The Soldier Who Doesn't Believe in Killing (Mark Waid Year 2, Captain America Vol 3, #16)

 

The evil Red Skull has the all-powerful cosmic cube... again. In fact, this time he's internalized the power of the cube, so Cap can't do the "knock it out of the Skull's hand" thing. This calls for extreme measures! But of course, Cap won't try to kill the Skull. Why, heavens to Betsy, that would be murder!

You know, I'm a much bigger pacifist than Cap. I don't spend my time beating people up, and I'm against the death penalty and war and all that. But... um... if a genocidal Nazi who's pretty much pure evil attains the power of a God and vows to crush the very concept of liberty, I think he pretty much needs to be taken down by any means possible. At the first opportunity.

This kind of thing really turns me off. I'm all for him wearing the flag, but being holier than the entire frackin' country even at the risk of the freakin' planet (or galaxy)... that's just lame. A lot of people complain that Batman never kills the Joker (who then always escapes custody and kills more people) but I believe that Batman may be genuinely frightened of where crossing that line would take him. Cap is a much more rational guy though, who has always worked hand in glove with agencies and authorities who are prepared to take lives in the defense of the country, within the law. In our country we view taking another's life as moral and legal if it's in defense of the lives of others. Waid seems to be of the school that Cap's schtick is that he can never lose a fight, and knows it. Even Gruenwald didn't go that far. Some would argue that Cap is such a damn good strategist that even with no powers against the most Godlike of villains he never has to kill, but for him to put his entire nation at risk out of the conviction he can outwit everyone ever born under virtually all circumstances smacks of unbelievable arrogance.

And what's this nonsense at the end of the issue 19 where he "hopes" for the Skull's sake that he managed to save himself. That's just... diseased.

(The story also features the character of Korvac, who died tragically wanting to make the world better in a memorable Avengers story, and who has now been turned back into a third rate cyber villain.)

Fortunately Ed Brubaker retconned all this nonsense away in Volume 5. Brubaker says Cap killed Nazis, and Brubaker is still writing Cap, so what he says goes. And Cap is still a decent guy, and a moral guy, but I like to think the current version wouldn't think twice before acing the Red Skull if he got his hands on the damn cosmic cube.

Captain America Volume 2 (1996). Heroes Regurgitated

In the mid-1990s, comic book sales were declining drastically in the wake of the collapse of the comics speculator bubble. Belatedly people realized that comics were not an "investment", and the first issues the comics companies were printing millions of copies of weren't, in the end, going to be worth much more than cover price (if even that). By some accounts two thirds of comic book stores closed during this period, and in 1997 Marvel comics declared bankruptcy, though they continued to publish comics. (They eventually exited bankruptcy and after a few hit superhero movies were later bought by Disney)

In 1996 Marvel decided to outsource the production of some of their comics to some of the hottest artists in comics, who had gone on to set up their own studios. Certain characters were removed from the shared Marvel universe in favor of the "Heroes Reborn" universe, and the artists and writers were given carte blanche to do whatever they wanted with the characters. Marvel soon pulled the plug on the experiment, and after 13 issues the characters were returned to the Marvel universe.

This was not a good year for Captain America. The prior year Mark Waid and Ron Garney had been revitalizing the book, doing excellent work. The "Reborn" issues varied from awful (under writer-artist Rob Liefeld) to mediocre (under writer James Robinson). How bad were they?

In this version of Cap's history, Cap was taken out of commission by his own government, because he opposed the bombing of Japan with nuclear weapons. Chuck Austen tried to introduce this same idea into the proper history of the Marvel universe a few years later. It was ignored. It was a bad idea. (And the art stunk too.)

But as I said, after 13 issues Marvel pulled the plug on it, gave us Captain America Volume 3, put Waid and Garney back on the book, and they pretty much picked up where they left off. The whole thing is pretty much forgotten, except that Cap's alternate-Earth sidekick Rikki Barnes is still running around for some reason.

Captain America 321-322 (Cap's Delicate Sensibilities and Code Against Killing)

Captain America is a soldier, not Dudley Do-Right. It's kind of annoying reading him wringing his hands over having to use deception and violence to rescue some hostages. No wonder comics readers of the era found Wolverine a breath of fresh air.

Gruenwald handled this better in later issues, but issue 322 introduces this:

What? Cap spent all his time on the front lines in World War II knocking people out and tying them up? I guess that makes him way more moral than those regular soldiers, who actually killed the enemy to win the war.

In fairness, this craziness may have originated with Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter, who had a strict "heroes don't kill" code. And Gruenwald actually does get away with letting Cap kill somebody in issue 321, when Cap has no choice but to shoot a terrorist who has opened fire on a crowd of defenseless hostages.

Still, a super-soldier who fought on the frontlines against the Nazis but never killed is a pretty weird notion. Brubaker mercifully wrote this out of continuity when he took over the book several years ago.

[Postscript] Here's Marvel's explanation of Cap's WWII career, from the letter's page of Captain America 327:

Neither Cap nor the Invaders ever carried guns behind enemy lines during the War. They were never actively engaged in combat with the Axis militia, but concentrated their efforts against Nazi super-agents and their leaders. All this is to say that Captain America never sought to kill anyone on the battlefield. It probably happened that soldiers who shot at Cap were hit by their own ricocheting bullets, but that's not the same as Cap shooting someone. We can't deny that Cap was at the center of a lot of bloodshed during the Big One, but he himself never shed another man's blood. The Ultimatum incident in CAP #321 was the first time Cap intentionally took someone's life.

[Postscript 2] In the letter's page of Captain America 328, Marvel backs down very slightly, by offering a vaguer response:

...we do not deny that enemy soldiers died because of Cap's actions. Still, Cap never regularly carried a gun, not was his mission to kill as many of the enemy as he could. His mission was to "destroy the enemies of liberty," which are the concepts of fascism, Nazism, and totalitarianism, not the individuals who espouse them. True, you cannot attack abstractions-- you can only attack the individuals who act in accordance with them. But its an important distinction. Further to the point, soldiers at war play by different rules than civilians at peace and Cap has had years to make peace with himself about his wartime actions. We're not saying that Cap is or ever was a pacifist, but he does have a profound respect for human life. It is a respect that has grown as he has matured, and includes respect for the lives of his individual enemies. Killing an enemy is always Cap's last resort, and every death he's ever been responsible for has taken its toll on his inner peace.

[Postscript 3]  A more detailed critique of the way Marvel handled the storyline where Cap killed a terrorist, and the events that followed, from the letter's page of Captain America #329:

Pinko Captain America (Captain America 225)

Writers generally had little to say about the life of Steve Rogers before he became Captain America. In the late seventies the writers of the book decided that perhaps there was so little reference to Steve's past because even he didn't know what it was. They sent him on a quest to discover his missing history. Eventually writer Steve Gerber uncovered Steve's pinko roots:

None of this jives with the history of Steve Rogers found on Wikipedia or in other stories I've read, so I'm guessing this all got wiped out at some later point in time.

Postscript: It sure didn't take Marvel long to disavow this origin. They published a letter is issue 233 raising several questions about these flashbacks, such as why was Steve Rogers depicted as not joining the army until after Pearl Harbor, contrary to earlier tellings. In response, Marvel wrote:

Yours is just one of many letters expressing concern and confusion over CAP'S retold origin that appeared in issue #225.

But probably nobody is more confused than [current writer Roger McKenzie]. Because it will be up to him, sooner or later, to explain the events that took place in CAP #225 to the satisfaction of Marveldom Assembled.

And he will too. Somehow. Some way. Because one thing's for sure. Whoever that was in CAP #225, it wasn't CAPTAIN AMERICA...

Stories Best Ignored: Cap Was Put on Ice by the US Gov't (Captain America Vol. 4, 7-16)

For a long time it was part of Captain America's character that he NEVER killed anyone (and, believe it or not, for a LONG time this INCLUDED World War 2)! There's even an issue in the Mark Gruenwald run that deals with this, when Cap finally has to take a life (an Ultimatum agent). Later, future writers, [like Ed Brubaker, writer of Captain America Volume 5], chucked that right out the window (or rather swept it under the rug) and pretended that those issues happened ANOTHER WAY [...] because in their minds there was no way a soldier like Cap went through all of WW2 without killing some Nazis.

And most readers are fine with this, accept it, and keep reading.

Same goes for issues where Flash Thompson and the Punisher fought in Viet Nam. Same goes for a lot of the old-fashioned sexist views of many of the characters. Everything gets a gloss and the comics you read in your youth didn't happen EXACTLY that way... but they happened.

                   -Amazing Spider-Man writer Dan Slott

 
I'm currently reading Captain America volume 4, and it appears that writer Chuck Austen not only stuck by the "Captain America didn't kill, even during the war" thing, he wrote a story about it, that was also intended to give a more "realistic" explanation for why Cap ended up frozen in ice:

and...

Captain America volume 4, issue 16 was Chuck Austen's final issue as writer. I haven't read the rest of volume 4 yet, but I'm guessing the writers that follow ignore this whole thing or eliminate it. I sure hope so.