A Look at Comics History: The Modern Age (Part 1)

With my last post, I got into a very brief run through of the history of American comics from the Golden Age to the Bronze Age, roughly 1938 to 1985. So in one long post, I hit on about fifty years of comics. A great deal was skimmed over to keep things somewhat brief, and later I'll remedy that by making more detailed posts about the eras in particular to flesh things out. Right now, I'm going to focus on what is referred to as the Modern Age of comics, running from 1985 or so until we decide something significant has changed in the industry, which is likely coming soon with the advent of digital comics. Maybe then we'll name it something better than "Modern Age" because the last thing we need is a Post-Modern and Post-Post Modern Age. Art History classifies enough in ambiguous ways already.

This will be a fair bit more detailed than the last post, since I'm only focusing on one period of time, and also might come across as more negative in some places. I do my best to keep things positive and not start screaming about the end of comics and all that, but there will be some hyperbole coming that I likely just can't avoid...so I apologize in advance. And anyone I end up saying negative things about, I feel the need to say that I'm not judging these people personally, but only the work.

It should also be noted that this is going to be divided up into multiple posts, as there are many points to get across. This time in comics has seen quite a lot happening, and many of the effects are still with the industry, for good and for ill, so I'm going to arbitrarily divide these up and try to hit as much as I can.

Okay, that out of the way, let's get into this.

As we're technically still in it, really setting a true start on the Modern Age of Comics is a bit hard to do. In some ways, it was much more of a general shifting of things instead of a very dramatic change, such as what occurred from the Golden Age to the Silver Age. Many things that started in the Bronze Age would carry on into the Modern Age, especially in the early years, and become a defining piece of what we consider comics today. The metric I tend to use to define the beginning of the Modern Age is the DC event, Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Crisis on Infinite Earths is a very important series when it comes to how comics have developed, so I'm going to spend a bit of time on it, specifically. The series was a 12-issue stand alone title, written by Marv Wolfman and pencilled by George Perez, that started in 1985, the goal of which was to simplify the DC universe. Until this point, DC had employed the idea of the Multiverse to explain different versions of the same character. This meant there were a handful of Earths with various numbers assigned to them on which different heroes lived. For obvious reasons, this created a bit of a quagmire when it came to story, and so the idea came to wipe it all away and start over. This series essentially ended the DC universe up until that point, killing a great deal of characters, most notably Supergirl and Barry Allen, the Flash that kicked off the Silver Age. The long-running comics Superman, The Flash, and Wonder Woman were all ended and, after the series, relaunched with new origin stories to fit into this new world.

What makes Crisis on Infinite Earths significant is the literal divide between the past and the present. DC removed the old to start over, as they've done just recently again. Almost more importantly, though, is that this series, combined with Marvel's Secret Wars in 1984, began the long running tradition of the so-called Event Comic. These are major stories that take all the heroes from the respective publishers and throw them together in one huge, supposedly game-changing story. Its a practice that has, in the past few years, become a near annual tradition for both Marvel and DC, and something that many decry as harming the industry as a whole.

But there is, obviously, more to the start of the Modern Age than literal breaks in history and events. The rise of anti-heroes and darker stories, something that started in the Bronze Age, came to a head in the mid-80s. There are two defining books for modern comics, especially when it comes to darker themes: Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, and Batman: Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller. Both books were unlike anything that had come before.  

Watchmen took a very hard look at superheroes, turning from the usual positive portrayal and instead seeing the characters as mentally damaged in some way or another. There really are no heroes in the book, and the focus is entirely on a more realistic portrayal of the world and what kind of person would put on a costume to right wrongs. Rape, murder, extreme violence, and genocide are all there in the open, and while the book handles them well, many creators influenced by it would seemingly miss the point: These characters are not to be cheered for the horrible things they do. This is an important point, as many creators instead decided to embrace the violence and negativity, something that many fans of the time also happily accepted.

Dark Knight Returns is similar in some ways to Watchmen, but altogether different at the same time. The story is about Bruce Wayne coming back from retirement to fight crime again, now an old, bitter man. There is an air of negativity and distrust in the book that fuels the main themes and drive. Gotham City hates Batman and nearly all other heroes are no longer around, save for Superman who is just a pawn for the US Government. The violence here is, again, very heavy, and the themes of darkness and oppression really do reflect the time.

The reason I highlight these two titles, specifically, is the dramatic shift in tone of comics that they represent. Regardless of one's opinion on the books themselves, they were both monumental influences on everything that came after. It quickly became necessary to have dark, violent stories with anti-heroes in stories just to have them sell. Wolverine's rise to popularity is a testament to this, but he was not alone. Other characters were also created, or grew into, this need for darkness and harder themes: Spawn, Cable, Deadpool, and Venom to throw some names out there.

Along a similar vein, major characters were killed or replaced in the early 1990s. In 1992, DC killed Superman. Batman had his back broken and was replaced for a time. Captain America was fired. Long-time Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, was turned into a villain and then replaced by Kyle Rayner. Stories seemed designed only to shake things up and get quick sales, with another even more dangerous trend evolving.

Specifically, I'm referring to the comic book speculator's market. Around the late 80s and early 90s, the idea began to go around that comics were really worth quite a lot of money. This was perpetuated by the sale of classic comics, Action Comics #1 and other major landmarks from decades ago, at extremely high prices. Now, the reason these old comics sold for so much was for the simple fact that they hadn't been in print for decades and were, and this is important, actually rare. Somehow, though, publishers and speculators missed this. People with no interest in the stories would buy comics hoping to send their kids to college by selling it. Publishers started to create gimmicks like foil covers, glow-in-the-dark covers, and other ridiculous ideas simple because they sold.

The problem here is simple, though. The reason the comics did sell was because all the people speculating expected them to be worth tons of money. But the publishers printed metric tons of them, meaning they weren't at all rare and weren't worth a damned thing. Unsurprisingly to anyone with any sense of how these things work, the comic market crashed. Everything tanked, with Marvel filing for bankruptcy in 1996 and the entire market for comic books nearly drying up entirely.

It has been around 15 years and the industry still hasn't completely recovered from this crash.

A Look at Comics History: Golden Age to the Bronze Age

I know I've been quiet on the blog for a while, but things are rolling along quite well on other projects and that's taken some slight priority. But here I am again, ready to tackle something rather insane. My real goal here, and this may take a few posts beyond just this one, is to talk about where the comic medium might be going in the future, in terms of form (digital vs. print vs. beamed into the brain), genre, style, etc. But to get down to all of that, it helps to have a quick run through of how the medium has evolved over the years.

So first, some history. As I'm mainly focusing on the American comic form, the best place to start is with what is referred to as the Golden Age. This began, well, is generally agreed upon to have begun, with the release of Action Comics #1 in 1938. This was, of course, the debut of Superman, a character that is ingrained in culture today very firmly outside comics. The Golden Age saw the birth of many of the most famous superhero characters: Batman, Captain Marvel, Captain America, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and the Human Torch to name a few. But this era also saw a large amount of genre diversity, too, as Westerns and Romance titles were very strong sellers at that time. As a whole, though, through the Golden Age, superheroes were king.

There are a great many big names in regards to creators of this time, the people working to define the language and style of what American comics would eventually grow to become. Will Eisner, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster,  Jack Kirby, and Milton Caniff are just a few.

But as World War II ended, the popularity of superheroes faded somewhat, and it left room for other genres to begin to grow. War stories, Scifi, Western, Romance, and Horror began to grow in strength and popularity, and many superhero books of the time were ended to make room for these new genres. Around 1954, the comics medium came under fire from certain people in the US Government as causes of juvenile delinquency and other problems. It is a trouble that has happened to many forms of entertainment that young people latch onto, from rock and roll to video games, and is not likely to go away in the future. But the result of this was the creation of the Comics Code Authority, a regulatory board that made sure all comics were 'safe' for children. This was a death sentence for many of the popular titles of the early to mid-1950s, as crime books and horror books were especially targeted. Thus, publishers turned back to superheroes.

In 1956, the Silver Age was born with the release of Showcase #4, the first appearance of the new Flash. At the time, the only surviving superhero books were Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, and none of them were doing well. The Flash revitalized the genre and captured an entire new generation of kids. Soon, Golden Age favorites returned in new form, with a new Justice League, Green Lantern, and others. A few years after this rebirth of the genre that was kicked off by DC Comics, a young Marvel Comics got in on the same genre. With Marvel came the birth of even more well known characters: The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Iron Man, The Hulk, Thor, Daredevil, The Avengers, and the return of the Golden Age hero, Captain America.

The Silver Age is very much the birth of what we see today as modern superhero comics. Flaws and problems became vital to the characters, and the stories began to grow more complex as the medium developed and grew. But even more, this is the era of many of the defining creators in American Comics: Jack Kirby, Carmine Infantino, Curt Swan, Gene Colan, Steve Ditko, Joe Kurbert, Neal Adams, and Jim Steranko, to name just a few. Steranko, in particular, helped to push the art into a new direction, with his art on Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. moving from what one expected from comic stories into surrealism.

Around 1970, the Silver Age came to an end. This gave way to the appropriately named Bronze Age, an era of comics that is generally defined by the darker stories and tones that began to creep into comics. Leading up to this era, many of the creators that had been in comics for decades moved on, retired, or were promoted to editorial and less directly creative positions in the various comics companies. This time also saw the beginnings of the shift in audience of comics, moving away from children to a smaller, more specific market of fans.

But for all the negativity that last paragraph implies, there were many interesting developments during the Bronze Age, such as a slight widening of genres being made available again. This mostly began with Marvel Comics release of Conan the Barbarian, which eventually lead to various other pulp books such as John Carter of Mars, Red Sonja, and Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. The horror genre also began to regain footing in the Bronze Age, thanks to books like Ghost Rider and Tomb of Dracula.

These books were generally well received and successful, but still, superheroes were king. The Bronze Age saw the death of Spider-Man's longtime girlfriend, Gwen Stacy,  and the death of Aquaman's infant son. Both of these came at the hands of villains in the books, and it was a strong turn towards much darker villains in comics. The book Green Lantern/Green Arrow tackled issues such as drug addiction and racial inequality, and Batman received a resurgence after the years of camp due to the Adam West TV Show of the 1960s. The Bronze Age also saw the growth of racial diversity in comics, with the creation of Luke Cage, Storm, Blade, a new Green Lantern, John Stewart, and others. 

On the art end, House Styles dominated the two major companies of the time, though not without some diversity. DC's general style emulated Neal Adams, while Marvel's a slightly more realistic take on the classic Jack Kirby style. This does not mean art was at all restricted, as this was the era of great artists like George Perez, John Buscema, John Byrne, Frank Miller, and Walter Simonson. Especially important for creators is this era brought the beginnings of a creator's rights movement, with artists and writers getting more open credit for their work and pencillers being allowed to keep their original pages.

Next I'll hit on the Modern Age and then get into where things could be going and where I think they should. Reading that, its quite an egotistical statement on its own, but hey, this is my blog and I mean it for the best.

The Ideal of the Hero

This is going to be a bit of a shorter post than I tend to do, but its a smaller, more concentrated subject that I at least want to hit in some small way. Before I dive into it, though, I feel the need to mention one thing.

I'm thinking the way I'll be doing the more detailed talks on specific artists, such as the Chris Samnee post from a few days ago, is to try and do them once a week. Possibly more in a week, but I don't want to rush them and would prefer to give the artists I talk about a good run through, so once a week seems a safe aim. Admittedly, any schedules I set for this blog are flexible, but hey, worth mentioning.

So with that out of the way, let me get on with this.

I was listening to the wonderful podcast, Word Balloon, hosted by the amazingly entertaining John Suintres, as he did a very long conversation spread over parts with Martin Pasko, a long-time comics creator who has worked since the 70s and also done quite a large amount of television work through the years. The great part about the interviews with Mr. Pasko is his first-hand experience with a great deal of the goings-on at DC through the 70s, which can shine a light on a very interesting period of time for comics, especially for someone my age that wasn't even born yet.

As the discussion rolled around various subjects, it eventually turned to a subject that has struck me far more than I thought it would. The idea of what our heroes should be. Specifically, Mr. Pasko brought this up in regards to the idea that characters like Superman would never have killed back then, whereas today that kind of action is more acceptable.

Now, I was born in the mid-80s, and I've grown up with entertainment in various forms that have created the idea that killing is just normal for many styles of dramatic fiction. This extends from the general faceless deaths from the likes of Stormtroopers in Star Wars to the deaths of major villains to the deaths of heroes themselves. Its just a normal part of storytelling to me, and in fact something I handle without thinking in my own work. People fight, eventually someone dies, the story moves on.

Before I go further, I want to make one point clear. I don't think any of this means that I'm some warped, horrible human being that doesn't see death as a real thing, or any of those other hilariously bad arguments against video game and entertainment violence. I'm speaking strictly in the form of storytelling, and specifically with how it relates to the idea of a hero.

So, now I dive into that. For a very, very long time in comics, death was a very rare, very serious thing. Uncle Ben's death is why Peter Parker is who he is as Spider-Man, and even moreso after the death of Gwen Stacy. The death of Bruce Wayne's parents shapes his need to fight crime so the same thing doesn't happen to others...and probably out of some twisted sense of revenge, depending on your interpretation of how crazy Bruce Wayne might be. But, on the whole, the heroes themselves didn't kill. Punch? Yes. Kick? Yes. But the use of lethal force was mostly restricted to WW2 era comics.

This changed fairly dramatically, as it did in quite a few forms of entertainment, somewhere in the 70s and 80s and grew from there. For comics, the 80s were a definite era of change on the whole. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen, Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's Daredevil: Born Again, and X-Men's Dark Phoenix Saga from Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, and John Byrne are just a few examples of ways that comics seriously changed in the 80s. The more upbeat comics of the previous few decades began to give way to grittier, angrier, and more cynical stories that tended to have more strongly portrayed violence than before.

Again, this doesn't make them bad. In fact, those stories are all still some of the best comics has to offer, and those are just super hero books, I'm not even getting into indie stuff from the time. But this gave way to the slow move into the stereotype of 90s comics, with giant guns, ultra-violence, and generally an over-the-top atmosphere that I'd be willing to argue is one of the many reasons the entire comic market nearly collapsed.

But comics survived, as they tend to, even if things are smaller now. Still, we now live in an era where the stories in comics are more grounded and real. There's still a certain hardness to many titles, though the overall feel of a heavy darkness and cynical feel is mostly gone. The heroes aren't necessarily as dark as they were, but on the whole, we definitely don't have a return to some of the lighter, older days. In some ways, this is probably for the better, as comics today are full of absolutely amazing stories and artists doing things that wouldn't be possible anytime before.

And this ideal of a hero sits in my mind and I wonder how that has changed. While we still have characters like Superman, Captain America, Spider-Man, and Batman that vow not to kill, it can and does happen. Sometimes for dramatic purposes, sometimes in the more simplistic idea of the last Captain America carrying a gun. There was nothing wrong with it, what with Bucky carrying the mantle and having fought in the war, he'd definitely use a gun and that's fine, but there's no way he didn't kill a few bad guys with it. Otherwise, why use a gun?

The others, too, have all killed in some form through the years. Partly just due to the nature of an ongoing character over decades and decades. New stories are necessary and death and killing are definitely ripe for drama. And I wouldn't say this diminishes the characters in any way either, if anything it could round them out and make them more multi-faceted when handled by a good writer.

But in general, it seems that the idea of the hero that kills is normal today. Think for a moment about a hero of some kind, they don't even have to have superpowers. Is it greater to solve a dangerous situation by finding a peaceful way to save all lives or are some evils just too evil? We seem to definitely be in the age of the latter, and for obvious reasons. But in some ways, it can be hard to look at the opposite, the hero that never takes a life and never lets someone die, as naive and childish.

Is it?

I don't think it is. I think, at the purest form, a hero is better than the rest of us. That's the point. They stand above the masses and do what everyone else can't. They find a way to make the impossible possible. So in this time where it is fairly widely accepted that some people are just too evil to live, isn't a person that can stand above that and say "No, there is another way." and then find that other way, a true hero above us all?

The ability to forgive, unconditionally is somewhere in most of the major religious beliefs of the world, but usually its above the level of the normal man. Isn't that where a hero is? So instead of it being naive, can't this be a great thing?

Clearly, I think there's something to this idea. I do honestly believe that, especially in times like we live in, the heroes that can defy conventional wisdom and save everyone may be what we need in our fiction and entertainment. At the same time, I don't think this should be everything. There's room for everything, but it seems that today, the truly good hero barely exists anymore. I think its time someone found the right way to bring it back, and while I don't claim to know how, with the current crop of writers and creators amongst comics and the entertainment industry as a whole, someone out there is smart enough.

Comic Artists You Should Know: Chris Samnee

Okay, here we go. Back from a little time away from this blog and through most of those early posts that I felt were necessary before really diving into the meat of what I want to do here. Its time to talk about a specific artist in the comic world. As with most things I tend to hit on, the goal is to show that comics are more than many people seem to think and that they deserve a great deal more attention in all aspects, but especially in the art world.

Normally, this is the point where you go straight to the king of comics, Jack Kirby. He's the man to really influence everything that's come since in a way that no one else has. There's a long list of other huge names in the comic world when it comes to art (Steranko, Ditko, Romita, Moebius, Perez, just to name a few), but I want to hit on someone newer to start this off. Those guys have been covered in a ton of places by smarter people than I, and while I'll likely get to them at some point, I'd like to try some names that are even less likely to be known to people that care about art.

So we begin with Chris Samnee, a relatively new talent in the industry. Very relatively, as he's been working for quite a few years now, but the comic world is full of "Hot New Artist!"s that have been working for years and years and only suddenly received the attention they deserve. He's done work for most of the major companies, Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Vertigo, and Oni Press, just to name a few. But he really caught the attention of readers with 2010's Thor: The Mighty Avenger, written by Roger Langridge.

Above is one of Samnee's covers for Thor: The Mighty Avenger (and as usual, make sure to click on the image to see it larger), and it is pretty much a perfect example of his work. He pencils and inks himself, and the truly noticeable part of that is Samnee's masterful use of blacks and negative space. He is one of the few artists currently working in comics to so strongly use blacks in an effective way, and is able to use it to imply linework that isn't even there. While, of course, implied line is one of those basics of art that is taught in pretty much any Drawing I class worth its salt, the use of it is rarely as effective in actual practice in modern comics anywhere but with Samnee's work.

And then there are the more obvious qualities to his art: Strong motion and pitch-perfect emotions. No one ever stands around looking boring in a Samnee-drawn comic, and he has a way of drawing a 'talking heads' scene that can be as exciting as a fight. Emotion is captured and exaggerated in just the right ways to say everything that is needed.

On top of all of this is Samnee's style. Many would call it "cartoony", which does the work a great disservice. His art harkens back to Silver Age comics, a style that many that don't read comics (and many that do, admittedly), see as childish, weak, and simple. This is, of course, not the case at all. The admittedly more simple styles of early comic books and comic strips should never be so quickly dismissed, as Samnee's modern take on the same clean, simple style easily shows.

Above is a piece that Samnee did for Comic Twart, Superman: The Movie in six panels. Its simple, and nails the entirety of the film in such a short space. While not the best example of showing how he can lay out a single page to tell a story, as this jumps large amounts of time, I think it DOES show a strength in storytelling nonetheless. There is much to be said about capturing a full length movie in six simple panels, and Samnee nails them in more ways than just reproducing what is seen in the film. Angle, expressions, use of black, and the choice of key moments is what pulls it together and really shows a grasp of storytelling that most of us can only hope for. Not to mention that he made sure to keep "Otisburg" on Luthor's map, which is just wonderful and fun if you know the movie.

Its hard for me to say much more about his work without devolving into repeating myself. I could go on and on in circles about the use of blacks and negative space and just how well Samnee can tell a story or draw a simple pin up that can put a smile on anyone's face. So its likely best I wrap this post up, but I have a couple more things to mention before I finally hit the 'publish post' button staring at me right now.

First, is a bit more expanding on just WHY I picked Chris Samnee as the first artist to talk about. There's more to it than just not wanting to pick the traditional guys to talk about when trying to explain to other artists (or anyone, for that matter) just why comic art matters and is more than second-rate crap as many in the world (art world and just the world) tend to see it. A larger reason is that I look at Samnee's art and I'm blown away. I look at what he does and how well he does it, and I want to be able to do that. His art inspires me in a way that few others ever have. I'd like to think that one day, after my wife and I have both spent years fighting together to make comics of our own, that I can be half as good as Samnee. I'd like to think that if his art can have such a strong affect on me, maybe one of the few people that read this can have a similar experience. Because, as I've said in every single post and will likely keep saying until I'm physically restrained from doing so, comics matter and they are legitimate art. And Chris Samnee is a prime example of why, and he's working right now.

So with that in mind, here's a tiny sampling of where to find his work and just what's out there that Chris Samnee has worked on. I highly suggest checking out his website, www.chrissamnee.com, where he constantly posts amazing pin ups such as the Cyclops and Daredevil shown above. Of course, the best way to get more of his work is in the comics, and the full run of Thor: The Mighty Avenger is out right now in two digest-sized trades, along with Serenity: A Shepherd's Tale with Joss and Zack Whedon. Currently drawing the monthly title for Marvel, Captain America and Bucky, written by Ed Brubaker.

On Captain America

With the live action movie starring Chris Evans coming this Friday, I feel like now is about the best time to put down some thoughts in regards to Captain America. The prompting of this is fairly simple. I feel like many people see the costume and hear the name and judge the character without any other thoughts. This is, of course, unfair to any character of any medium, but as I was once guilty of this with Cap, specifically, I wanted to put down why this has changed for me and why I think it should for others.

So basically, the reasoning is very similar to my general talks on comic art and the medium: Why does it mean and why does it matter?

The best place to start is, of course, at the beginning. Captain America was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in 1941, part of Timely Comics, the company that would eventually become Marvel Comics. The basics of the character are pretty simple. A young, weak, skinny kid named Steve Rogers wants to fight in WWII like everyone else his age, but isn't allowed to sign up due to being so weak and small. Instead, he is given the chance to take part in a top secret project, Operation: Rebirth, with the goal of creating the perfect soldier. Rogers is selected as the first test subject, and it succeeds, transforming him into the a strong, perfect human specimen, but the project is sabotaged leaving him the only Super Soldier created by the project.

From there, Cap goes to fight in WWII. He servers as a symbol to the troops and fights Nazi super soldiers and mad scientists during the war, until being presumably killed in action attempting to stop an experimental plane late in the war. In fact, Cap is not killed, but falls into the ocean and is frozen in the ice until being found in the 1960s, then joining the newly-formed Avengers with Iron Man, The Hulk, Wasp, Giant Man, and Thor, and that's when the more typical super hero things begin.

Since then, the usual insanity of a 50 years of publishing serialized stories has occurred, with Cap having done everything from fighting aliens in space, giving up the mantle of Captain America, and even the requisite super hero death and return.

There have even been others to take up the Captain America name, most recently his former sidekick Bucky, but the fact remains that Steve Rogers will always be the Captain America we think of the most. Any detours from this path tend to be temporary and mainly to explore other aspects of the character.

And that, right there, is what I want to get into. The character of Steve Rogers.

It is extremely easy to dismiss Captain America as a jingoistic, overly-patriotic anachronism. Hell, his costume is pretty much the American flag. But that is very much judging a book by its cover. While draped in those colors, the real focus is not on patriotism or some nationalistic push, but instead what it is to be good. Steve Rogers, at his core, is a good man. He does what is right because it is right, not for some political ideal. Cap is, or at least should be, above politics and nationalism.

He is the American ideal, yes, but he's also more than that. He is a human ideal, and not just physically. In many ways, he is comparable to Superman. They are the pinnacles of good in their respective universes, the role models that everyone looks up to, and the ones that never flinch in the face of evil. They are, put simply, true heroes. But while there are countless similarities, a key difference that truly defines Captain America remains.

Superman is an alien. He is from another planet, has powers we can only dream of, and is simply not human despite how close he may seem. Captain America is human. He has all of our faults, yet through it all is able to remain good. His powers are super human, yes, but to a degree that one could argue is attainable more than things like flight or heat vision or anything like that. Captain America is us. He is an ideal that is within reach for the common man in some way.

That is because the essence of what makes Captain America what he is does not come from the super strength or the costume or the title. The essence of it all is Steve Rogers. The kid from Brooklyn that always had the strong convictions and good heart that made him the hero he became. He may have been a scrawny kid, but his true strength comes from his desire to do good. And even with all the powers, that is who Steve Rogers has remained. That is why no one can really replace him as Captain America.

And that is why Captain America matters.

He may fight Nazis, aliens, super soldiers, mad scientists, and a few random criminals, but he is what we should all attempt to be in the end: A good man.