He’s been a WHAT all along?

I don’t normally weigh in on the comics published by Marvel or DC Comics because I don’t read them any more.  When everything I was diligently following got restarted and/or rebooted to attract new readers I felt my years-long loyalty was being disregarded, so I put my money where my dissatisfaction was.  That is, I simply stopped buying their comics.  That does a lot more than bad-mouthing on the internet.  Still, every so often some bit of superhero news comes my way and I do my best to keep up, even a little.

And man oh man, am I ever glad I stopped giving those assholes my money.  Captain America has been a Nazi all along, huh?  You guys are really going through with this?  Screw you.  That is the dumbest premise for a comic since One More Day and, after reading a spoiler-filled synopsis, I won’t even be giving this story a chance.

This is the kind of thing that makes me happy I’ve never been given the opportunity to write anything for Marvel or DC.  Mainstream comics are a collaborative exercise, though not in the way that Garth and I collaborate.  We have full creative control over every STAR POWER story, every character choice, everything.  If anyone is to blame for unpopular directions, it’s us and only us.  Mainstream comics are collaborations in that when one team is done with a character or title, they hand responsibility off to another creative team, who hopefully build off what the previous team, or years of teams, have built before them.  That’s why I despise reboots.  They wipe away everything that years of teams have done before, good and bad.  The collaboration of numerous writers and artists, the baton-passing of creative teams, are wiped away.  One More Day and this Secret Empire bullshit aren’t reboots, but they wipe away years of established story for… I don’t even know.  This crap makes me insane.

This is why I think superheroes shouldn’t only belong to corporate comics.  This is why we need indy creators doing their own superhero stories.  Because when some committee decides your favorite story or character needs an edgy twist to drum up business, or to be wiped away completely after years of dedicated reading, you’re going to need to turn to some superhero stories that are free of this corporate comics nonsense.

Comics are a wonderful medium, but the business of comics can make me mad as hell.