RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Comic Books Cap is not a gay nazi.

Marvel Backtracks on Captain America Revelation After Just One Issue

(Note: Here be spoilers, naturally. You’ve been warned.) After one issue, Captain America is no longer a Nazi. The only surprising thing here is how quickly Marvel backtracked on their initial choice, though it was clear Captain America would not actually be a Hydra agent forever. In an interview with ComicBook.com, Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso said that in Captain America: Steve Rogers #2, it will be revealed that Captain America just thinks he’s a Nazi, err, I mean, Hydra agent, because he had false memories implanted by “Kobik, the sentient Cosmic Cube who became a girl.”

In an interview Captain America: Steve Rogers writer Nick Spencer gave with Entertainment Weekly just one month ago, he said, “The one thing we can say unequivocally is: This is not a clone, not an imposter, not mind control, not someone else acting through Steve. This really is Steve Rogers, Captain America himself.” Well, turns out it was mind control. Didn’t take long for that stance to change.

Later on in the former interview, on the topic of the backlash, Alonso said, “We’re trained to anticipate a strong reaction to change or a big plot twist like this, whether it’s a female Thor or the new Ms. Marvel or the Korean-American Hulk. We didn’t expect the reaction to be anywhere this big.” To compare these incidents of backlash completely misunderstands the issue. White men were angry about Thor being a woman and the new Ms. Marvel and the new Hulk because they meant increased diversity in spaces that used to solely pander to white men. However, people were upset about Captain America being made a Hydra agent, effectively stand-ins for the Nazis, because it betrays a character who was created as an anti-Nazi symbol by two Jewish men during World War II. All of this just screams of a shameless gimmick while also trying to give readers what they want.

Would it make all that much difference if Captain America were gay? A gay Iron Man, now, given Tony Stark’s penchant for making lewd comments in the Marvel movies, would have made for a spikier shift in dynamics. A gay Hulk might have been read as homophobia, particularly if alter ego Bruce Banner remained straight. A gay Black Widow would have fed into stereotypes about physically adept women.

But a gay Captain America? Would anyone even notice?

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Perhaps that’s why the Twitter user behind the #givecaptainamericaaboyfriend hashtag chose good old Steve Rogers to have their sexuality switched, the latest salvo in the ongoing GLAAD-backed battle to improve Hollywood’s appalling record on diversity. Chris Evans’s patriotic hero is the guy you’d introduce your daughter (or son) to, rather than the Avengers member one might choose to go for a beer with. He’s the superhero equivalent of Alan Titchmarsh, an uncomplicated titan of conservatism in the tradition of that doyen of American innocence, Forrest Gump (though with a rather higher IQ). As Stark himself has pointed out, Rogers doesn’t even use curse words.

As such, Gay Cap would probably make no more of a fuss about his sexual proclivities than the current Straight Cap does. Which you have to assume is exactly the campaign’s point, even if the idea seems to have entered from way out in left field. After all, while the recent social-media drive to switch John Boyega and Oscar Isaac’s relationship from bromance to romance in the new Star Wars movies made a certain sort of sense, Rogers’s coming out would undercut both his previous passion for Hayley Attwell’s Peggy Carter and his burgeoning romance with her niece, Sharon, in current Marvel film Captain America: Civil War.

That doesn’t mean Marvel and its owner Disney are off the hook here: the studios certainly ought to be thinking about introducing a gay superhero into the Avengers continuum at the earliest opportunity. It’s just that there are better candidates.