A examination of politics with the help of superheroes, as well as other cool things
Showing posts with label Captain America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Captain America. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
The Surprising Politics of Superhero Movies
TotalFilm.com has compiled a list of 30 superhero films and the politics involved there in, ranging from Superman's "Truth, Justice and The American Way" and the X-Men's civil rights analogies to some of the more out there theories involving Unbreakable and the Spider-Man's movies. The whole list can be read here.
Monday, April 15, 2013
Visual.ly's Infographic Roundup
Friday, January 25, 2013
It Could Be A War Crime To Use Biologically Enhanced Soldiers
io9 has an article about whether the use of biologically enhanced soldiers, ala Captain America, could be a violation of international law and qualify as a war crime.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Marvel Cinematic Universe Concept Art Collection
io9 has amassed a collection of concept art from the first six Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies, aka Marvel Studio's Phase One. The whole collection can be viewed here.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
The Big Picture Part 1
Today we've got a roundup of some videos from Bob "MovieBob" Chipman's The Big Picture series about superheroes, politics and related pop culture. Tune in tomorrow for the second part.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Superheroes Visit Children's Hospitals
A children's hospital in Pittsburgh recently had a surprising morning when Batman, Spider-Man, Captain America and Superman appeared and washed the hospital's windows. You can check out the video below for the whole story, or this article for more info and a gallery of the event.
And in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a children's hospital got their windows cleaned by Superman, the Hulk, Flash, Spider-Man and Captain America, which you can read more about in this article or in the video here.
And in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a children's hospital got their windows cleaned by Superman, the Hulk, Flash, Spider-Man and Captain America, which you can read more about in this article or in the video here.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
2012 Election Final Stretch Blips
Today we've got some Final Stretch entries for the election.
- First off, the Huffington Post has a collection of the "best of" political late night talk show jokes, which can be viewed here.
- Next, Comics Alliance has an interview with Ed Brubaker, the writer of Captain America for the past eight years, including Cap's death and the comic's return to political stories, as he departs from the comic, which can be read here.
- Wired has a list of the Top 10 Fictional Characters that they'd like to see as president, which included Professor Charles Xavier, and can be read here.
- China Daily has an interesting article on how campaigns figure out the best places to show ads, and can be read here.
- And apparently Paul Ryan has been calling the brochure the Obama campaign has been producing detailing what he plans to do with a second term as a comic book, which you can read more about it here, see a video of Ryan talking about here, and the brochure in question can be downloaded here (pdf).
Monday, October 29, 2012
Superhero 411: Captain America
Real name: Steve Rogers
First Appearance: Captain America Comics #1 (1941, Timely Comics)
Creator: Joe Simon (Writer) and Jack Kirby (Artist)
First Appearance: Captain America Comics #1 (1941, Timely Comics)
Creator: Joe Simon (Writer) and Jack Kirby (Artist)
Occupation: Soldier
Religion: Protestant
Religion: Protestant
Operates in: All over the place
Born in 1922, Steve Rogers grew up a frail youth in a poor family. His father died when he was a young child, and his mother when he was in his late teens. During the onset of World War II, Rogers was horrified by newsreel footage of the Nazis in Europe and attempted to enlist in the Army but was rejected because of his scrawny physique. Undaunted, he earnestly pleaded to be accepted so he could help and was overheard by US Army General Chester Phillips, who offered Rogers the opportunity to take part in the secret Special Operation Rebirth. Rogers agreed and was taken to a secret laboratory and introduced to Professor Reinstein, the creator of the Super-Soldier formula. After weeks of tests, Rogers was given the serum and a special treatment to accelerate and stabilize the serum's effects. Rogers body quickly developed into a perfection of human physique, but a Nazi spy who had infiltrated the experiment murders Reinstein after the success so that the United States can not reproduce the experiment as Reinstein had not written down the full formula for fear the Nazi would steal it. Rogers was then put through intense physical and tactical training before being given his first assignment, to stop the Nazi agent calling himself the Red Skull, and given the patriotic uniform and codename Captain America. Fighting valiantly during the war, as the Allied forces were closing in on Berlin and the last of the Nazi forces, a desperate Nazi official launched a bomb-loaded plane that would head straight for American soil. Captain America jumped onto the plane as it took off and managed to bring it down in the Arctic Ocean, where his Super-Soldier formula allowed him to enter a state of suspended animation as he was frozen in solid ice. Decades later he was rescued by the newly formed Avengers and became a cornerstone of the team, often acting as team leader, and continues to act as a symbol of liberty and justice.
Captain America was conceived with a rough sketch of the character in costume in 1940 by Joe Simon (a copy of which is seen to the right), first under the name Super America before being changed to Captain America, and was quickly given his own solo comic, which Simon would write and Jack Kirby would draw will adding his own ideas to story. Captain America soon became the most popular character of Marvel Comics, then called Timely Comics, during World War II, with the first issue selling nearly a million copies. Given the comic's decisive attitude to America entering the war a full year before the Pearl Harbor Attack would see America join the Allies and a strong isolationist front in America at the time, Simon and Kirby received regular hate mail and death threats, so much so that they had to be given police protection. However the character was so popular he became the company's first property to be adapted into another medium with the release of the 1944 movie serial Captain America, but his popularity waned after the war ended and disappeared in the 1950s after an ill-fated revival attempt in 1953. However a reintroducing during the Silver Age of comics, where he was revealed to have fallen into and be revived from suspended animation in The Avengers #4 (1964). Captain America has had a solid presence since, with his most recent adaptations being part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Captain America: The First Avenger, released on July 22, 2011, and The Avengers, released on May 4, 2012.Saturday, September 22, 2012
President Captain America
In Marvel's The Ultimates #15, which hit stand this week, Captain America is elected the President of America through a land-slide write-in vote.
In an interview with The Washington Post series writer Sam Humphries says "We wanted to dramatize an extreme version of what we see in America today, in the face of all [this] divisiveness, what do we have in common? What does it mean to be an American? What can we agree on? And what makes America the place that it is?"
“This is a United States that’s being torn asunder by special interest groups — by opportunists looking to divide and conquer,” Marvel Entertainment Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso says “This is a metaphor for what goes on in real life, but on steroids.”
You can read the full Washington Post article here, read an extended interview with Axel Alonso and Sam Humphries here, and see a preview of the comic here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)