#them books were new so they were shelved wrong at the outset

[beauzos]

i think it’s a bit annoying how managers in particular at my store kinda put people down if they notice a mistake (not to their faces but like, if they notice a book in the wrong section or whatever they’ll get on the headsets to complain) bcs i feel being less hostile might help people feel able to admit they made a mistake so they can learn from it

on the other hand i feel my blood pressure rise when i see a book in the complete wrong place in history and i can’t help but wonder aloud to all my coworkers who the fuck would’ve done it. so i understand but i try not to be mean about it LMAO

[meeedeee]

If You Want to Write a Book, Don’t Listen to Stephen Hunter RSS FEED OF POST WRITTEN BY FOZMEADOWS

A few days ago, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Stephen Hunter published an essay at the Daily Beast titled, rather provocatively, “If You Want to Write a Book, Write Every Day or Quit Now.” Since then, it’s been doing the rounds on Twitter, and not because of its quality. Hunter’s piece is so laughably bad in every respect that I damn near snorted vomit out of my nose while reading it.

There is, I have found, a distinctive type of faux-eloquent arrogance exhibited by your common or garden Serious Male Writer that endeavours to turn “he said, loftily” into an aspirational dialogue tag instead of, as is actually the case, a dismissively condescending one. Hunter’s piece is a case in point: setting aside the gross inaccuracies of its substance, the style is so deeply invested in celebrating itself that it’s less a case of gilding the lily than (to borrow one of my husband’s favourite phrases) sprinkling a turd with glitter. Presented without Hunter’s caveats and curlicues, the core recommendation – make regular writing part of your routine, because you can’t ever publish a book you don’t finish – is a reasonable one. That Hunter has managed to turn such simple advice into a purple, self-congratulatory screed about the failings of other, lesser beings is, if nothing else, a cautionary example of hubris in action.

He begins:

In a few days or weeks, I’ll start a new novel. I don’t know yet and won’t for years if it’s good, bad, dreary, enchanting, or merely adequate. Moreover, I don’t know if it’ll help or hurt my reputation, make me rich or a fool, or simply pass into oblivion without squeak or moan.

What is certain is that on that same day, whichever one it is, one thousand other people will start their novels. In order to publish mine, it has to be better than theirs. So, forgive me—I pretty much hate them.

I’d be very interested to know where Hunter is getting this figure about a thousand other people from, as he goes on to mention it more than once without ever citing a source. Even so, and regardless of whether his numbers are accurate or a mere illustrative hypothetical plucked from the aether, the following contention – that these other yearling writers are Hunter’s direct competition – is wrong in all respects. The number of people who start writing a book on the same day you do is completely irrelevant. Even if all those other novels ultimately end up finished and submitted to agencies and publishers, you’re only directly competing with each other if you’re submitting to the same venues, at the same time, about the same subject matter.

A writer of adult thrillers is not vying for marketspace with those producing memoirs or YA, but with other authors of adult thrillers – and even then, the outcome is largely contingent on context. If a particular genre is experiencing a boom, as urban fantasy was not long ago, then publishers looking to captialise on a trend are more likely, not less, to sign on multiple works in the same oeuvre, to say nothing of the existence of imprints which, regardless of market trends, are dedicated to specific genres or subgenres. The real competition doesn’t kick in until the book is actually being promoted – by the publisher, by reviewers and booksellers and librarians, by the readership in general – and even then, it’s neither an equal nor a predictable thing. Promotions can fail, viral successes can happen, an author whose first four novels were largely ignored can become a breakout success with their fifth, and so on through endless permutations of chance and context. Solid promotion is always helpful, of course, and there are things both author and publisher can do to maximise a book’s chances, but ultimately, it’s up to the audience.

Which is why Hunter’s opening premise is not only irritating, but deeply unhelpful to those budding writers for whom his essay is presumably intended. Unlike an annual literary award, an audience is not a finite resource, but a thing to be shared and cultivated: the reader who buys a competitor’s book today may well be inspired to buy yours tomorrow, and as such, hating them from the outset is not only pointless, but completely antithetical to the cultivation of professional writing relationships. In my own experience as a published author, other authors are frequently some of your best friends and biggest cheerleaders. We support, critique and learn from each other precisely because we’re writing in the same field, which is also how we come to share recommendations about new books to read. Regardless of whether I’m acting in my capacity as authorial colleague or delighted reader, taking note of which books my favourite writers are praising, criticising or otherwise discussing is a large part of how I stay abreast of the field.

Call me newfangled, but if I’m going to go to the effort of hating someone, it won’t be for merely sharing my ambitions: they have to actually earn it.

But let’s be honest: Of the thousand, 800 won’t cross the infamous Mendoza Line. God love them, God be with them, God show mercy to them, for whatever cruel reason they were not given enough talent or the right mind, or any of a dozen different pathologies to make them capable of writing a publishable book. No amount of labor will alter this reality.

There’s so much wrong with this, I scarcely know where to begin. 800 potential novels lost! Where is he getting these figures? And god, the condescension! If someone desperately wants to be a traditionally published author and finds themselves unable to achieve that goal, then yes, that sucks for them. But I intensely dislike the construction here – especially when “cruel” is paired with “capable” and pleading to the divine – that implies a person is somehow tragic or deficient if they can’t or don’t produce a published work. Many people write foremost for their own pleasure, whether in fannish contexts or otherwise, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

And then there’s the fact that, in dismissing these 800 potential writers, Hunter is apparently convinced that lack of ability is the only reason why, on this particular occasion, they might not succeed. Clearly, he’s aware that it’s possible for even a successful author to abandon a manuscript, given his admission that the same thing has happened to him. (“I know how books die. A few have perished under my saddle, believe me.”) So whence comes the conviction that the hypothetical majority of his hypothetical thousand competitors will drop out of the running, not because they, too, have just so happened to hit a stumbling block, but because they’re pathologically incapable of success? The idea that “no amount of labour” can help such writers is particularly incongruous – not to say disgusting – given that he’s ultimately asserting the value of regular writing and hard work. (But then, as we’ll see shortly, he’s also claiming it should be easy.)

Also – and I feel like this ought to be an obvious point to make – but “publishable book” is not a universally coherent standard, not least because we now live in a time when self-publishing is commonplace. Even so, plenty of books that I would deem unpublishable, were the verdict mine alone to make, have nonetheless been traditionally published, because – unlike the Mendoza Line – there is no single, absolute yardstick against which all potential novels are measured. (Whether Hunter believes there should be is a different matter.) Just as a great deal of comparative rubbish ends up on shelves, so too does a lot of excellent writing never make it that far, and while I’ve also encountered a lot of heinous attempts at narrative in unpublished contexts, I don’t for a red hot minute believe that the majority of bad writers are incapable of improvement. Hunter seems oblivious to the possibility that some among his theoretical thousand might be young writers – my first attempt at a novel was made at 11 – whose talents, like their interests, are far from fixed in stone, but who nonetheless might be grossly dissuaded by advice purporting to tell them otherwise.

Ugh.

So that really leaves but 200 to worry about. They are smarter, more talented, better looking, have better teeth, more hair, better bodies, and in most other respects are simply better. If they were writing this piece instead of me, you would like it a lot more. They are more charming, more beguiling, more charismatic, smell (a lot) better, have more polish and manner. They’re fun to be with! You’d be proud to have them as a friend.

I will beat them all, however, and I will do it on one strength they lack, the poor, good-looking devils.

I will finish and they will not.

The two most important words you can write in any manuscript are “the” and “end.” Somewhere along the line my brilliant competitors mosey off. I’m too dumb to mosey off. They’ll lose faith. I’ll never lose faith; it’s the only faith I’ve got. A new lover will come into their lives; I’m not even on speaking terms with my old (and only) lover. They’ll be distracted by so many other dazzling prospects; I have no other dazzling prospects. Their spouses will begin to grouse over undone errands and abandoned socks on the steps, there’ll be just too much research, they’ll grow depressed, sick of their own voice, unable to get themselves buzzed up enough. Their books will die.

Without wanting to veer too far into the perilous realm of psychological analysis, this entire section is like peering into a well of deep and unresolved personal bitterness. Other people might be handsomer, kinder, more likeable, smarter and generally more desirable than Hunter, but by god, he can write books! Which… good for him, I guess? Like, I’m not about to argue that writing stories isn’t a cool skill to have, but contrary to what he’s saying here, you can actually be an author and an intelligent, engaging, social human being. Crazy, right? The One True Path to authorial greatness doesn’t open only to those who suck at everything else, or who fail at interpersonal relationships, romantic or otherwise. I know plenty of authors who also have other, successful careers as scientists or academics or any number of things; who have partners or children or extensive social networks (and sometimes even all three!). By the same token, I also know plenty of writers, both published and unpublished, whose failure to complete a given manuscript has roundly failed to result in depression, divorce or anything more dire than personal irritation. Shocking, right?

Here’s the truth; sometimes a book just doesn’t go, and sometimes it’s only that it doesn’t go now. You have to set it aside for a bit, and maybe it dies and turns into fertiliser for future ideas, or maybe you cannibalise its parts, or maybe it’s only slumbering like Sleeping Beauty, waiting for some suitably handsome catalyst to wander along and offer the dragon a better gig at a newer, shinier castle. Either way, the price of failure isn’t the loss of everything you love, and success doesn’t hinge on having had nothing else to love in the first place. Hunter might well console himself with that particular narrative, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let him blithely hang its weight on the rest of us.

You work every day. You work so hard, you make such progress, you’re such a star that you decide to take a day off. The day after, you feel guilty so you work twice as hard. You set new records, you crash the 3,000-word barrier, you achieve epiphanies you never thought possible! Again you reward yourself with a day off. Then the next day—oh, actually, now it’s the next month—you can’t remember why you started the damned thing anyway and the anxiety of your sloth is crippling, turning you all beast-like and spite-spitting, so you formally surrender and feel a lot better. For a few months. Then, of course, you hate yourself and as the years pass, that hatred metastasizes into a cancer of the soul. If only… And you’re one of the forlorn ones who dies with regrets.

A lot of preps stared at Stephen Hunter when he wrote this essay. He put his middle finger up at them.

The most important thing is habit, not will.

If you feel you need will to get to the keyboard, you are in the wrong business. All that energy will leave nothing to work with. You have to make it like brushing your teeth, mundane, regular, boring even. It’s not a thing of effort, of want, of steely, heroic determination. (I wonder who pushed the meme that writing is heroic; it must have been a writer, trying to get laid.) You have to do it numbly, as you brush your teeth. No theater, no drama, no sacrifice, no “It is a far far better thing I do” crap. You do it because it’s time. If you are ordering yourself, burning ergs, issuing sweat, breathing raggedly through nasal channels that feel like Navajo pottery, you’re doing something wrong. Ever consider law? We definitely need more lawyers.

Like… I get what Hunter’s trying to say here, which is that merely wanting to be an author won’t get you very far if you don’t actually put the work in, but god, there’s such a crushing sense of nihilism to his version of things, I kind of want to ask if he’s okay. Speaking as someone with a fair knowledge of mental health issues, routinely doing anything “numbly,” even brushing your teeth, is not actually a good thing. Numbness is not synonymous with the mundane, and if you’re starting to think it is, you should probably seek help. I say that with absolute sincerity: feeling numb about everyday life is a genuine danger sign.

Which is also why this paragraph makes me fucking furious. There’s a reason we talk about having a will to live, and a reason why someone losing that will is a terrible, awful thing. For some of us, everything is a matter of will, because we’re struggling to even get out of bed. Telling someone to give up writing because sitting down at the computer takes effort is one of the most toxic, destructive and fundamentally insincere pieces of advice I’ve ever seen issued. I’ll tell you this for nothing: every single writer I know, myself included, has struggled to write at times. The reasons why vary – lack of time, mental health issues, exhaustion, problems with the plot – but even when you’re someone who writes regularly, routinely, as a matter of habit, it can still be difficult. Some things can only be done – or only done now – because we order it of ourselves; because we fucking try.

Work every day. Obviously I don’t mean every day. Hyperbole, it’s what we do for a living. So let me clarify and tell you what I really mean: Work every day.

This is because the most difficult test of the author isn’t his mastery of time or dialogue, his gift for action or character, his ability to suggest verisimilitude in a few strokes, but his ability to get back into the book each day. You have to enter its world. It demands a certain level of concentration to do so. You have to train yourself to that concentration. The easier it is to get there, the better off you’ll be, day in and day out. In fact, if you skip a day, much less a week, the anxiety you unload on yourself doesn’t increase arithmetically but exponentially. If it’s hard after one day, it’ll be hard squared, then cubed, ultimately hard infinite-ed. And that’s only by Wednesday!

And this, right here, is where we see that Hunter’s status as a single, childless, (presumably) antisocial man who doesn’t need to work other jobs to support himself has apparently birthed the assumption that all other aspiring writers are in the same boat – or, far more worryingly, that anyone who doesn’t meet that criteria naturally can’t succeed. It’s not just that he’s using masculine pronouns to refer to his archetypal author, although it certainly doesn’t help: it’s that everything he says here is predicated on “his [the writer’s] ability to get back into the book each day,” which doesn’t leave any room for people who need to work to live, or who want to go out with their partner or friends, or who need to spend time with their children – for anyone, in other words, who has an actual life.

To reiterate: making writing a habit is excellent advice, and writing a little each day is not a bad thing to do. But asserting that people can’t be writers if they do anything other than this is grossly false, not least because there are thousands of successful, published authors around to disprove it. If Hunter personally experiences anxiety when he skips a day of writing, that’s one thing, but it’s far from being a universal experience. God, I am so sick of Serious Male Writers assuming that what’s true for them must logically be true for everyone else! If that’s how narrow Hunter’s view of the human condition is, I shudder to think how his writing must suffer – or maybe he just avoids creating characters who aren’t fundamentally like him. Either way, I’m not in a rush to check out his back catalogue.

Some writers of my acquaintance find great success in writing a small amount per day, every day, but I can’t think of a single one who’d cry failure on anyone who writes differently, or who had to take time off. Personally, I write in bursts: I can produce huge wordcounts in a short amount of time, but only if I rest for a little while afterwards. Once recharged, I can go again – but if I hit a snag in the plot, it’s always less work in the long run if I stop and puzzle it out instead of forging blindly on in the wrong direction just for the sake of wordcount.

Find what works for you, is the point. Shouldn’t that be obvious?

Effort is pain. Pain is not your friend, not this kind of pain. Via pain, doubt, fear, self-loathing, stasis, heavy legs, and halitosis enter your life. Your skin hurts, your hair hurts, the little whatever-it-is between your nostrils hurt. You have the energy of a cat on a couch. Inertia is your destiny, your tragedy, your one-way ticket to where you already are. That is why the easy way is the best way. It is easier to work every day than to deal with the load of self-inflicted grief you’ll encounter when you skip one day, four days, or the rest of your life.

Listen. Stephen. Bro. I get that this is going to come as an alien concept to you, but effort is not always synonymous with pain, in much the same way that numbness is not always the same as mundanity. Maybe that’s how you experience the world, but it’s just not true for everyone. Yes, sometimes it takes effort to write, but often it’s the good, satisfying kind, where you know you’re achieving something, making yourself better and stronger by testing your personal limits. Also, technically? Inertia is easier than effort. Effort is how you break free from inertia, and I know I keep harping on this point, but seriously: one of the most toxic mindsets to impose on a person is the idea that small failures are inherently synonymous with large ones. This is why, for instance, recovering addicts who fall off the wagon with a small transgression so often feel like they’ve got no choice but to commit a big one: not because it’s inevitable, but because they’ve been taught that success/failure is a binary proposition, with one slip the same as catastrophe. Plus, uh. It is actually possible to be disciplined while including regular breaks as part of that discipline, you know? I’m just gonna put that out there.

Another helpful tip: F— research! I say this, knowing that my works are thought to be well-researched and I am proud of the research in them. But in research there’s also death and destruction and self-loathing. You can do the research later. You cannot use “more research” as a crutch to justify your sloth. You are selling narrative not background. The most important truths you tell involve what you know about human behavior, not what color the Obersturmbannfuhrer’s epaulets are. If you don’t know it, just bull on through and keep going. Make it up. Jam it with placeholders. It’s OK. At that stage you need momentum, not precision. That’s why it’s a first draft; that’s why there’ll be a second draft.

*pinches bridge of nose, breathes deeply*

I say unto thee again, not everyone feels this kind of way about research. It’s not goddamn poison, okay? Some people find it merely a chore and others, invigorating. Yes, there are certainly instances where the research can wait, or where there’s no harm done in writing first and fact-checking afterwards, but the belief that “human behaviour” doesn’t also require research is kind of why Hunter is giving such goddamn shitty advice in the first place, because – say it with me! – people are fucking different. It’s this kind of approach to writing that leads to all manner of bigoted stereotypes finding their way into mainstream works: the writer assumes that all people fundamentally think and feel and experience the world in the same way they do, that no particular circumstance, belief or identity requires investigation in order to be accurately represented by an outsider, and so they don’t do the research. Shit like this is how, for instance, you end up with a horrifically anti-Semitic book purporting to be the opposite, or endless faux Medieval Europe fantasy novels written by people who, like Hunter, think that “selling narrative not background” is a sufficient justification for shitty, inconsistent worldbuilding.

Plus – and again, I feel that this ought to go without saying, but apparently not – measure twice, cut once is also as applicable to writing as it is carpentry. Some writers thrive on letting the momentum of a first draft carry them through to the end, then going back later to rip the guts out of whatever doesn’t work. For others, though, it’s easier – and less time-consuming – to pause mid-novel, work out the problems as they occur and produce a cleaner first copy.

Finally: Writer, forgive thyself. You may write crap for years, decades, eons before your brain gets tired of being so mediocre. You will never know if that jump is possible if you don’t keep humping, every day. Numbly, you must do the necessary. Keep on slugging. Forward the light brigade. You can always fix it later. But none of this will be doable, understandable, possible, unless you get to the “the” and the “end.”

If Hunter hadn’t taken up the bulk of his essay saying the exact fucking opposite of this, I’d almost be inclined to think it a positive note on which to end, instead of a sad little retcon. But it is sad, in much the same way that the whole damn article is sad. There’s not a speck of joy or passion evident in it anywhere: no humour, no enthusiasm, and certainly no hint of why anyone might want to be an author in the first place. Hunter’s attitude to writing is a baffling mix of arrogance and nihilism: everything is awful in my life, but I console myself with the knowledge that other, seemingly happier people will ultimately suffer more by virtue of failing to write like me. It’s a type of seething misanthropy for which I have precious little time and increasingly little patience in any context, let alone when it’s misrepresenting itself as the be-all, end-all of my chosen profession.

Pulitzer be damned: when it comes to giving writing advice, like Jon Snow, Hunter knows nothing.

from shattersnipe: malcontent & rainbows http://ift.tt/2qCbLxS via IFTTT

[thebibliophagist]

   Goodreads   Amazon

One snowy night, in their senior year of high school, best friends Shelby and Helene are involved in a terrible car accident. Shelby escapes physically unscathed and emotionally scarred, but Helene’s injuries have put her into a permanent vegetative state.  Helene’s parents keep her in her bedroom and word spreads far and wide of Helene’s supposed “healing” powers. As a line of faithful followers forms outside of Helene’s house every day, Shelby is admitted to an inpatient psychiatric ward where she falls deeper into depression and self-destructive behaviors.

some spoilers below.

I loved Hoffman’s Seventh Heaven and was unimpressed with The Museum of Extraordinary Things, so I was really hoping that I would enjoy this book.  I was so excited to see this available as a “Read Now” on Netgalley, but it’s been more than six months since I downloaded my copy. I’ve finally read it, and I don’t really know what to think. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it, either. I really just didn’t see the point.

As always, Hoffman’s writing is beautiful.  Unfortunately, beautiful writing doesn’t stand in for the absence of plot. Although this book follows Shelby for a good decade or so of her life, very little actually happens.

At the outset of the book, and I want to mention this because I am quite sure it will turn off some readers, Shelby is regularly raped by one of the orderlies in the inpatient psych ward. This understandably undoes any progress that she might have made while hospitalized, and it carries over to how she views relationships for the next several years.

Out of the program, Shelby shaves her head and wears shapeless black clothes and combat boots that she knows make her look unattractive and scary.  She’s trying to look bad because she doesn’t deserve to look good. Her best friend is in a coma because of her, and why should she be enjoying her life when Helene can’t?

Shelby abandons all hope for a good life.  Although she’d been accepted to NYU, she never moves into her dorm. She moves down to her parents’ basement, where she sleeps on the couch and smokes a lot of weed. Her only semi-meaningful relationship is with her dealer, Ben, who she eventually begins dating.  Shelby doesn’t actually like Ben, but she feels that she doesn’t deserve to be in love because Helene is in a coma. Eventually, Shelby and Ben move to New York City together.

Shelby is awful to Ben.  She feels that he deserves better than her, and maybe if she yells enough, if she’s crazy enough, if she treats him poorly enough, he’ll leave. But Ben loves Shelby, and it’s not until she cheats on him with a handsome, charismatic veterinarian that he snaps. It’s not even the cheating that bothers Ben, it’s the fact that Shelby is going to leave him for this smarmy doctor.  When things don’t work out with the vet, Shelby realizes what a good person Ben was.  At this point, it’s too late.  Ben wants nothing to do with her.

At some point, Shelby realizes that she needs to get a job. She begins stocking shelves at a pet store, a dead-end job she picked so that she wouldn’t have to talk to people. Shelby is quickly promoted to manager for no real reason and becomes best friends with one of her coworkers. Although Shelby is a self-professed child-hater, her coworker tells Shelby that she will be babysitting her three children for several days while she goes out of town. (Why you would leave your three children with someone who doesn’t know the first thing about kids and admittedly hates them is beyond me, but this made for a really good couple chapters.) It turns out that Shelby is amazing with children. She knows exactly what to say to all of them so that they will become better versions of themselves. She calms fears and tames wild teenagers, all while letting them eat forbidden food and stay up past their bedtimes.

While working at the pet store, Shelby also learns that she loves animals. I guess she didn’t know this before. When she sees an animal being mistreated, she liberates it from its current owner and takes it home with her. By the end of the book, she has a motley crew of four dogs, ranging from a teacup poodle to a Great Pyrenees. Shelby is amazing with these dogs and can turn the worst-behaved animal into an angel almost instantly.  I’m glad that she saved these dogs because I, too, have a very big soft spot for animals, but I don’t know how she kept getting away with stealing them!

Shelby also goes to college at some point, where she’s admitted without much effort on her part. I suppose it’s possible that her old SAT scores and high school grades helped, but it seems like it should have taken a bit more work given that she hadn’t been in school for so long.  Of course, Shelby turns out to be absolutely brilliant and she gets great grades without even trying. Shelby is so brilliant that the state of New York actually pays her to go to school. Everything comes naturally to her and she ends up applying to (and being accepted at) UC-Davis for vet school. As the book ends, Shelby moves to California with the love of her life as Ben begs her to take him back.

I guess I didn’t really understand the point to this book. Shelby tries so hard to have a horrible life, but good things just keep happening to her. She tries to have a terrible, low-paying job and is promoted to manager. She tries not to have any friends, but good people insert themselves into her life. She tries to hate children, but ends up playing the part of the cool aunt. She tries not to succeed and ends up with a pretty perfect life.  I was happy for her, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t understand what the reasoning for all of this was.

The book is very emotional, and I often wanted to cry while reading it. But, as I’ve said with other books like this, what’s the point in making me cry? You haven’t made me realize anything new. You haven’t made me see things from a new perspective. You haven’t shed light on any underrepresented topics. You just want me to cry.  Congratulations, chunks of this book felt like punches to the chest. But why?

Now, this book has a fairly high average rating on Goodreads. It’s a book that many thousands of people have absolutely loved. Personally, it didn’t do it for me, but please don’t let that stop you from reading it.

Final rating: ★★★☆☆

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC!

#mmdreading: a book you were excited to buy or borrow but haven’t read yet

[aion-rsa]

15 Characters Who Wielded Captain America’s Shield

“When Captain America throws his mighty shield / All those who chose to oppose his shield must yield / If he’s led to a fight and a duel is due / Then the red and the white and the blue’ll come through / When Captain America throws his mighty shield.”

RELATED: Beyond Mjolnir: The 15 Greatest Asgardian Weapons

There aren’t many super weapons with their own theme song, but there aren’t many as iconic as Captain America’s shield. The round shield first appeared in “Captain America Comics” #2. It is made of a mysterious alloy with properties of vibranium and adamantium and is indestructible, except when it isn’t. The shield has been a constant companion of Steve Rogers and has lasted from World War II into the far future, and has been wielded by several other men and women, mostly with honor and good intentions (although sometimes not). Here are 15 superheroes who wielded the shield.

STEVE ROGERS

The first shield-bearer, of course, is Steve Rogers, the 98-pound weakling with a stellar strength of character even before his physique was altered to reach the maximum of human capability. Debuting in “Captain America Comics” #1, he was a leader in the effort to fight World War II even before the United States joined the Allies. Since then, he’s been a mainstay of the Avengers, frequently battled alongside Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. and has been at the forefront of major events throughout the Marvel Universe’s history.

Captain America has constantly been regarded as an exemplar of justice and freedom, until it was revealed in “Captain America: Steve Rogers” #1 that he is secretly loyal to Hydra, and has been since his childhood and throughout his career. This is a Steve Rogers who has been altered by the Cosmic Cube and has had false memories implanted, and the ramifications from those changes are still playing out.

ISAIAH BRADLEY

Before Steve Rogers took up the shield, there was another brave soul who did: Isaiah Bradley, a Tuskeegee Airman. Bradley was one of 300 African American soldiers secretly experimented on by the U.S. Army in Project: Rebirth, the government’s early attempts to create the Super-Soldier Serum. This was revealed in “Truth: Red, White & Black,” the 2003 miniseries written by the late Robert Morales and drawn by Kyle Baker.

Bradley is one of only seven survivors of the trials, but is the last one standing when he undertakes a mission behind enemy lines in Germany to destroy that nation’s efforts to create its own super-soldiers. To do so, he disguises himself with a spare Captain America costume and shield. After completing the mission, however, Bradley is charged with stealing the costume, court-martialed and imprisoned for nearly 20 years, until he is pardoned by President Eisenhower. Sadly, the unrefined version of the serum in Bradley’s system caused debilitating effects on his mind and body.

THE SPIRIT OF ’76 / THE PATRIOT

After several years during which Captain America was not featured in any comics, he was reintroduced to the Marvel Universe in 1964’s “Avengers” #4. However, the explanation for his absence (that he had been in suspended animation since 1945) didn’t account for comics that featured Captain America into the 1950s. “What If?” #4, “What If The Invaders Stayed Together After World War Two?,” partially retconned away that discrepancy. It revealed that after Captain America and Bucky went missing in 1945, the U.S. government covered up the incident and recruited replacements.

William Naslund, The Spirit of ’76, accepted the request, along with Fred Davis as the replacement Bucky. As Captain America, Naslund served through the end of World War II, sometimes with the All-Winners Squad. However, he was killed in action in 1946 while the All-Winners thwarted an attempt to kidnap a congressional candidate in Boston: future President John F. Kennedy. Right after The Spirit of ’76 was killed, costumed hero the Patriot, Jeff Mace, found his body and pledged to serve in his stead. Mace served as Captain America until 1950.

GRAND DIRECTOR

William Burnside had a stalker-ish level of fascination with Captain America and with Steve Rogers, gaining a Ph.D. on the topic, even visiting Germany and uncovering documents with the original Super-Soldier formula. At the outset of the Korean War, Burnside made a deal with the F.B.I. to reveal the formula to them if he could be the new Captain America. However, by the time his preparations were complete (including multiple surgeries for Burnside to resemble and sound like Steve Rogers, as well as adopting his name) the war ended and the program was shelved.

When a Communist spy posed as the Red Skull and attacked the United Nations, Burnside and partner Jack Monroe acted on their own as Captain America and Bucky to stop it. After that, they carried on as Captain America and Bucky, fighting Communists, but slipped into madness because their transformation was incomplete without exposure to the stabilizing Vita-Rays. They were put into cyrogenic suspension for their own safety, but released a quarter-century later and battled the original Captain. Burnside later became the Grand Director, leader of the neofascist National Force.

ROSCOE SIMONS

Steve Rogers had a crisis of conscience when he battled the Secret Empire, in “Captain America” #169-176. Following the threads of a plot to discredit him takes Captain America all the way to the White House, where he thwarts a coup d’etat led by a hooded man described only as a high-ranking government official. “Number One,” strongly implied to be President Nixon, commits suicide, and an unnerved Rogers renounces the Captain America identity.

Three well-meaning do-gooders step up to take the Captain America mantle only to find out the hard way that it’s not as easy as it looks. Pro baseball player Bob Russo, on his first time out, swings into a wall and breaks his arm, while a biker named “Scar” Turpin takes on six thugs and gets the snot beaten out of him. Finally, gym owner Roscoe Simons, who refuses to be dissuaded by The Falcon, shows his mettle in a fight. He gets Steve Rogers’ blessing and a bit of mentoring and training by The Falcon. Unfortunately, in stopping a bank robbery, Simons and The Falcon are captured by minions of the Red Skull. Insulted at finding a substitute in the costume, Red Skull beats Simons to death.

AMERICAN DREAM

“What If” #105 gave us a look at a possible future for the Marvel Universe, showing us Peter Parker’s daughter, May, becoming the costumed hero Spider-Girl, and meeting that era’s Avengers. This led to the character getting her own title, “Spider-Girl,” the flagship of the MC2 line of comics. Spinoff title “A-Next” introduced Shannon Carter, cousin of Sharon Carter and a tour guide at the Avengers Museum. Carter resolves to join the Avengers, taking on the name American Dream. She trained extensively to overcome damage from a car crash and devised her own costume and weapons, throwing discs that looked like mini-shields. She got her wish to join the Avengers in “A-Next” #4.

In an adventure that took the team to an alternate reality where the world was conquered by Dr. Doom, American Dream met the original Captain America, who was leading the resistance. With the new team’s help, the regime was overthrown and Captain America gave American Dream the shield of that world’s defeated Cap. American Dream also appeared in a five-issue limited-series and in the four-issue “Captain America Corps” series.

CYCLOPS (ULTIMATES)

The crossover adventure in “Ultimate X-Men/Fantastic Four Annual” #1 and “Ultimate Fantastic Four/X-Men Annual” #1 presents an alternate future for the Ultimate Universe. Here, Mr. Fantastic succeeds in finding a way to cure The Thing, but his device also strips the powers from Cyclops and Jean Grey, while Captain America ages and dies. To continue the fight on behalf of mutants, Scott Summers takes the shield and adopts the mantle of Captain America, although he redesigns the shield in X-Men livery.

Cyclops gathers an X-Men team consisting of Rogue, Shadowcat, Wolverine and a new male Phoenix to go 20 years into the past to kill Reed Richards and the Fantastic Four, so as to prevent the dystopian future that spins out of the “Ultimatum” crossover. However, things quickly go wrong when Wolverine reveals he is a Sentinel in disguise. The Wolverine Sentinel attacks and kills most of the team, including Cyclops.

DAVID RICKFORD

David Rickford had a short career as a Captain America, appearing only in “Captain America” #615.1.” At that time, Bucky Barnes had been in the role, but was sabotaged by Baron Zemo, who made public his past as Soviet assassin the Winter Soldier. This resulted in Barnes’ incarceration in a Russian gulag.

To entice Steve Rogers to again take up the Captain America guise, Nick Fury, posing as the Power Broker, arranged for a new group of volunteers to test what they were told was a reconstituted Super-Soldier serum. Among them was decorated Special Forces soldier Rickford, who instead was put through the Power Broker augmented strength process. After some training, Rickford went public as Captain America, but after a successful first day, he was captured by minions of A.I.M. who planned to convert him into a M.O.D.O.K.. Steve Rogers rescued him and demanded Rickford resign the Captain America role, lest he get himself killed.

SUPER-SOLDIER

1996’s  “DC vs. Marvel” crossover series also introduced a series of spinoff titles published by both companies. Under the banner “Amalgam Comics,” these books featured characters, locales and concepts that were a blend of elements from both companies.

Super-Soldier was a mix of Captain America and Superman. “Super-Soldier” #1 gave us his origin: He was Clark Kent, a 4-F volunteer who was injected by a “Super-Soldier” serum blended with cell samples from a body found in alien rocket that crashed on Earth in 1938, and also was blasted with solar radiation. The combination gave Kent powers and abilities far beyond those of ordinary mortals. He had super-strength, stamina, flight, invulnerability, heat vision and super-hearing. As Super-Soldier, he carried a shield that bore Superman’s “S.” But in battle with Ultra-Metallo, Super-Soldier crashed into the Altlanic Ocean, and is frozen in ice and lost for decades. He has a second adventure with Sgt. Rock and His Howling Commandos in “Super-Soldier: Men of War” #1, taking down Major Zemo, a mix of DC’s Iron Major and Marvel’s Baron Zemo.

DANIELLE CAGE

In today’s Marvel Universe, Danielle Cage is a baby, the daughter of Avengers Luke Cage and Jessica Jones; her birth occurred in “The Pulse” #13. She is destined for greatness, however, because when she grows up, she’ll be Captain America!

Cage’s grown-up self appears in “Avengers: Ultron Forever” #1, brashly taking down agents of the Golden Skull. She has inherited the strength of her mother and the toughness of her father, and uses a shield tricked out with devices that allow her to fire it off and have it return. Danielle is whisked away through time by Doctor Doom to join other Avengers from different periods: Jim Rhodes as Iron Man, Thor Odinson, Thor’s successor, an early Hulk, the Vision and the Black Widow. The team was assembled to defeat Ultron, who had conquered the world in a timeline 50 years in the future. Cage is currently on the roster of “U.S. Avengers.”

MAJOR VICTORY

A founding member of the original Guardians of the Galaxy, young Vance Astro adored space. He volunteered for an interstellar mission to Alpha Centauri that required him to spend much of the thousand-year journey in stasis. A special containment suit was provided for infrequent periods of wakefulness, and he developed psionic powers. Unfortunately, Earth developed faster-than-light propulsion during the time he was gone, beating him to Alpha Centauri by some 200 years.

While with the Guardians in the 31st century, Major Victory searched for the lost shield of Captain America. In the effort, he battled Interface, who also sought the shield for its power. With his powers, Interface removed Major Victory’s containment suit, causing him to age, and took the shield but discarded it because it seemingly had no power. When Major Victory seized it, the shield gave him strength and inspiration, which are the true powers of the shield. He continued to carry it, using his psionic powers to steer it when thrown.

U.S. AGENT

When he was recruited to fill the role, John Walker intended to honor Captain America and the ideals he represents, but found it increasingly difficult to do because he holds a different worldview than Steve Rogers does. Walker first appeared in “Captain America” #323 as Super-Patriot, an opponent of Captain America’s idealistic perspective. Walker had undergone the Power Broker’s strength augmentation and was working with a promoter to pay for it.

Later, Rogers is summoned before the Commission on Superhuman Activities, which declared everything related to Captain America is property of the federal government and instructed him to work solely on its orders. Rogers refused and resigned, and the Commission approached Walker about wearing the costume. Walker, as the new Captain America, proved to be more violent and impulsive, even killing some of his opponents. Rogers, now known as The Captain, battled Walker in fight instigated by the Red Skull. In the aftermath, Walker was fired and persuaded Rogers to re-take the Captain America mantle. Walker then became U.S. Agent, in a costume similar to Rogers’ costume as The Captain.

BUCKY BARNES

From the beginning, there was James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, Captain America’s partner and friend, working side-by-side with him in adventures through World War II. Until that fateful moment, revealed in “Avengers” #4, in which a drone plane explosion in 1945 caused Captain America to be lost at sea and killed Bucky. Or so everyone thought, anyway.

In 2005, Captain America encountered a new antagonist, a KGB assassin known as the Winter Soldier. Bucky had been found by Soviet forces, outfitted with a prosthetic arm and brainwashed. The Soviets then sent him on covert assassinations, placing him in cryonic suspension afterward for months and years at a time. Captain America, with unwavering faith that Bucky could be saved, used the Cosmic Cube to free him from his programming. However, Captain America was seemingly killed while surrendering at the end of “Civil War.” His last request, delivered to Tony Stark, then head of S.H.I.E.L.D., was for Bucky to carry on in his stead.

SAM WILSON

As the Falcon, Sam Wilson is one of Captain America’s longest-serving partners and is the first African-American superhero in Marvel Comics, following the Black Panther’s 1966 debut by three years. He was introduced in “Captain America” #117 in 1969 as a man with an affinity for birds and soon becomes a costumed hero, although his past as a street hustler has been retconned away. He gained an upgraded costume that allows him to fly in “Captain America” #170.

After Steve Rogers loses the Super-Soldier serum in his system, becoming as physically frail as an average 90-year-old, he directly asks Wilson to take over as Captain America. As the All-New Captain America, Wilson has had a rocky tenure; he is not universally accepted in the role, alienates a large part of the public when he reveals his politics, and is being undermined by Steve Rogers, whom he does not know is a mind-controlled Hydra operative.

SUPERMAN

It takes an extremely dire circumstance for the No. 1 hero of another universe to wield the seminal weapons of the Marvel Universe. It happened in 2003’s “JLA/Avengers” #4, the culmination of the long-delayed inter-company crossover between Marvel and DC, chock full of wonderful moments.

In the story, both teams are working at the behest of cosmic entities (the Marvel Universe’s Grandmaster and the DC Universe’s Krona) to recover totems of power, six from each of the universes. But the Grandmaster, whose champions are the Justice League, is working a hidden agenda to protect his universe from Krona, who in turn is willing to destroy all the known universes in his increasingly reckless quest for knowledge of the truth of creation. The Avengers and the JLA unite for an assault on Krona and his forces that is a cover for Superman to attempt to strike him down. To ensure he can, Captain America gives Superman his shield. Thor gives Superman his hammer, to boot.

Who was your favorite shield-bearer? Be sure to let us know in the comments!

The post 15 Characters Who Wielded Captain America’s Shield appeared first on CBR.com.

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