#even when flags became agent venom

[sadiecoocoo]

Rewatching Ultimate Spider-Man, a show made that was practically made for multishippers, really makes me see all the subtle things I missed that totally aren’t making me fall in love with another spidey ship

[softgrungeprophet]

i liked agent venom when i read it, partially because it actually had a discernible plot and a story that wasn’t just half finished and abandoned from constant cancellations, but at the same time i hate it. i hate it so much.

i hate that flash became venom and suddenly, all of his relationships were completely erased except for like, betty and sometimes peter and that was it. mj and harry who? childhood friendship with liz? no she’s just going to... blackmail him for some reason even though they’ve known each other for literally like 15 years

i hate the agent venom origin slott wrote, i hate flash being pissy about peter confiding in MJ, who they are both friends with, because if you’re dan slott you can’t talk to girls unless you plan on fucking them, i hate how gung ho slott is about the military propaganda and the fucking american flag behind flash in superior spider-man, even though superior (a comic i don’t ever plan to read in full) actually had a good moment with flash and “peter” and flash’s tenseness in a domestic argument situation

(i also hate that that one pre-agent venom web of spidey comic could have been good, actually had good assistive devices, but then... the entire villain plot is about some Mysterious Terrorist or whatever who nonetheless congratulates flash for “constructively” letting out his anger on faceless middle-eastern soldiers, and this is played straight--disgusting)

i hate all of it even the things i like because they took a character who actually was fairly complex and flattened him into a football-loving, gun-toting, all-american patriot who loves god and his country, at odds with the previous 30 years of character development, at odds with the flash who when asked if he liked being in the army (after being DRAFTED into fucking vietnam) said that there is no liking the army, only dealing with it, and i hate every bro who thinks agent venom was the coming of the great whatever and acts like flash was completely nothing before then and that only in agent venom did he have any character when the opposite is true and agent venom trampled out every bit of nuance he had to focus on alcohol and football and nothing else (at least bunn finally put him back into a school again, had him working with youth again (andi in this case))

i hate, unrelated to agent venom, the fact that flash the complex character has been further and further stretched and distorted to have been a horribly violent schoolwide bully as a teenager rather than what he actually was--an obnoxious kid with a fucked up home life trying to fuck with one specific kid--to the point that even in the college stuff, even AFTER having “become good,” he’s the only one who gets repeatedly and purposefully excluded from official works and fan works alike because everyone thinks of him as nothing more than a bully, that every movie appearance of flash sucks except TASM (which is still barely a flutter but you can tell thought was actually put into his character by the actor himself), the fact that he’s the only living member of the friend group (because i assume gwen is dead) who doesn’t get more than a single-line mention in the ps4 game (but at least it’s positive, and i like to pretend that MJ was checking on him when she went to the veteran’s center since we know he works with veterans in the game, even if we never see him) (i still want to be able to go to coffee with mj, flash and harry all together)

i don’t like the bullying flashback in the bunn AV run (even though i liked the comic as a whole, especially with andi, and how bunn and shalvey moved away from the military stuff more toward neighborhood protector stuff), i don’t like bunn’s take on high school flash (he also wrote a different spider-man comic with high school flash a little bit before then)

i hate that flash’s growth wrt his disability, which he came to accept as a part of him that he didn’t need to find some miracle cure for, was completely thrown down the toilet so they could do their stupid supersoldier agent venom shit, which flies directly against the SPECIFIC endpoint of the stages of grief comic, which SPECIFICALLY used superserums and bionic military limb testing as the thing he did not need in his life--and then dan slott runs over like teehee here’s some bionic supersoldier military testing shit :3c

hate that he was killed for the stupidest reason by norman fucking osborn, hate that the disabled abuse survivor was killed by the man who killed one of his best friends, who abused another, who manipulated HIM, who drove him into a fucking building after force-feeding him hard alcohol, hate that norman got to “win” against flash one last time, hate that norman is now being treated as this fucking “couldn’t help it” case while harry is Actually Bad, and still, flash is what? a dream symbiote dragon? fucking stupid and i hate it, i don’t want any of it

every new thing i see about new spider-man and venom comics wrt flash makes me wish he would stay dead lmfao

but it’s not like there weren’t already a ton of bad comics about him but at the very least... i would like something that isn’t just about the Patriotic Soldier Boy who never actually fucking existed

the football thing is a really fun one--and i love that the TASM movie made flash play basketball in that movie because if you look at comics from the 60s through to the early-mid 2000s, preceding agent venom... flash stopped playing football after high school and started playing basketball instead. started doing other sports, probably stopped football because, gee i can guess who told him to play football in the first place, but somehow agent venom happened and decided that his entire life was just Football and Guns? when he hadn’t touched a football in literally like... 10 years in-universe

(TASM best live-action spidey adaptation)

there is not purpose to this rant i just needed to get all this shit out of my head

i am very On Edge the past few weeks and idk why, just ADHD brain shit I guess but everything makes me tense lately (probably why i played through 77% of the spidey game in literally four days by virtue of doing absolutely nothing else in my free time) (i’m taking a break for the sake of my hands but maybe i should go keep playing lol)

i know some people like the dragon and i’ve added it to my “flash trans” list but in the context of stories about flash over the past ten years i really am not interested, and this coming from someone who read eragon 9 times in middle school and grew up reading mostly high fantasy and dragon books. i just. don’t want it. not by the writers currently going at least. maybe if it was someone else or if i knew it would be anything more than a future of soldier boy alcohol football crap lmfao

[perilegs]

2018 meme list

january:

• ppl eating tide pods

•image of a triangle with text above it saying ”Children yelling: mcdonalds! mcdonalds! mcdonalds!”  and on it ”We have food at home” ”*Pulls into the drive through as children cheer* *orders one black coffee and leaves*” ”MCDONALDS! MCDONALDS! MCDONALDS!”

•the word fuckor

• google arts and culture app

•image of gordon ramsay saing delicious, finally, some good fucking food

• january lasting forever

• original vs un-tumblrized

• goverment assigned fbi agents

• you so. fucking. precious. when you. smile~

february:

• lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to was down for a while

• cat no banana has kitties!! and that has raised the cat’s popularity

•image of a person first looking at their swim goggles and then putting them on

• hotel? trivago

• Furries? In my family? it’s more likely than you think

•[blank] you can’t change my mind

March:

• X but every other beat is removed

• patrick looking mean

• that 4 panel image of the minion guy showing off his plan that fails on the last 2 panels

• op literally X but go off i guess

• distinguished/functional/disaster gay/bi/lesbian chart makes a huge comeback but the distinguished/functional/disaster part is replaced with whatever

• naked spongebob looking exhausted

April:

• vriska

• yodeling kid

• x dies in infinity war

• trumpet boy

• *NSYNC memes as always

May:

• someone’s body just chipping away with that triangle effect, i think it’s an infinity war joke

• gorl

• we’re updating our privacy policy

•in this essay, i will

• the ”is this x” butterfly meme is making a huge comeback

• bold of you to assume X

•a guy saluting then yelling

June:

• e3

• that thing with pancakes and burgers (ihob)

• this is so sad alexa play X

• small dick energy

•despacito

• my list of the best x10. they9. cannot8. be7. judged6. like 5. this4. they’re all wonderful3. and perfect2. equal beings1. [someone/something]

July:

• car salesman slaps the roof of car

• alignment charts keep gaining popularity

• queer eye reaction pics

• rabies for some fucking reason, are y’all allright?

August:

• polite cat

• merida’s accent

• ”I        like that”

• johny johny telling lies?

• ima keep it real with u chief!! kermit

•omg do gay X exist? imagine going to the Y and they...

september:

• the nature of humanity is just that every so often someone invents homestuck again

• those hand shake image pictures are getting real popular again

• bongo cat

• the picture of the guy saying ”god i wish that were me” except it’s replaced with whatever text

• zendaya is meechee

• moth and lamps

• cat holding a sign

october:

• presidental alert things

• hiding the you know i had to do it to ’em guy in every single picture there is

• banksy’s art shredding after it was sold

• memes about youtube crashing

• image of a brown haired guy from venom sitting in a lobster tank looking around

• that image of pikachu where his mouth is open :o

november:

•you should have picked mercy song suddenly got popular and became meme even tho it’s kind of old

•super smash beam

• emoji editing site

• tumblr just gets fucking deleted from both the app store and the google play store

• they did surgery on a grape

december:

• tumblr is banning all ”adult content” and flagging normal posts like there’s no tomorrow

• some guys really live like this

• the image where a woman with a pink dress first looks shook and then kinda smug/interested

send me a message if i missed something! there are no pictures bc tumblr’s formatting won’t allow it

memes i missed:

• (x) isn’t bad you guys are just mean

• hit or miss, i guess they never miss, huh?

[ultimate-miles]

Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man (2014-2015) - Not with a Bang, but a whimper

Post Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #19, Miles Morales’ written career as Spider-Man has not been great. After fridging one of the only central supporting female characters in his cast – Rio Morales, his mother – the state of the narrative became preoccupied with manpain, and framing the grief of a teenage boy as, in the words of Miles Morales, someone who “didn’t understand what it meant to be Spider-Man” (Ultimate Cataclysm: Spider-Man #1), which required his entire supporting cast to shame and emotionally manipulate him back into the job. 

If there was any good that came out of the last five issues of UCSM, it was probably the introduction of Ultimate Cloak and Dagger and Ultimate Taskmaster. 

Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man, unfortunately, offers very little in the way content improvement outside of one side story and its art direction. Otherwise, it doubles back in circles on subjects and issues that should’ve been laid to rest and ends on an inconclusive whimper.

Ultimate Spider-Man #200 + #Issues #1-7

Death in comic books means nothing, and holds no weight unless you’re a wildly unpopular (or non-white) character that any given publication is looking to get rid of in order to appease their narrow minded (and white) audience. When the Ultimate Marvel universe was created, one of the creeds it presumably lived by was that “death mattered”. When a character died, it would mean something, it would impact the narrative, and every character that died would remain dead.

It’s a shame, then, when they chose to stick their guns, they let Jeph Loeb decimate almost half of the Ultimate Universe’s roster in one of the uglier displays of wanton violence, sexism, and just plain shit writing, with the 2011 “Blockbuster Event” Ultimatum. Ultimatum more or less ensured, despite maintaining the promise that no one would return from the dead, none of the deaths mattered – a lot of it was just Loeb masturbating to his own cruelty if we’re being honest.

With the “Death of Spider-Man”, Brian Michael Bendis added salt to an otherwise unhealed wound that was Ultimatum, which wasn’t even a year old at that point. To his credit, he made Peter Parker’s death matter – book ending it with the first villain that more or less was responsible for the creation of Spider-Man (Norman Osborn) – with reverberating consequences throughout most surviving series in the UM. Yet, following the introduction of Miles Morales – the new and Black Spider-Man (reportedly meant to honor Bendis’ Black children, whom I pity) – you could tell, in the years preceding the removal of Peter Parker as the protagonist of the Spider-Man title, Bendis was regretting his decision.

After a 160 issue run (where Peter made actual appearances and was the protagonist until his death), the questionably numbered Ultimate Spider-Man #200, once again sees Bendis fantasizing about what he might’ve done had he not killed Peter Parker and replaced him with Miles Morales. Most of the original cast of characters that were central to Peter Parker’s story – plus Miles and Ganke – gather together at the Parker House at the behest of May Parker and Gwen Stacy (who appears to be a creep perving on underage teen boys no matter what), to commemorate the life of the late Peter Parker. Considering the previous three iterations of “Memorializing Peter Parker” in the UM, Ultimate Spider-Man #200 brings nothing new to the table, but should’ve been a red flag to anyone paying attention to the declining quality of Miles’ title.

Miles’ final title in the Ultimate Universe, Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man, begins with the reintroduction of a supposed-to-be-dead Norman Osborn – in the custody of S.H.I.E.L.D. – and two generic Spider-Man copycats robbing banks. There’s nothing really of note to say about the first seven issues of this thirteen issue title. Bendis decides, with the Ultimate Marvel universe doing the death rattle, to undo the death of both Osborn and Peter Parker – with Peter getting a half-assed excuse for his being brought back from the dead (to sum it up: “because reasons”).

I don’t think a Spider-Man comic has made me quite as angry as this series has. In the moment I read the issue wherein Peter Parker tells Miles, “It’s time for the Original Spider-Man to get back into the game”, I could’ve torn the book into shreds and smote its ruins if I thought it was going to hurt Marvel’s sales and not be an even greater waste of my spent $3.99.

“I can’t believe we’re beating this dead horse again” was what I was thinking and I just stopped buying the book altogether. I think that the first step to mine ceasing to see Miles Morales as a legitimate character, but wasted potential in the hands of non-Black creatives. I only ended up reading the trades for the sake of reference and fact checking and it’s only this year, three-four years after the fact that I bothered to do that.  The only thing worth noting about the first seven issues of this title is that it sets up the last four, which are even worse.

Cataclysm: Ultimate Spider-Man #1-3 + Issues #8-9

Cataclysm: Ultimate Spider-Man is one of seven miniseries titles part of the “Blockbuster Event” known as Cataclysm, which sees Ultimate Galactus (or 616 Galactus, I’m not sure which tbh. There’s very little difference between the two when you get to the nitty-gritty) attempting to destroy the 1610 universe and devour it all. You get the distinct feeling that, before someone came up with Secret Wars, Cataclysm was meant to be the true end of the Ultimate Universe – but someone upstairs changed their mind and rendered it to a mere false start. Long story short: The grand majority – if not all of – the Ultimates (the Avengers of the 1610 universe) are killed or sent into the void with Galactus by Ultimate Shadowcat – who is later hailed savior of the world. The All-New Ultimates are formed. 

Das it. 

But, within Miles’ slice of the Cataclysm story, Bendis finally decides to focus on the elephant in the room: Jefferson Davis and his open and his fantasy xenophobia toward superhumans and how it has literally silenced his own son from admitting to his double life as Spider-Man. Moreso since the death of his mother, Rio Morales, at the hands of Ultimate Venom. I’ll be perfectly honest – I don’t think Jefferson Davis is a great guy – I actually ended up liking his no-account brother (Aaron Davis, gone too soon) far more because he was upfront about his ideals and his mission statement. He never pretended or tried to be a better person. He was just rotten and enjoyed it.

For that one piece of sage advice Jefferson offered Miles in the earliest tenure of his first title, Jefferson is the perfect example of a man who expects his son to “do as he says, and as I do”, but expects no consequences visited upon him whenever he dehumanizes people. He’s a walking metaphor for the heterosexual Black father who spews homophobic slurs in casual conversation around their gay daughter or son and I’m sure as hell that was intentional despite the incompatibility of the allegory.

Cataclysm: Ultimate Spider-Man doesn’t do much to repair his character, if anything it makes him thrice times worse. When Galactus starts wrecking all of New York City and Brooklyn, Miles, Bombshell (Lana Baumgartner) and Cloak and Dagger, struggle to save the people caught in the monster’s wake – all while recounting where they were when the Ultimatum event occurred.

In Miles’ flashback, we see Jefferson lose his head over the knowledge that the title wave was caused by a mutant (Magneto), all while loudly proclaiming everyone stuck in traffic was going to die. The most important nugget of information taken away from Miles’ flashback is the knowledge that his father more or less promised that he would abandon or disown Miles if he ever found out his son (then, probably only 11 or 12 years old at the time) was a superhuman. 

I never had much sympathy for Davis (I tolerated him because of Rio), but the moment Miles tries to convince his father to come with him out of the city to safety, and Jefferson decides to blame a now fourteen year old Miles for the death of Rio and Aaron, I just outright hated him. Cataclysm: Ultimate Spider-Man is not a bad read all things considered. It tells its story concisely and never loses focus of its characters in relation to the catastrophe. The downside is that you have to read the rest of the Cataclysm series to know what was going on. I’d probably recommend you read it, especially since it ties into two issues of The Ultimate Spider-Man. 

The conflict between Miles and Jefferson is left hanging until issues #8 and #9 of Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man – also known as “The Only Redeeming Thing About This Comic Book Title”. The eighth and ninth issues of MMTUSM sees Jefferson Davis finally owning up to his past and basically just spilling the beans about his life as a criminal with Aaron and how he became involved with S.H.I.E.L.D. during the 80s – when Miami Vice, Jerri Curls, House Party Flattops, and ill-fitting suits with shoulder pads were all the rage – and how he met a young, already-at-it, Nick Fury. 

The complete tonal and visual shift in the issues are a welcome respite from the Peter Parker nonsense of the previous seven. The story arc, “Miles Morales: An Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.?”, carries with it the kind’ve of visual flair I see a Tim Sale illustrated graphic novel (like Spider-Man: Blue or The Long Halloween), but it’s still David Marquez illustrating the story from beginning to end. 

It’s got the look and feel of a pulp novel, or one of those old newspaper comic strips where the spots of the print were obvious through the inking and character sketches. The narrative, which sees Jefferson and Aaron working for smalltime criminals to Jefferson’s eventual graduation to protecting the Kingpin (with a minor explanation as to why he loathes mutants), is, in my opinion, the highlight of a story that could’ve worked as a full-fledged miniseries about the Jefferson brothers.

My only quibble with the framing of the narrative is that the early inclusion of S.H.I.E.L.D makes Jefferson look more like the unwilling participant of crime he was manipulated into thinking he had to do for “the greater good”, as opposed to some young blood who didn’t give much thought to right or wrong (which is how the early issues framed it) before he had an epiphany. I always assumed the crime came first, then S.H.I.E.L.D, then Rio. Honestly, if you’re at all interested in this storyline, just look for the single issues and don’t buy the trade. You’ll be doing yourself a favor.

#Issues 10-13

Marvel and its twisted, present-day romantic relationship with Neo-Nazism is a fairly ironic one, given most of its early artists were white Jewish dudes with alternate names designed to explicitly hide their Jewishness on account of antisemitism. But, I suppose the publications preoccupation with Nazism to begin with (even if it was denouncing it) would’ve inevitably steered its future publishers to romanticize it in the end. I mean, that’s what happened after all.

You know shit it bad when Marvel wants you to pity [white] characters like Grant Ward of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D for joining a Neo-Nazi group, despite the repeated and angry affirmations of protagonist Daisy Johnson, who flat-out reminds the audience, “You are a Nazi if you join Hydra”, who is undermined anyway by the narrative that continues to bleat, “pity the Neo-Nazi.”

Brian Michael Bendis, in all his infinite lack of wisdom, decides – the biggest way to differ Miles Morales’ love life from Peter Parker’s, is make an underdeveloped character, his girlfriend, Ultimate Kate Bishop, a member of Hydra. Miles’ white girlfriend rides on the agenda of the Aryan Ideal and white supremacy. Brilliant.

The Ultimate Spider-Man issues, #1-#4 and #7 prelude the last four issues with Miles deliberating whether or not he should tell Katie Bishop about his double life as Spider-Man. Instead of being supportive, everyone from Ganke to Cloak and Dagger warns Miles against telling her, thinking it would be a bad idea. He does it anyway, Katie panics and runs away. 

The aforementioned issues give the reader a glimpse into Kate’s life with the Bishops, with one conversation with her older sister casually mentioning that “they” would have to kill Miles and the seventh issue concludes with her uttering the phrase, “Hail Hydra.”

If The Ultimate Spider-Man had something to say about the issue of Nazism, especially in relation to Miles’ life as a Black teen – or the cautionary tale of “you never know someone until…”, then I could maybe understand the decision to make Kate Bishop (a wildly popular Avenger in the 616 universe, be she an adult or a teenager) a Nazi.

But, it doesn’t, it basically does exactly the same thing Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D does with the Daisy Johnson/Grant Ward dynamic. The narrative depicts a “Sympathetic Nazi” (Katie) trying to explain their position, and a furious significant other (Miles) outright declaring their relationship is over. Only, where AOS more or less dragged that subplot out to its natural conclusion (“Sympathetic Nazi” isn’t really sympathetic and dies), 

The Ultimate Spider-Man did nothing to that extent. Readers barely have gotten to known Katie Bishop since her introduction in issue #23 of UCSM. She was given no time actually to be anything other than “Miles Morales’ girlfriend”. And when it comes right down to it, the Hydra subplot was nothing but an excuse to bring Dr. Doom into the narrative at the last moment. So, the “My Girlfriend is a Nazi” storyline just falls flat.

On a smaller note, the way the last couple issues decide to use Judge – the minor character from Ultimate Comics Spider-Man – is sigh inducing. It’s like Bendis realized his book was coming to an end and figured the best way to a handle a character that barely had any face time since the first twelve issues of the UCSM, is to just plop him in the middle of the story with his already knowing Miles is Spider-Man. 

But, he does it in a way that, if you removed him from the story, nothing would change. It’s a superfluous addition and kind’ve discourteous, especially since Bendis doesn’t do anything with Judge later on in Miles’ new 616 title, the unfortunately named Spider-Man.

Outside of issues #8 and #9, Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man is a sad conclusion to Miles Ultimate Universe solo-title career. It reminded me why I stopped reading his title four years ago, and knowing that none of his recent stuff isn’t any good either kinda makes me glad I made the decision so early on.

[bizarnage]

Thanks for the question! You might be surprised to hear that out of all the three major people to go by the name “Venom” (Eddie Brock, Mac Gargan, and Flash Thomspon), Eddie has the cleanest cannibalism record! Venom first ate brains in the 1996 issue Venom: The Hunger #1. Eddie was delirious after not sleeping for days and combined with the symbiote’s rising hunger, led the pair to eat a criminal’s brain, but Eddie came to his senses and vomited what he had just eaten into a dumpster right after.

This is the only incident in which the pair of Eddie and Venom had eaten or even bitten any humans (with the exception of biting the super villain Sandman). When Mac Gargan became Venom, his first brush with cannibalism was similar to Eddie’s as it was a “heat of the moment” situation where Mac devoured Steel Spider’s arm in Thunderbolts #115 (2007). Later, Mac would not resist the symbiote’s urges as Mac began to enjoy biting and even eating humans such as this panel from Siege: Spider-Man (2010).

Flash Thompson is a somewhat different story as from even his first outing as Agent Venom in The Amazing Spider-Man #654.1 (2011), Flash looses control, bites off, spits back out Flag Smasher’s arm, and replies that it doesn’t count as cannibalism. A similar situation would occur in Venom (Vol. 2) #9 (2011) where Flash looses control again, bites off, and spits out Hijacker’s head. In issue #24 (2012) Flash would make the full leap to cannibal as a demon in him causes him to devour a whole human.

In all three of these cases, the hosts were originally unwilling participates to the act of cannibalism as they were under the influence of the symbiote (and a demon in Flash’s) case. At the end of the day though, Eddie rarely used his teeth as a weapon and never completely ate a human, Mac often used his teeth to bite and devour countless amounts of people, and Flash did also occasionally use his teeth to bite but also ate a human in one incident.

[aion-rsa]

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Who is John Walker, the US Agent?

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John Walker, the US Agent will be one of the antagonists of Marvel's The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+.

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When The Falcon and The Winter Soldier starts up on Disney+ next year, one of its main antagonists will be the returning Daniel Bruhl as Helmut Zemo. At D23, it’s been announced that there will be another major antagonist in the form of John Walker, as played by Wyatt Russell. Walker is a B-lister-at-best to Marvel and it makes sense that this would be the project that would formally introduce him into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

While there have been various people to take up the mantle of Captain America outside of Steve Rogers, there are only five who truly matter. Isaiah Bradley was the prototype for Captain America as revealed in the excellent Truth: Red, White, and Black. William Burnside became Captain America in the 1950s in response to Rogers’ disappearance after World War II. John Walker became the new Captain America after Steve Rogers was dismissed from the role. Bucky Barnes took over as Cap when Rogers temporarily died. Then Sam Wilson became Cap when Rogers (living again) lost his super soldier powers and became physically elderly.

While Bradley and Burnside have potential to show up in the future (though they’d have to get a good Chris Evans double for Burnside, if not Evans himself), John Walker is the perfect wrench to throw into a story about Sam Wilson wielding the shield.

So who is John Walker, the Captain America of the 80s?

Walker was created by Mark Gruenwald and Paul Neary, debuting in the pages of Captain America #323 in 1986. In his original appearances, he played the role of Super-Patriot, a glory-hound loud-mouth vigilante backed up by his own propaganda machine. He’d spend much of his time giving speeches about how Captain America was old news, falsely portraying him as a gun-toting psychopath, and he’d even stage fights with goons in Captain America masks called “The Buckies.”

Though respecting the First Amendment and all that, Captain America obviously didn’t like this. Walker, who was driven by fascism, couldn’t leave well enough alone and instigated a fight with Cap. It went on for a while and Walker considered himself the winner because he...threw a shuriken into Cap’s chainmail.

Yeah, I don’t get it either.

A few issues later, Rogers had issues with the US government. The two parties disagreed on the status of the Captain America identity and the United States’ ownership. Deciding that he answered to the dream and not the suits behind the desks, Rogers gave up being Captain America, choosing instead to fight crime as Nomad and later The Captain. Tony Stark even made him a new shield!

The high-ranking government types discussed who would make for the best replacement. Fittingly enough, one even suggested that Sam Wilson would be a perfect candidate...but the public wasn’t ready for a black Captain America. They instead went with Walker, because jerk or not, he was still pretty damn good at punching terrorists in the face.

read more: Everything You Need to Know About The Falcon and The Winter Soldier

Walker was taken aback, especially considering he made had made a name for himself specifically by telling everyone how much Cap sucked. He ended up agreeing to the terms, mainly since he would do just about anything the government tells him to. It was there that we also got to learn his origin.

Walker was the younger brother of a soldier who died in Vietnam and was celebrated as a real hero. Idolizing his brother, but stuck in his shadow, Walker decided to prove himself by joining the military. While he was active, the US wasn’t involved in any wars, so his attempts for glory and acknowledgement were empty gestures. He ended up getting powers from the Power Broker, a pro-wrestling promoter who was the lazy way out whenever a writer in the '80s needed to give someone special abilities without revealing that they were actually a mutant. Walker never entered the squared circle, as he instead got himself an agent and a dream to be America’s #1 patriotic hero.

Then again, he did stage pre-determined fights with the Buckies to get him more cheers from the public, so I guess he's more pro-wrestling than I originally thought.

After Taskmaster trained Walker to sling a shield like an expert, the new Captain America started kicking ass in the name of ‘Murica. For roughly two years, Walker played the role, where he was portrayed as a violent psychopath dressed in the flag. He wasn’t quite Frank Castle level of bonkers, but he had no problem tying his villains to explosives and leaving them to die. 

Over the course of his run, he started to chill out a bit, question authority a little, and the narrative made sure to make him sympathetic. For instance, he got doxxed and his parents were murdered because of it. Then he wasn’t even allowed to see their funeral because duty calls.

In the end, it turns out the big puppetmaster of everything was the Red Skull. Walker and Rogers teamed up against him and took him down. Then everyone decided to go back to the status quo with Rogers as Cap.

Walker was lucky, though. You see, the 90s were on their way and there was no better haven for an edgier copycat of an existing hero. It was a time when Iron Man was flying around with a giant gattling gun on his shoulder, Spider-Man’s alien double was eating the brains of drug dealers, a Thor knockoff was embarrassing all of us with a leather jacket and ponytail, a new Batman had a hideous costume covered in razors, and so on. Rather than go back to being Super-Patriot, Walker dressed in a black version of the Captain America outfit, got a shield of his own, and fought crime as US Agent.

Even though the two were never really shown to be close friends, Captain America and US Agent co-existed as politically-opposite counterparts with a mutual respect (usually). US Agent received a couple miniseries to his name, but never got a full-on solo series.

Instead, he spent the next few decades jumping from team to team. As part of the West Coast Avengers and later Forceworks (oof, the '90s), he often played opposite Hawkeye. Hawkeye initially was the Avenger who was a stubborn asshole to nice guy Captain America, so now he had to deal with a version of Captain America who was actually a stubborn asshole. US Agent later led the Jury, a team of armored soldiers who were originally put together as a revenge pact against Venom, then just kind of stopped fighting him after two stories.

For real, though, it's kind of amazing how nobody cares about the Jury and yet they still show up from time to time.

Speaking of teams nobody cares about, US Agent was also part of Superhuman Tactical Activities Response Squad (STARS) and one of the modern incarnations of the Invaders. He became the American liaison to Omega Flight (which he hated, because they’re filthy Canadians). This led to him joining Hank Pym’s Mighty Avengers during the whole Dark Reign thing. Funny enough, Walker was a big supporter of Norman Osborn being in charge of the superhero wing of the government for a time. Of course he was.

read more: Marvel Pulls Essay Over Political Fears

This came to a head in a Siege tie-in where the Mighty Avengers fought Osborn’s Thunderbolts and we got US Agent vs. Nuke. It was the battle of the I-can-see-where-you're-coming-from right wing patriotic super soldier and the crazy-email-that-your-uncle-sent-you right wing patriotic super soldier. The Mighty Avengers won, but US Agent took some horrible damage from the fight, losing an arm and a leg in the process.

No longer wearing the tights, US Agent became Warden Walker as part of the Thunderbolts. He remained in a wheelchair as he didn’t want to use cybernetic attachments to augment his body and be one step closer to becoming like Nuke, the unfortunate super soldier knockoff who first appeared in Daredevil: Born Again. The comic was bloated with characters, so his panel-time was limited, but Walker at least got a rad moment when he took care of a prison riot on his own, Bad Day at Black Rock style.

It’s the guy meekly bringing over the wheelchair that gets me.

Thunderbolts became Dark Avengers and US Agent was briefly sucked into an alternate reality where the heroes of NYC were at war with each other. Using a lobotomized Venom symbiote, the creature was used to replace the missing pieces of Walker’s body, making him whole again. Team member Toxie Doxie had US Agent under her control, but that was a series-ending cliffhanger that was never touched on ever again.

After that, US Agent has been just kind of kicking around Marvel, showing up whenever someone needs a cranky guy who can still kick some ass. Fittingly, one of his last appearances was him going after Sam Wilson Captain America, but that ties into Civil War II and Secret Empire bullshit and I really don’t want to have to discuss those events.

Outside of comics, the biggest appearance for US Agent was the Capcom tag-team fighter Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter. He was a secret character and really just a recolored Captain America to the point that they didn’t even make his outfit accurate. Still better than how the game turned Blackheart red and called him "Mephisto." US Agent would reappear in Marvel vs. Capcom as an assist character and would be an alternate costume for Cap in Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

read more: The Legacy of Marvel vs. Capcom

As a newcomer to the MCU, Walker is going to be a real wild card. He could be anywhere from a full-on villain to an eventual member of the Avengers. The most likely scenario, at least at first, is that the government isn't going to be thrilled with the idea that Steve Rogers bequeathed the Captain America legacy to Sam Wilson without checking in with them first, and Walker is probably their preferred candidate. I can’t wait to see what Wyatt Russell has to offer.

Gavin Jasper writes for Den of Geek and wonders how long until Forceworks shows up in the MCU. Don’t say they won’t because we’re getting the goddamn Eternals! Nothing is impossible! Read more of his articles here and follow him on Twitter @Gavin4L

Read and download the Den of Geek SDCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Gavin Jasper

Aug 24, 2019

Marvel

Captain America

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The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

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[bloodfromtherock-blog]

OVER 60 YEARS OF OLD MAN TRUMP’S COLOR LINE

Daniel Hutchens August 15, 2017

In the 1950s, the brilliant and legendary folk songwriter, Woody Guthrie, of “This Land Is Your Land” fame, returned from service in the Merchant Marine and lived for a while in “Beach Haven.” Which was an apartment complex built by Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump. There were some disturbingly bigoted policies in place at Beach Haven, and Woody was stirred to write some lyrics, telling the plain truth like he usually did:

I suppose Old Man Trump knows Just how much Racial Hate he stirred up In the bloodpot of human hearts When he drawed That color line here at his Eighteen hundred family project… Where no black ones come to roam! No, no, no! Old Man Trump! Old Beach Haven ain’t my home!

Turns out things back in the ‘50s were about the same as they are today, as far as our nation being plagued and pilfered by a racist housing developer named Trump.

Fred Trump was investigated by a U.S. Senate Committee in 1954 for profiteering off public contracts, overestimating charges to the government, and other dandy little scams of that nature. Fred Trump was also widely known to be bitterly racist. His homes, as Woody had observed, had a “color line.” No blacks needed apply. This charming little foible persisted into the 1970s, when the Justice Department filed a civil rights case against the Trump firm––which by then involved both Fred and Donald––for racist housing discrimination. Again, no blacks wanted. The case was eventually settled out of court, which became a pattern for Donald, despite his raving during this recent political campaign that he would “never settle.”

Then he paid $25 million out of court to settle fraud claims from his Trump University mega-scam, just a few months after he’d taken office as 45th president of the United States. Keepin’ it classy, as the saying goes.

***********************************************************************

Fast forward to today. It sure didn’t take Trump long to pivot from yesterday’s respectable condemnation of white supremacists, the obviously forced “racism is evil” prepared statement, back to his usual off-script, angry, confrontational, arrogant-little-schoolboy-running-off-at-the-mouth-while-shitting-his-pants-from-pyscyotic-fury-and-fear stance.

I applauded Donald Trump yesterday, for saying what should have been said. Words that could have been a good start toward cooling the venom and division that’s brewing in this country. Even though Trump had obviously been shamed, cajoled and most likely “advised” to make the statement––it mattered. It was an official declaration that America opposes bigotry and the oppression of one race or class by another. It was decent and reasonable and American.

That’s all over now, make no mistake about it. Trump fully outed himself today as a KKK and Nazi sympathizer at heart, no matter what scripts he’s forced to recite. You can hear it in his voice. Anyone with a free mind of your own, just look––watch him. Watch the two videos and see who this man is we have in our White House.

In the carefully scripted “racism is evil” speech, you can see Trump white-knuckling his way through the words. Obviously less-than-pleased about the message he’s grinding out. Satirical columnist Andy Borowitz compared Trump’s delivery to a “man in hostage video…whose robotic performance indicated that he was reading a prepared statement under duress.”

In today’s speech, our boy was BACK. He wasn’t reading from a script. He was arguing with and trying to bully-pulpit a room of reporters. He got to suckle his favorite pacifier with the shiny, simple-minded catch phrase, “You’re fake news!” And he asked us, “What about the alt-Left?…I think there’s blame on both sides, and I have no doubt about it, and you don’t have any doubt about it either.” (You don’t get to tell us what we think, you clueless, classless, woman-fearing little piece of refuse washed ashore from the sewers of reality TV.)

He told us, “This week it’s Robert E. Lee. Is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson?” (No one ever said rich, white, early American men didn’t own slaves, including the Founding Fathers…but if you don’t understand the distinction between…on one hand, two men who shaped our principles of government, occupied the office of American President, and helped frame the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence…and on the other hand, a general who came along generations later, and deserted this country to fight against us with the Confederacy, in an attempt to defend the very principle that white humans are superior to others, and to defend institutionalized slavery in the South…if you just can’t see the difference, we can’t help you, you tiny-brained, tiny-handed, twittering little tyrant.)

He told us, “I watched this very closely” (the incident in Charlottesville). “I watched it much more closely than you people watched it.” (Prove it.) “You had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay?” (No, it’s not okay, Nutty Professor. Again, prove it. And, if there were non-racist “decent people” among those marchers, as you contend, wouldn’t they have felt a little uncomfortable sandwiched between a squadron of heavily-armed, vile-racial-epithet-shoutin’, “Heil Trump” chantin’, swastika-and-Conferedate-flag-wavin’ mutants?)

Trump had held it in. You could hear the gluttonous relish in his voice as he let it all bust loose again. He tore into the reporters with the vengeance of a junkie who’d been deprived of his stash. His advisers can’t cage him. He came out of hiding, and we saw it happen right before our eyes, the werewolf-like transformation, back into the real creep behind the golden curtain. Our freak of nature. Our Hate-Monger in Chief. Our two-headed American Monster.

*************************************************************************

So there it is. Another fine mess. Why does all this matter? Shouldn’t we just be used to the brazen lies and arrogant indecency by now? It matters because Trump is encouraging dangerous idiocy. The stench is drifting back up from the latrine:

White Nationalist leader Richard Spencer praised Trump’s tantrum today: “I’m proud of him for speaking the truth.”

Former Imperial Wizard of the KKK David Duke said, “Thank you President Trump for your honesty and courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville and condemn the Leftist terrorists.”

Following Trump’s first weak-kneed speech about Charlottesville, neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer said, “We have an army! This is the beginning of a war!…Trump comments were good. He didn’t attack us…He said he loves us all…No condemnation at all…When asked to condemn, [Trump] just walked out of the room. Really, really good. God bless him”

Yeah…the ugly side of his support base is getting hungry. They’ve been pushed to the edges of society for a long, long time. As they righteously should be, with extreme prejudice. But they’ve got an agent on the inside now, and they’re slithering up toward the gates.

So many extremely conservative Republicans have by now bashed the white supremacists in no uncertain terms. But the Trump administration is a new beast. Not Republican, not Conservative, not American…a brand new ugliness.

The extremely conservative Senator from Utah, Orrin Hatch, hit a nerve when he said, “We should call evil by its name. My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home.”

But maybe the former Republican Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, best summed up why traditional conservative Republicans are disgusted with the alt-Right, in the following tweet:

“ ‘White Supremacy’ crap is worst kind of racism––it’s EVIL and perversion of God’s truth to ever think our Creator values some above others.”

That statement really reconnects to the heart of the issue. The white supremacists hold a basic belief that they’re superior to other races, religions, etc. And they want to legislate that belief into action in our society. If certain members of the “alt-Left” engage in violence, or behave badly in whatever way––then it’s reasonable to condemn those actions. But they aren’t promoting a hideous, oppressive, bigoted belief system. They’re trying to defend themselves. And that difference is why any decent American president would speak out specifically against white supremacy, without hedging and hem-hawing and giving the old nod and wink of approval to his brethren.

**********************************************************************

Yep…old Woody Guthrie knew what he was talking about. His lyrics about “Old Man Trump”, sadly, ring more true today than ever.

I suppose Old Man Trump knows Just how much Racial Hate he stirred up In the bloodpot of human hearts When he drawed That color line