They Killed Captain America?!?!
What, are you kidding me?!?
The living legend of World War II - at least in the world of publishing giant Marvel Comics - was gunned down by a rogue sniper AND his longtime girlfriend in the latest issue, number 25, of his monthly Marvel comic book. (Sold for cover price on Wednesday for $2.99, grabbing as much as $75 just 12 hours later on ebay. Good luck finding a copy!)
And the timing couldn't be worse, because as Cap's creator, 93-year-old Joe Simon so aptly stated - "we really need him now."
Sure, everyone knows the red, white, and blue Avenger will be back in some form, somehow, at some time or another. But in today's world, when the illustrated embodiment of America's freedoms and liberties is gunned down on the steps of a courthouse, it's attracting real world headlines everywhere. CNN covered it immediately, the New York Daily News devoted a whole page to it. So did yahoo.com, ABC news, and literally more than 500 other news agencies worldwide. Just google "Captain America" if you don't believe me.
Slow news day? Maybe. Or perhaps the media saw it as a symbolic event, with the comic book character, who for the past year has been fighting back against a government-imposed super-powers registration act designed to help safeguard America's liberties, serving as an allegorical reference to world events today.
And if you're wondering what any of this could possibly have to do with MCC - check out Thursday's Lowell Sun coverage of the assassination, and keep an eye out for a quote from MCC's in-house comic book uber-geek.
What do you think? Much ado about nothing? Why so much attention to a comic book event with all of the serious news unfolding in the real world?