Nazis, Bad Writing, and Event Fatigue!

Ah, comic books, you are the fountain of unending nonsense and horrible bullshit that feeds my angry soul. So, after a lot of prodding, I finally am going back and covering a question I got asked. Or rather, I am replying to the people who left me lots of messages saying that I was wrong to react badly to Captain America being a Hydra agent and should let the story play out first. This would be fine as an argument except for the fact that...as I pointed out...Hydra is an organization founded by Nazis and ran by Nazis.

Trump looks weird without his wig.

A scary amount of people come to the defense of this whole idea, often saying that Hydra and the Nazis are not inherently related. Alright, let's go through the more famous members of Hydra then. The Red Skull? Nazi with a skull face. Baron Wolfgang von Strucker? Nazi with a magical killer claw. Sin? Red Skull's daughter who is a sadist and also a Nazi. Crossbones? Sadist who knowingly works for a Nazi (Red Skull) and is often Sin's lover. Arnim Zola? Nazi scientist who wants to wipe out "impurities" among humanity. Noticing a trend here? Hell, the main member of Hydra that most fans would go to as being not clearly a Nazi is Deadpool's sometimes sidekick, Bob.

Clearly, the most important member of Hydra.

Now, look...I love Bob. He's a fun idiot character and is always nice to see pop up in a Deadpool story. He went from unwitting hostage to being the de facto tag-along on Wade's adventures. He's also meant to be a joke character who only exists to make agents of Hydra out to be ineffectual morons. He's not glourifying them or colouring them as a powerful force, because that's not why he exists. He exists to help Deadpool tell his jokes. But none of that means that Hydra aren't a group of fucking Nazis who are motivated towards doing Nazi things. It boggles the mind that you'd even think that it's acceptable not to think of them as Nazis. Is it because there's ninjas and some lady in a green leather catsuit? Because that still doesn't erase what they are.

No amount of boners you may get will make it acceptable to pretend they're not what they are.

See, the crux of all this is the fact I gave Nick Spencer a lot of shit after the "Captain America: Hydra Sleeper Agent" reveal. And some people think I should apologize for being wrong. No. I'm not going to apologize, mostly because I'm not wrong. Spencer made a decision to write a story where Captain America, a character created by Jewish comic creators to be a stand against Nazism, is now a Nazi. No, I'm not taking anything out of context, he's clearly now a Nazi. In a time period where white supremacists and Neo-Nazis are running rampant, Nick Spencer took the symbol of everything good and turned him into what he was created to fight. It's not clever, it's offensive and it's the sort of thing that actual real-life Nazis love because they feel like it validates them.

Meanwhile, the guy who turned Cap into a Nazi went of to say he's against Nazi punching. You know, that thing Cap has done countless times. Fun.

I grew up loving Captain America. He was a character that represented an ideal. He wasn't what we are, but rather what we aspire to be. He stood up against oppression, he fought fascism, he was against serving government interests, and he never backed down in face of death. Captain America faced down Thanos and he didn't flinch. He's not and would never be a Nazi. But a disturbing trend started back in a shitty little comic series called Civil War. I really really hate that story and here's why: it was completely out of character for everyone. Mark Millar wrote most of the characters as belligerent dicks. And that's not shocking, because that's sort of his thing. But I feel like it began a really stupid trend towards writers shitting on characters for the sake of shock value.

Yes, having a shitty alcoholic preach about MySpace & Nascar sure is what we needed.

The truth is that all of this bollocks? It's not creative or clever, it's lazy and tiresome. They've done the Cap being brainwashed to work for Nazis thing before, more than once, and he broke free every damn time. Because he's Captain America and writers understood that it would be in terrible taste to keep him that way for longer than a short period and that it was something that would only serve to show how strong his sense of right and wrong is at his core. What's Nick Spencer is doing is a cliche that he's dragging out for shock value to promote an event that no one wants to happen. Why doesn't anyone want it? Because it's following up another event, meaning there's almost no time to breathe between the events if you're actually masochistic enough to try and read all of this crap.

Like this asshole right here who seems to enjoy torturing himself .

But the reason this all came up again isn't just because of the prodding from people disagreed with me about the fact that Hydra are Nazis or even the oncoming event looming. No, the reason this all came up again was because they did it again. They took a heavily anti-Nazi character and made them a fucking Nazi for their shitty little Nazi event. So, which iconic character did they decide to wipe their asses on? Magneto. Yeah, the Jewish Holocaust survivor whose parents were killed by Nazis and has fought against fascism pretty much his entire life. That guy. He gonna be Hydra now. Just a reminder for you, this is what happened when the Red Skull and Magneto met last.

He also crushed his head with a piece of a wall. Magneto has a zero tolerance policy towards Nazis.

Now, here's the thing...I know it's all going to probably be reversed and that's it's all because of reality altering and all that bollocks. But I don't care. It's still wrong to do this. It's fucking offensive to the Jewish community, the creators who built these characters, and the fans who love them for what they stand for. It's exploitative in the worst possible way, because it involves tainting these characters in a way that may very well ruin them for many people forever. It has soured my opinion of nick Spencer as a writer for leaning on such terrible story idea and it makes it harder to justify supporting Marvel when they allow this sort of thing. It's pure and utter trash marketing and the only people it's really appealing to are the worst examples of humanity. You know, the people Nick Spencer doesn't want you punching in the face.

A Spencer is defending a Spencer...hmmm...

Do I think Nick Spencer is a Nazi? No. I think he's a jackass who is leaning on something offensive, because shock writing is easier. What I hate more than anything about all of this though is that everyone involved should know better. The time for a big event story about the rise of a Nazi organization is not when actual Nazis are creeping out from their dark corners. It's a time for showing heroes like Captain America being up against Nazis more than ever. It's a time for showing Magneto taking a stand against the kind of actual hatred he grew up dealing with as it starts to rise up. Writing topical stories about these characters standing against shit that is actually hurting innocent people and affecting them is what we need. We don't need another event. We need good comic books that inspire us to be better because our heroes remind us we're not alone. But we're not getting that and it's on Marvel for letting it happen. And now that I'm exhausted from talking about this shit, I'm gonna go watch a movie about puppets who murder Nazis. Later days, bleeders.

Good times.