Captain America is coming back. And this time he's packing heat.
The star-spangled hero returns to action in January. The former Captain America, Steve Rogers, was killed off in March after leading a protest against a law in the Marvel universe that required all those with superhuman abilities to register with the government. He was being led to the court house when he died in a hail of bullets.
It remains unclear just who will be adopting Captain America's colors in January. It's possible that the book's writer, Ed Brubaker, may figure out a way to resurrect Steve Rogers. It's also possible that someone else might be wearing a revamped Captain America costume.
But more disturbing than Capt's new identity or new clothing is the fact that he is shown brandishing a pistol. Brubaker points out that Captain America frequently used a gun in the 1940's, while combating an assortment of threats posed by the axis powers.
As a matter of fact, the gun used was fairly prevalent during the formative years of many superheros we now consider classic. Over at DC Comics, the Batman was shown using a pistol in some of his early adventures. The Batman's later aversion to firearms was traced to the trauma experienced by the youthful Bruce Wayne after watching the brutal murder of his parents. Even the older, jaded Batman of Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" declined to use weapons that fired lethal ammunition.
Not that there is any shortage of comic characters willing and able to kill an opponent. Marvel's Punisher carries an assortment of weaponry in his one-man war on crime. Wolverine of the X-Men has repeatedly demonstrated no misgivings about the need to kill.
Such behavior is still a relative anomaly in today's comic books. DC's otherworldly hero The Spectre has used his almost infinite power to dispatch law breakers in a variety of ways. The original Human Torch (actually an android having no relationship to the current Fantastic Four member) occasionally burned his victims alive. And as far as Prince Namor of Atlantis was concerned, particularly in the early days of his strip, human beings made better shark bait than companions.
So in this environment it was no surprise that Captain America might occasionally take a weapon off a fallen foe and use that weapon against other opponents. Heck, his young sidekick Bucky, has been shown using a flamethrower during the same period. Talk about youth being engaged in dangerous occupations!
Brubaker is absolutely correct when he points out that Steve Rogers was a soldier when he wasn't being Captain America. But the Captain America who used weapons like that was a Captain America who battled Japanese foes who were depicted as having fangs and eyeglasses way too thick to have come from the bottom of a Coke bottle. The artist who drew Capt's adventures in those early days tended to give the shield-slinging crusader German foes who were walking advertisements for the missing link.
Meanwhile, Bucky sometimes served as a member of a group of stereotyped individuals called the Young Allies. By today's standards, the most offensive member of the Young Allies was a slow-talking zoot suit-wearing African American. So let us not romanticize those early chapters in Capt's career too much.
Since those early days Capt has changed somewhat. For the past four decades he has been the embodiment of the American values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The fact that he refused to use a conventional gun when so many people would be shooting at him was the perfect metaphor for everything America's foreign policy and military responses should always be: You may attack us in force using every dirty trick in the book but we will respond by fighting honorably and beating you at your own game.
Sadly, the use of a sidearm by the new Captain America signals the character's willingness to buy into the entire mindset of the Bush administration and its War on Terror. Where once Captain America modeled the best of America, the new Captain is a product of its fears. The new Captain is an exemplar of the situational ethics used by this administration to defend itself from openness and accountability.
It is a mindset that lends itself to abuses at facilities like Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. It is a mindset that permits secret trials, extraordinary rendition and the suspension of Habeas Corpus. It is a mindset that allows conservatives to believe that torture is an effective means of interrogation.
In short, Captain America with a gun is Jack Bower in a funny suit.
And we, as a nation are poorer for it.