If you were confused by the recent announcement that iconic character Captain America has been a secret Nazi all this time, Time magazine and Marvel have another puzzler for you: It relates to the 2016 presidential election. Talking to a Marvel Comics editor on Wednesday, Time writer Eliana Dockterman noted that the Nazi-aligned Hydra talks about “criminal trespassers” who “make a mockery of America’s borders.”
She wondered, “Obviously, this hate speech is nothing new for the organization, but it sounds like rhetoric we’ve been hearing this election. Is that purposeful?” Marvel executive editor Tom Brevoort agreed, “We try to write comics in 2016 that are about the world and the zeitgeist of 2016, particularly in Captain America. Nick Spencer, the writer, is very politically active."
He added:
So we can talk about political issues in a metaphoric way. That’s what gives our stories weight and meat to them. Any parallels you have seen to situations real or imagined, living or dead, is probably intentional but metaphorically not literally.
Indeed, a look at the Twitter page of Nick Spencer, who wrote the new Captain America series, finds a far-left bent:
The Time interview also included this exchange on how the Captain America is a Nazi plot is supposed to be really deep:
What are we supposed to think about the fact that someone literally named Captain America now supports these beliefs?
Again, I don’t want to say anything too definitively because we’re laying out the story. But we want to push that button. There should be a feeling of horror or unsettledness at the idea that somebody like this can secretly be part of this organization. There are perfectly normal people in the world who you would interact with on a professional level or personal level, and they seem like the salt of the earth but then it turns out they have some horrible secret — whether it’s that they don’t like a certain group of people or have bodies buried in their basement.
You should feel uneasy about the fact that everything you know and love about Steve Rogers can be upended.
