Bucky Doodle Dandy

 

Well, if you ain’t heard the news, there’s a new Captain America, and he’s former Cap sidekick Bucky Barnes.

No big surprise, and the big reveal has already been spoiled in the media. I think most of us were expecting Bucky (or the Winter Soldier, as he’s now called) to take up the shield.

I honestly have a hard time getting excited about this. Cap’s death was just a publicity stunt, Bucky Barnes as Cap is just a publicity stunt, Cap’s eventual resurrection next year is gonna be just another publicity stunt. There’s mighty little old-fashioned storytelling getting done in comics these days. It’s all driven by fairly short-term marketing.

And the more I see of the new costume, the goofier it looks to me. First, he’s wearing a Puerto Rican flag on his chest. Sure, Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States, but it ain’t quite the same as a regular American flag, now is it? And second, look at the point that big metal flag comes to. Poor Bucky ain’t gonna be able to sit down at all without stabbing hisself in the dinkyboo. Just a bad costume design in general.

And as long as I’m grousing about the new Cap, I’m getting plenty of amusement about people complaining that the new Cap is gonna use a gun. “OMG, Captain America doesn’t use a gun! When the real Cap comes back, he’s gonna be mad at Bucky for using a gun!” Pshaw, sez I. The original Cap was a soldier, so yer darned tootin’ he used a gun. It ain’t even that hard to dig up pictures of Cap lugging around various guns and even shooting people with ’em. If Cap comes back whining about Bucky using a gun, Bucky’s within his legal rights to hit Cap with a steamshovel. And that probably goes double for goofy fanboys.