Five days after the comic-book death of Captain America, mainstream media attention has slowed significantly as a handful of newspapers trot out retrospectives, and a few editorial writers poke the metaphorical corpse.

“When a hero dies, do we all follow?” asks the editorial in this morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer. “Even when he’s imaginary?” It goes on to wonder, “Does the end of Captain America portend the waning of his namesake land?”

The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s editorial chooses cynicism over hand-wringing: “So rest in peace, Cap. Until Marvel decides to resurrect you again, that is.”

“Cynical” doesn’t begin to describe Mike Antonucci, an entertainment blogger for the San Jose Mercury News. On Friday, he wrote a rather angry post titled, “Captain America and Marvel: Both finished in my eyes,” in which he writes, “I shouldn’t have allowed Marvel to suck me in. I won’t let it happen again.” But yesterday Antonucci conceded that Marvel “certainly succeeded in getting the attention it was angling for.”

Writing for the Philadelphia Daily News, Jerome Maida tries to provide some perspective with an FAQ-style rundown.

The first item — “Why have so many retailers sold out so quickly?” — isn’t likely to win Maida many friends among retailers: “Because they didn’t heed Marvel’s advice to order huge, Civil War-type numbers. Some retailers took the risk and it has paid off. Others didn’t and are now whining. Marvel even overprinted more than usual to meet higher-than-expected demand. Due to the media coverage, that has not proven to be enough.”

And Scans Daily reminds us that it’s all just a little bit of history repeating, pointing to Klaus Janson’s 1992 miniseries, Punisher and Captain America: Blood and Glory. In it, Steve Rogers is killed … by a sniper. Oh, and the sniper is one Frank Castle, who apparently takes up Captain America’s shield. (I say “apparently,” because I’ve never read it, so I’m only going by the scans.)

Poster Thorn Lokisson comments: “Who knew, 15 years ago, just how much of the imagery would unintentionally foreshadow or even ominously portend of things to come in the post-Civil War Marvel Universe?”

This entry was posted on Monday, March 12th, 2007 at 9:37 am and is filed under Fandom, Marvel, Pop Culture, Retailers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.