Your cosmic cube refuses to obey you because it's enjoying the Hostess Twinkies

[petronia]

This is never going to stop being funny, sorry.

This week in comics! 08/03/2011 - Fresh Presentations: The Comics Journal weekly column containing a review of Captain America. This sparked off a discussion on Tumblr (Tari | Tom | Charmian | me) about narrative structure that had very little to do with Captain America. XD; Anyway, I originally wrote this in my response to Jonathan Bogart's post:

I went to see this yesterday, followed by Thor tonight, on its second run at the Dollar Cinema - I am actually experiencing a surprisingly amount of EMOTIONAL RELIEF at being All Caught Up and Things Finally Starting To Make Sense; so some part of this creaky setup is working, at least for people like me who know literally nothing about Avengers continuity, even though it was obvious circa Nick Fury’s ominous rumblings in Iron Man 2 that the writers didn’t have any plot to hint at, and at this point they’ve barely fixed on a McGuffin. That’s fine: I’ve seen worse seat-of-pants flying by Shounen Jump mangaka who in the end managed to land their cargo. But I absolutely reserve the right to wait for shiz to come round to the Dollar Cinema, where a popcorn and a movie set you back $3.50 inclusive of tax.

I had a number of thoughts on Captain America itself, but the article up there covers pretty much all of them. (Actually, I have a chance to catch the '91 adaptation on Saturday; one of the things the Fantasia Film Festival is good for is catching you up on the history of terrible geek b-movies.)

And then I rambled on in issen4's comments, expanded version:

There’s this kind of - I haven’t fully thought this out - I feel like there’s an ongoing effort in this particular continuity of Marvel movies to examine the nature, causes, and consequences not of superpowers (or even superheroism per se), but superheroic mythology. Iron Man is about the America of today: aggressive technological superiority and heavy-handed external interference, an inability to reconcile internal neuroses with Randian individualism and a basic desire to do good and be seen as good while standing at the top of the world... Captain America is about the America of yesterday: part history, part revisionism, part pure storytelling/propaganda to provide a competing narrative to external inimical pressure - implication by the end that that America (and its virtues?) is gone (for good?), but also that the Ideal American could only have started life as the universal underdog, and so was never that thick on the ground in the first place... and then, just to drive the comedy home, Thor which is a straightforward restatement of the Sufficiently Advanced Science(tm) thesis as the original source of any mythology, wrapped in a pseudo-Shakespearean parable delivered by Kenneth Branagh, but in its actual effect on the overarching storyline is for reals about Nazi appropriation of Nordic mythology, Tacitus’s Germania, etc. i.e. not only “what if the Captain America who sold war bonds and kiddie comics was real” but “what if Odin-worshipping white supremacists are SOMEWHAT ON THE RIGHT TRACK except for the part where they try to pin racist ideology to this” I was like duuuudes do you realize you went there? Did you go there ON PURPOSE??? But I would imagine others have remarked upon the irony of "our" side possessing the superior Aryan superman creation program.

...Anyway, that was just to gather up all the disparate content bits. XD;

#for Hostess Twinkies read (the bloodless victory of) capitalist consumerism

#the Sufficiently Advanced Science infodump passes Bechdel

#I would like the Avengers movie to address these conflicting visions of American identity via having Iron Man and Captain America yell at each other or something

#this is a deep plot by RDJ to surround himself with blond studliness AT ALL TIMES

#actually I just want Marvel vs. Capcom 3 fanfiction, do I have to go to FFN for it

Comments

[maeran.livejournal.com]

HOSTESS TWINKIES~!!! ♥__♥

Seconding the Iron Man vs. Captain America~ Maybe they can duke it out on a Saturday night show or something. XP

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, when you see the trailer the first thought you have in your head is, "How on earth are these two people going to work effectively as a team? o_O"

[uminohikari.livejournal.com]

via having Iron Man and Captain America yell at each other
That's actually amazing.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

It's all gonna be super METAPHORICAL on Joss's part, you'll see.