“Captain America #600” available early from some retailers

Marvel instituted the option for retailers to pick up Captain America #600 today, Monday June 15, two days earlier than the usual Wednesday releases. A press release confirming fan speculation about the probable reasons why also hit today. It’s loaded with spoilers, so it’s coming below the cut.

So, which retailers get the issue early? The program was announced via e-mail on a Wednesday, and replies from retailers had to reach Marvel that Thursday. Therefore, participants are a voluntary group of people who checked e-mail on the busiest day of the week and noticed a chance for participation in an unprecendented program that would involve working the one day a week most “mom and pop” style comic shops are closed. Some who would have participated didn’t learn of the program until after the deadline, so check with your local retailer to be sure.

Last chance to avoid spoilers…

The press release confirms speculation that the “Reborn” series solicited with Ed Brubaker scripts and Bryan Hitch pencils is, in fact, a miniseries about the return of Steve Rogers, the original Captain America who died after Marvel’s Civil War.

13 replies on ““Captain America #600” available early from some retailers”

  1. Wow. Nobody saw that one coming.

    Why are they doing this? I can see bringing back someone like Batman — “Batman = Bruce Wayne” is embedded in our psyche from birth. But how many people know who Steve Rogers is? Or care? Maybe I just don’t know the Cap stories well enough, but it seems to me he was supposed to be larger than life, a symbol as much as a superhero, and passing the mantle on to someone else (preferably another super-soldier) actually suits the tale. At least that’s the way it looks from the outside…

    There are ways to do this sort of coming-back-from-the-dead story really well, but even recent comics don’t have a great track record. But my real question is why do this at all?

    (One thing I can see is that some other hero misses Cap so much, or feels so guilty over his death, that he goes to extreme lengths to bring him back — and the story becomes as much about that hero as it is about Steve Rogers. This would make a fantastic Iron Man story, for example, if handled carefully.)

    • The Steve Rogers Captain America stands almost at the start of the Marvel Universe, and he’s really important to Marvel fans. But (as I’ve said before), we’re talking about companies that couldn’t keep Jason Todd and Bucky Barnes dead– even though the revolving door o’ death rarely serves their stories well. It turns dramatic moments into gimmicks.

      • Ah, okay, that makes sense. Then they were almost certainly going to bring him back from the start. Again, if they use this event to develop not only Captain America but some other hero(es) as well, that would actually work. It’s been done before: last time (?) The Thing was killed Reed Richards started planning how to bring him back within a couple of pages, for example, and I understand the resulting story was pretty good.

        Here’s hoping!

        I look forward to the review. :)

        • The review will likely come later tonight. As for the “why,” Brubaker’s been knocking “Captain America” out of the park since he took over 51 issues ago, and this is all following the outline he had in place when he took over the title. In other words, the writer that killed him is bringing him back exactly as he planned to bring him back before he’d even killed him off. It’s like the “Authoritative Action” and “Hereafter” stories in FF you refer to, but with a longer delay.

  2. If it felt like the marketing driven crap published 15 or 20 years ago, I’d agree with Octa. It’s not. It’s incredibly well written, and I actually prefer it when characters are “killed” with the plan for the return already in place, as it’s often better than whatever concoction brings them back. In this particular case, interviews with Ed Brubaker at the time of Cap’s death were what convinced me Steve Rogers was coming back before his run was over, because of the way he avoided questions, talked about how he had long term writing plans for the title and he wouldn’t have chosen to schedule a marketing blitz at that point in the grand scheme of things, and so on. (He also sounded far more modest than my recap is turning out.) I’ve read enough comics now that I don’t expect anyone to stay dead. My personal criteria for liking a “back from the dead” story is mainly this:
    1) the return has to make logical sense in the context of the story that killed the character and the history of those involved, and
    2) the return has to be a better story than the one it’s contradicting.
    (Those are essentially my criteria for any story that rewrites history.) #1 is now almost assured, given the revelations since Cap’s death, particularly in #600. #2 seems likely, given how well the title has been steadily building on its own history to get consistently better each week.

    • Good writing can make anything work, and this may be an example. But I really feel DC and Marvel have hurt themselves by their constant spinning of the Revolving Door of Death.

      • An argument probably could be made that the only way to truly kill a comic book character would be to forget them. As long as the character is remembered and known, the true ‘life’ of a fictional character’, they bring that character back.

        Like, where is ‘Toro’, the original Human Torch (turned Vision)’s sidekick?

        • Toro’s been involved heavily in the “Avengers/Invaders” miniseries that’s about to wrap up, and will be a major player in the “Torch” miniseries starting in September about the return of the Jim Hammond Human Torch. (The whole “Vision made out of old Human Torch chassis” bit has since been retconned. Not that it matters, since the current Vision isn’t the original Vision, anyway.) Toro has also been featured in flashbacks in this “Captain America” series, since he and Bucky were both Invaders.

          For dead characters who stay dead, there’s Uncle Ben and Mar-Vell, and that’s about it. There are tons of forgotten characters, though. “Freak of Science” from the old Speedball series, both genders of the Sphinx, Racu Standu, and so forth. If characters were title characters in their own books or major players on a successful team, they won’t stay dead forever. If they were the supporting cast of a poorly selling book, they’re gone when the lead’s status quo changes. (Racu was Kyle Rayner’s landlord. Kyle moves to Oa, Racu vanishes. The male Sphinx was an enemy of Nova, and the female of the original New Warriors; with Nova’s return to popularity, one of them may come back, but it hasn’t happened yet. Freak of Science was a lousy character the first time; I doubt anyone misses him.)

        • Y’know, that never made much sense to me. Granted, the old Human Torch wasn’t much like the Vision, but given that they went to such lengths to establish that the Vision was the old Torch, why re-retcon that origin?

          Kinda burns, no?

          • Because it wasn’t the origin. The original story that “established” the connection made little logical sense in the first place, and was used in part as a catalyst to mention names of other Golden Age heroes from the Timely era that hadn’t been mentioned and would have copyright lapses if not used. They didn’t all appear on the page, so they relaunched the Invaders series later to do that more explicitly. The first appearance of the Vision simply revealed him as a creation of Ultron. If Ultron rebuilt himself from scratch each time, why would he bother to track down the original Human Torch for his creation unless the original Torch’s power set was the goal? Instead, he had to gut all but the “chassis” to replace it with what he wanted.

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