Steve Rogers Will Be Reborn

Crossposted from For The Love Of Comics

The speculation is over, Marvel has revealed that the upcoming Reborn miniseries will feature the return of Steve Rogers. New York Daily News had the scoop.

“The original Captain America is finally coming back,” Marvel Comics editor in chief Joe Quesada told the Daily News. “We’ve been patiently planning for this moment for 21/2 years.”

The rest of the article is a basic rehash of what we already know. Cap died two and a half years ago, major uproar, Reborn will be five issues, yadda yadda yadda. You can read the article here.

Actually, it occurs to me that this isn’t For The Love Of Comics and not all of my readers may know the recent history of Cap, so let me give you a quick rundown.

It has long been accepted that death is never final in comics, unless you’re Uncle Ben (Spider-man’s uncle), Thomas and Martha Wayne (Batman’s parents), or Bucky Barnes (Captain America’s WWII partner).  Ed Brubaker broke this rule when he retconned history to reveal that rather than dying in a rocket explosion, Bucky survived, albeit with the loss of one arm.  While Cap was frozen in ice, Bucky was recovered by the Soviet Union, brainwashed, and turned into the Winter Soldier, a covert operative and elite assassin.

In the present, Cap runs into the Winter Soldier and somehow recognizes Bucky, though Bucky has visibly aged about twenty years and has been assumed dead for around twenty years.  It’s comics, some things you just have to accept.  Cap slowly gets through to Bucky, who breaks through his brainwashing and begins making peace with the things he did as the Winter Soldier and acclimating to the world.

Then came the superhero Civil War, which was kinda complicated, but can be summarized for our current purposes by saying that some young superheroes messed up and got a lot of kids killed.  The government responded by passing a law requiring all superheroes to register their identities and become licensed, thus bringing some accountability to the superpower game.  The superheroes split roughly down the middle, with Iron Man heading up the pro-registration side and Captain America heading up the anti-registration side of heroes refusing to register.  Alot of fighting ensued, which culminated in a huge battle.  Just when Cap had Iron Man down and could have won the “war”, he noticed the civilians around that were being hurt in the battle and surrendered, realizing that he was causing more harm than good.

When Cap was being brought to the courthouse for his trial, he was shot and presumed dead.  After much soul searching, Bucky agreed to take up the mantle and has been trying to live up to the name of Captain America for the last year.

Now, after alot of character growth and exploration of what a world without Steve Rogers is like, Steve is apparently coming back.  Judging from the realistic tone of the series, I’m assuming that it will be revealed that the Red Skull has been keeping Steve Rogers in some kind of suspended animation while he prepares his master stroke of evilness.

I’m sure this is good news for most fans, but I’m actually pretty disappointed. The death of Steve Rogers was such a major move that I think it needs to stick awhile longer. We’ve seen some great stories about what the loss of Steve meant to his friends and enemies, and there’s still alot of ground that could be covered. Not to mention that this does a huge disservice to Bucky, who had just seemingly gotten comfortable in his own skin and the Captain America uniform.  The article doesn’t mention what will happen to Mr. Barnes, by the way.

To Ed Brubaker’s credit, though, I thought bringing Bucky back was a terrible idea, but Brubaker pulled it off and Bucky’s return is considered the prime example of a resurrection done right.  I thought it was a terrible idea to kill Steve Rogers, but that easily ranks as one of my top five favorite comic stories of all time.

So no matter how much I wish they had waited a little longer to explore this whole impact of Steve Rogers being gone, I also trust Ed Brubaker to do it right.

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