature that its authors had written as depicting friendship, not secret gay love.
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was intended as an American fairy tale that would stand beside the works of the Brothers Grimm and Lewis Carroll, not an allegory on the gold standard, but even a statement by L. Frank Baum himself that the work was not allegorical hasn’t prevented generations of critics from believing that the book was actually a manifesto in favor of free silver and William Jennings Bryan.
- And while we’re at it, no, The Lord of the Rings is not an allegory of World War II and the Cold War. JRR Tolkien despised modern allegory (including his friend CS Lewis’ Narnia books), plus he began the book as a sequel to his non-allegorical, non-political children’s book The Hobbit. Generations of readers and critics have said otherwise, and let’s not even talk about how the officer/batsman relationship between Frodo and Sam has been viewed over the years, shall we? Or how Tom Bombadil has been viewed as a happy flower child, a venomous nature spirit, or a modern verson of Hades snatching Persephone from her happy home by the river to be his companion in derry-dolling and stomping throught the lilies?
- Gene Roddenberry was so appalled by the appearance of fanfiction about the epic love between Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock that he actually included a passage in the novelization of the first Star Trek movie where Captain Kirk himself insists that no no no, he’s straight, plus why would he choose a lover who only came into heat every seven years? That this did absolutely nothing to stop the flood of Kirk/Spock fannish erotica surprised no one except Roddenberry himself and possibly the suits at Paramount.
- Ditto the suits at Lucasfilm who aren’t happy with all the Kylo Ren/Hux, Han Solo/Chewbacca, Anakin Skywalker/Obiwan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker/a random porg or two, Leia/Rey, every character in Rogue One/each other Grand Leader Snoke/Andy Serkis, etc., etc., etc., fic that’s appeared over the past forty-one years.
So it’s not just the work that makes a piece’s reputation. It’s how the audience receives it, interprets it, and then reinterprets it that ultimately makes the difference between a book that’s popular in its own day and one that’s popular for all time. Creative work is as much about the relationship between the creator and the audience, and the audience and the work, as anything else, and woe betide the creator who thinks otherwise.
It is safe to say that neither the original creators of the comic book I’m going to discuss tonight nor the current copyright holder of the book had the slightest idea of how their audience would react to recent developments. That at least part of the reaction was based on a subtextual reading of the book and character that isn’t supported by any definitive evidence didn’t make it any less angry or painful. And though the creative team a couple of years ago might well have expected some backlash against what they clearly thought was a clever plot twist that would shake things up a bit, they clearly had no idea just how emphatically their attempt at shaking things would be rejected:
Captain America: Steve Rogers – Hail Hydra! and its sequels, ancillary works, and a GIANT SPECIAL EVENT THAT CHANGED NOTHING AND EVERYTHING O’DOOM, by Nick Spencer et al., art by Jesus Saiz and several others – May 25, 2016, should have been a red letter day in American comic books: Captain America was coming back.
This doesn’t mean that the comic book named Captain America had been on hiatus. Nor does it mean that there hadn’t been a superhero named “Captain America” fighting crime and doing his best to live up to America’s lofty ideals. The book had been published every month, and it starred a noble man clad in red, white, and blue, a vibranium shield on his arm as he combated evil and struggled to exemplify old fashioned concepts like equality, liberty, and justice in an increasingly dark world.
The difference was that the original World War II Captain America, Steve Rogers, had lost the super serum that gave him his powers and had taken a background role in the Marvel Universe. The current shield slinger was his longtime friend and crime fighting partner Sam Wilson, formerly the Falcon, the first prominent African-American superhero. This had caused a minor eruption from Fox News about how this was clearly inspired by President Obama (wrong, and even if it had, so what?), but overall Sam had been more than up to the task.
2016 was a very special year, though, as the character would be turning 75, and that meant some sort of commemoration was in order. So it was no surprise when it was announced during a 75th anniversary TV special that Steve would get his powers back and resume the role of Captain America alongside Sam in May. Marvel already had two Hawkeyes, several Hulks, and close to a dozen Spider-Men/Women/Hams/Clones, after all, so two Captains America should have been a snap.
If only.
For it seems that the newly restored Captain America was not the noble, self-sacrificing, rock solid force for all that was right and good. This Captain America was a bit…off. Brusque. Abrupt. As if he were hiding a secret of some sort –
Like being a sleeper agent for Hydra, the fascist organization that had been Marvel’s stand-in for Nazism for the last several decades. Worse, Steve proved that he was actually EEEEVVVIILLLL by shoving Grade B hero Jack Flag out of a plane, then turning to face the reader and saying, “Hail Hydra” as coolly as he used to say “Avengers Assemble.”
And if that weren’t bad enough, writer Nick Spencer and editor Tom Brevoort gave several interviews insisting that oh no no, this was not their idea, perish the thought! They were only teasing out the subtext that had been buried in the character all along, so people should stop speculating that this was something new. Nor should anyone think that this was a clone, a Life Model Decoy, the result of brainwashing, or anything else. This really was Steve Rogers, he really had been a Hydra sleeper agent since forever, and everyone needed to sit back, relax, and enjoy this exciting new chapter in the saga of the Sentinel of Liberty.
Needless to say, that is not what happened. Comics fans reacted about as well as if Spencer and Brevoort had decided that Cap had been a child molester who also fed newborn kittens through a meat grinder when he wasn’t secretly attending NAMBLA meetings. Comics historians pointed out not only was there a singular lack of any evidence in the books that Steve had ever been Hydra, he’d been created to advocate America’s entry in World War II and had been a New Deal liberal for the majority of his career. And many, many observers could not understand why Marvel Comics was making Steve EEEEVIIIILLLLL at the very same time that Captain America: Civil War was making Marvel Studios over a billion dollars.
Jewish fans in particular were appalled, and little wonder. Not only were Captain America’s creators, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, Jewish, but the character had been created explicitly to fight fascism, beginning with a cover showing Cap socking Adolf Hitler in the nose. Many also made the point that even though neither Simon nor Kirby had explicitly said so, certain aspects of Cap’s origin story bore a striking resemblance to the golem legend: he acquired his powers thanks to the work of a wise Jewish elder (based on the Jewish Albert Einstein) who gave him a secret formula activated by Vita-Rays (the breath of God), wore a costume and carried a shield explicitly based on his community’s heraldry (including a star on the shield, albeit one of five points, not six), and had the letter A on his forehead (just like the aleph in emet, the sacred word inscribed on the golem’s forehead at his creation).
This theory, which seems to have originated thanks to Rabbi Simcha Weinstein around 2005-2006, may or may not be what Simon and Kirby had in mind. Simon wrote in his memoirs that at least part of his inspiration was King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table (or, why Cap has a shield), but he didn’t give any indication that golems were involved. And though Jack Kirby was a devout Jew who spent his last years drawing murals based on Biblical stories instead of comics, he didn’t live long enough to write his memoirs.
“Not proven, but possible” is the best anyone can say about the original Captain America being a latter-day golem. But in the same way that Leslie Fiedler saw Huck and Jim’s friendship as something more, some comics fans (particularly younger fans and Jewish fans) had come to see Captain America as a star-spangled golem designed to defend not just his country, but the American Jewish community in particular.
This made the mere idea of the character turning fascist more than simply another heel turn that would be rescinded as soon as enough comics had been sold. It was an active, deliberate betrayal of Simon and Kirby’s original character, both as an anti-fascist and as a potential golem, and a slap in the fact not only to Jewish fans but the enormous Jewish influence in comic books as a whole. Worse, it opened up the possibility that people who didn’t much like Jews but really, really loved the idea of 100% lily white Americanism would seize upon this development with joy and rapture, and never mind pedants pointing out that this was almost certainly temporary.
When all of the above was pointed out to Marvel via a veritable tsunami of angry tweets, enraged blog posts, and occasionally tearful protests by fans who felt not only betrayed but actually threatened, Spencer and Brevoort merely chortled that all of this was supported in the books, stop overreacting and you’ll see! And if the plot had been resolved quickly, or Brevoort and Spencer had simply stopped giving interviews, the entire controversy probably would blown over with a few shrugs and someone saying something like “eh, it’s comic books, no one stays evil or dead for long, whadda y’expect?
Alas, Captain Hydra was not a passing fancy. As the months passed, it became clear that he was manipulating the entire Marvel universe so he could conquer the world (of course) and finally execute Hydra’s master plan (of conquering the world, what else?). More heroes fell or were forced underground. Allies were either dismissed or lied to (the horror!) Other evildoers were vanquished. And Marvel’s 2017 Big Summer Event that Changed Everything (never mind that it would be retconned within two years) promised to bring the saga of Captain Hydra to a glorious climax, or something, even though seasoned comics fans predicted that none of this was permanent so people should simply calm down and read the damn books.
Which they did, least in sufficient quantities to justify the continued existence of Captain Hydra. Comic shop employees were not happy (one I asked about Captain Hydra literally gagged, while another switched jobs right about then, isn’t that interesting?), while the manager at my local shop said ze was convinced that half the sales were to collectors who were convinced that a complete, mint-condition run of Steve Rogers: Captain America would eventually be worth big bucks. And for all the rumblings about boycotts and all the outrage about Captain Hydra (especially after it turned out that yes, brainwashing was behind the heel turn, tee hee hee Marvel sure fooled us!), initial sales of Steve Rogers: Captain America more than justified the Hail Heard Round the World.
All of which goes to show that it Captain Hydra had remained a comic book thing, the protests would have died down, the plot would have played out, and eventually Cap would have turned good again, just like the pundits predicted.
If only.
For it seems that, just as those Jewish fans had predicted, the alt right was delighted by the idea of Captain Hydra. A cover of Cap deflecting missiles labeled as “racism” and “fascism” was photoshopped so that he wore a swastika, not a star, and the missiles bouncing off his swastika’d shield said “Jews” and “multiculturalism.” At least one alt right marcher in Charlottesville was photographed wearing a Captain America t-shirt prior to picking up his tiki torch, and little graphics of alt right symbol Pepe the Frog dressed as Captain America began appearing on the Internet.
Worse, it looked like at least some of Marvel’s employees thought this was just swell. A vice president said that “fans don’t want diversity” because several books starring female or non-white characters had flopped, never mind that Ms. Marvel (Muslim), Black Panther (African), and Squirrel Girl (female) were among their most prominent titles. Local comic shops were urged to dress their employees in Hydra t-shirts to publicize the upcoming Secret Empire event. Nick Spencer had poor Sam Wilson (still officially a Captain America) face off against angry “social justice warriors” who thought he was an angry imperialistic American, never mind his history as a social worker and Civil Rights activist in Harlem, and that was before a media web site dug up Spencer’s history as a right-wing political candidate and gentrifier in Cincinnati.
Then Secret Empire came out, and it became clear that, far from passively accepting Captain Hydra, fans were doing what they usually doing and responding by rejecting what they didn’t like and celebrating what they did, and if Marvel didn’t like it, well, that was too damn bad.
The first indications that the backlash was more than a handful of angry, spoiled, Social Justice Warriors of the Jewish persuasion came by the fall of 2016. This was when Marvel sales began to show a sudden, noticeable decline. For all that Steve Rogers: Captain America was selling decently, the same could not be said for the rest of Marvel’s offerings. Those fell sharply, by around six percent overall, and accelerated to the point that Marvel had to reassure shop owners that things would indeed turn around, just wait for Secret Empire!
Then came the 2016 election, and suddenly having America’s Own Superhero running around hailing and shoving people out of airplanes and putting his buddies into comas wasn’t nearly so entertaining. Some critics tried to cast this as “well, it’s part of the zeitgeist, of course they planned it this way,” even though Nick Spencer had first pitched the plot in 2014, but that sort of petered out once it became clear that racists, anti-Semites, and homophobes were taking advantage of the zeitgeist to curb stomp opponents and vandalize Jewish cemeteries.
Then came the first Women’s March, and soon it became clear that at least some of the anti-Trump marchers had seized upon the original Captain America not as a symbol of resurgent bigotry but as a symbol of liberation and resistance to tyranny:
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Marchers carrying Captain America shields appeared in several of the Marches, including a woman in Washington who wore a shield painted with “this machine kills fascists” along with her pink pussyhat.
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A Native America water protector showed up at an anti-DAPL protest with a shield in his right hand.
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A man wore a full Cap costume to an anti-Trump veterans’ protest.
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“Where have you gone, Cap’n America? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you” was graffiti’d onto a wall.
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Several cartoons of superheroes either punching Nazis, Donald Trump, or alt right leader Richard Spencer or advocating the same appeared right after a Black Bloc anarchist actually did slug Spencer on inauguration day.
One of these cartoons, by Kossack Matt Bors, was even based on Jack Kirby’s original cover art, only with Cap wearing a bandanna over his lower face and an anarchist A on his forehead
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Joe Simon’s granddaughter, Megan Margulies, wrote a moving essay about her family legacy and how she’d seen someone at the Boston Women’s March lifting a Cap shield on high.
As for Secret Empire itself, to say that it was not well received is putting it mildly. Critics howled over the mediocre art, Nazi-esque uniform worn by Captain Hydra and his henchmen, and vicious plot elements like Captain Hydra destroying Las Vegas. Sales were the worst for any Marvel event in a decade, and there were so much bad publicity that Marvel actually had spoil the ending in a press release that all but begged fans to keep on buying the book because Cap would turn good again.
And if that weren’t bad enough, the actual ending – the good Cap is freed from a cosmic cube by Ant-Man and Bucky Barnes, then punches out Captain Hydra – was so lame that the entire comic book community was left scratching their heads and saying “This is it????”
Needless to say, this did not end well for anyone involved. Marvel Comics head Axel Alonso left the company, possibly involuntarilyMarvel’s overall sales nosedived by a gruesome 20%, and at least one copy of Secret Empire was publicly burned. Nick Spencer was unceremoniously reassigned to another book, while fan favorite (and staunch liberal) Mark Waid replaced him in time for the 700th issue of what was once again Captain America.
The controversy seems to have died down, at least as long as no one at Marvel trieds to defend Secret Empire as an experiment that failed, not a tasteless attempt at revising a Jewish-created character by a couple of Gentiles. The idea of Captain America as a defender of liberty and an anti-fascist seems to have won out, thanks largely to fans who simply refused to accept him being anything else. He’s become a people’s superhero and symbol of American ideals, right alongside Superman, and I fully expect to see more Cap cosplayers at protests as the long, weary struggle against the current regime continues.
So whether his Cap’s creators intended him to be a sort of American golem, on some level that’s exactly what he’s become. And none too soon; as Joe Simon himself wrote toward the end of his life, during the time when Captain America was presumed dead about a decade ago, “We sure could use him right now.”
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Did you ever read a Captain America comic book? See someone dressed like Captain America at a protest? Do you have an old costume or prop moldering in your knotty pine rumpus room? Is the Golem of Prague secreted in your attic? Take up your shield and come to the fire, my friends, and share….
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Monday, Feb 12, 2018 · 2:54:43 AM +00:00 · Ellid
I just learned that this may not be over after all; alt right comics fans who call their anti-minority, anti-woman, anti-LGBT movement “Comicsgate” issued a manifesto on Friday that urged their followers to boycott several non-male, non-conservative, non-white creators, including Matt Fraction, Kellysue DeConnick, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Alex de Campi.
Among the creators singled out was Mark Waid, the current writer on Captain America, an outspoken liberal who writes Cap that way. Waid was specifically given the book to rehabilitate Cap’s reputation after Captain Hydra, and so far his work has been a critical and popular success. Whether Comicsgate and its bigoted little followers will have any impact is not yet clear, but if this goes beyond a tiny group of malcontents, I’ll be sure to let you know.
Ellid