Can't believe how much this affects me.

Galleycat ruined the shock for me.
Captain America is dead. I would have found out anyway, I read the comic. Yes, I read comics and I'm in my thirties. I also like Star Trek, Star Wars and robots and monkeys. Occassionally my wife points at me and yells "Nerd."

"Geek," I correct her. "I'm a geek. Not a nerd."

"What's the difference," she asks.

"You wouldn't have married a 'nerd.'"

She walks away.

What really gets to me, beyond the death of Captain America himself, is how this character's death has affected me. I'm really sort of mourning. Like the death of Spock, or Kirk, or any other fictional death I've dealt with I recognize that it's NOT REAL. I know that. But it is real. And this one, Captain America, has something deeper in it.

Obviously, his death is a representation of the death of an era in the U.S. Whichever side of the political spectrum you may find yourself on, the symbolism of his death can't be missed. We aren't the same nation, perhaps never were the same nation, that we were in World War II, when Cap was created. I don't believe it was a better world then, but I do think there was less dirt in the air. Marvel may be putting Cap into the past because what he stood for is no longer the same.

I also wonder if there weren't discussions at Marvel about the ongoing investigations in the U.S. sports communities involving steroids and illegal performance enhancing drugs. Why would that matter? Steve Rogers, Captain America, was originally the 90 lb. weakling who wanted to go fight Nazis. He enlisted, but the only way the Army would let him go fight was if he enrolled in a secret super-soldier program. They shot him with their "super-soldier serum" and out came Captain America. In essence, that's steroids. I can't help but think that Marvel may have seen the handwriting on the wall: when sports figures are being torn open every day and blasted for using illegal and physically damaging chemicals to enhance their physical performance, how can Marvel defend a hero, dressed in red, white, and blue and named after the nation, who was created through performance enhancing drugs?

Marvel has certainly got plans to have a Captain America return. The costume is empty, and Steve Rogers is being buried, but the comic book isn't cancelled and the costume won't remain empty forever. I speculate that someone new will fill it, someone different than Steve Rogers to be sure, someone perhaps not so physically "perfect" nor morally perfect. Perhaps someone like Frank Castle, the Punisher, someone who bends rules more, who sees means justified by ends, who may symbolize what we our government seems to do in our name more and more.

In the end, Steve Rogers's death has touched me. It's made me think about heroism, and what sort of heroes my son will have, what icons he'll look at and dream of being. The fact that Steve Rogers won't be one is a little sad. Sad too is the fact that the only movie they ever got out of Captain America was a horrible, horrible piece of crap starring J.D. Salinger's son.