So Marvel has cannily managed to land on the front pages of newspapers around the country -- and incidently sell out of the latest issue of Captain America's comic -- by printing a story in which the Star-Spangled Avenger gets assassinated, a la Oswald, on the way to his arraignment.
One comics scholar reacted to the news by reprinting the Jim Steranko cover to the Captain America comic from 1968 in which The Living Legend of WWII was supposedly ventilated by bullets and killed -- complete with a funeral -- only to come roaring back (on a motorcycle filled with explosive fuel, no less) in the middle of a graveyard. That storyline only took one issue to bring Winghead back to life; I suspect this one will take months or years -- much like the storyline in the early '90's in which Superman was temporarily killed off.
As all long-time comics fans know, Superhero Heaven has a revolving door.
Since this is the Era of the Pundit, lots of editorials took this opportunity to crank out op-ed pieces on Cap, what he means to America (and what he has meant at various times in the past, his character shifting as the definition of patriotism shifts), and (invariably) why we need him more than ever. And radio shows have used the occasion to dust off the cheesy theme to the cheesy 1960's CA cartoon -- the one where comic panels were shown with a character's lips or leg moving to give the illusion of animation.
Will this create any new comic buyers (besides the ones who bought CA #25)? Maybe, but not likely in any numbers. The public is going to forget this; it probably already has. But sometimes comics marketing needs an adrenaline shot like this.
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