The Death of Captain America

It's a story, not a stunt

By Corrina Lawson
April 1, 2007

Marvel's publicity machine went into overdrive for Captain America #25, featuring the murder of its title character, and probably did the storyline and the writer, Ed Brubaker, a real disservice because the publicity overshadowed the fact that this is the best run of Captain America in at least twenty years.

When I heard through the internet that Captain America #25 was going to be big, my first thought was "Sharon's going to kill him. Poor Steve. Poor Sharon."

So when I heard the spoilers about a sniper being the killer, I thought "Huh. That's weird." But turns out that a brainwashed Sharon Carter did kill him.

I suppose I should be upset. I've been a fan of Captain America since the short-lived but well-remembered run by Roger Stern and John Byrne. The problem with this run is that it spoiled me for most of the later Captain America writers. Mark Gruenwald did a good job, but only Mark Waid's run, also short, came close to recapturing the magic I remembered from Stern/Byrne.

Then Ed Brubaker was announced as the writer to relaunch Captain America after the disastrous attempt to insert him into the real world. I had high hopes. When working at DC and Wildstorm, Brubaker had co-created one of my favorite series ever, Sleeper, and did his best to write some excellent Batman stories despite the intrusion of crossover events that interrupted his story arcs. He even managed to write one of the best Batman stories of the last ten years, a flashback story to the police officer who investigated Thomas and Martha Wayne's murders, despite the fact this story took place during a very ill-conceived and mostly poorly executed event called Batman: Murderer/Fugitive.

I admit, I winced when I heard Brubaker was going to start his Captain America run by killing the Red Skull and bringing Bucky back. C'mon? Bucky? What was he doing?

Writing great stories, as it soon became clear. Yes, the Red Skull really had been killed. But then he was brought back fairly shortly, in a way that wasn't a cop-out and made several other characters much more interesting. Bucky's return as the Winter Soldier, a brainwashed killing machine leftover from Soviet Russia, worked beyond all reason, mostly because the creative team made me care about Bucky Barnes and what happened to him. It worked because of that moment of sheer joy Steve Rogers experienced when he realized that, yes, Bucky was really alive and that, yes, he had his memories and sanity restored. That's one of my favorite panels ever in a Captain America story.

And then there's Sharon Carter. Busy trying to find and protect Bucky during a battle, Cap let down his guard and Sharon was secretly grabbed and tortured by the Red Skull and his crew. She's been systematically brainwashed since then by Dr. Faustus, who's been posing as a S.H.E.I.L.D psychiatrist. (And, by the way, did I mention that Brubaker writes a wonderful Sharon Carter?)

So the set-up was there for Steve Rogers to die at the hands of the women he loved. In interviews, Brubaker has said that Civil War (Marvel's event for the last few months) hadn't forced him into this, that this was the plan all along, if done a little faster because of Civil War. I believe him, because the foreshadowing for Steve's murder are all over his previous two story arcs.

And the storyline works without Civil War because aside from the issue spotlighting the Winter Soldier and the Young Avengers team-up (go get it, it's great), I haven't read any of Civil War. I know the events of Civil War #7 played a role in setting up Cap's murder but I have no desire to read it. All the story I need is in the Captain America issues.

So ... now what? Did one of my favorite writers kill off one of my favorite characters for good? I doubt it. I think, like Wesley in the Princess Bride, that Cap is only mostly dead. As Brubaker showed previously with the death and reincarnation of the Red Skull, he's quite aware of the conventions of mainstream superhero comics. He knows that if he planned to kill Captain America off, someone would eventually bring him back.

So I am trusting that Brubaker himself has plans to bring Cap back in a year or two, in a way that doesn't cheapen the story and in a way I don't expect, though I'm guessing it has something to do with the Cosmic Cube. I could be wrong, I suppose, but so far, I have reason to trust in Ed Brubaker's storytelling.

In most cases, I think superhero deaths are simply a cheap way to pump up interest in a major event. See: Blue Beetle. But like the original death of Jean Gray in X-Men #137, Captain America's murder doesn't feel forced, it doesn't feel cheap, and it's a damn good story.