The Twelve and a Tangent

Okay, this looks really interesting. I'm a huge fan of DC's golden age type stuff, especially when the heroes are interacting with modern day society. I don't know very much about Marvel/Timely golden age heroes (I do adore Cap, Bucky, Nick Fury and Namor though, and older Invaders issues are LOTS of fun. But when it comes to genuine GA material, I'm at a loss.)

I've never heard of most of these characters before, but they look like they could be a lot of fun. I'm intrigued by the possibility of Straczynski at the helm, since I adored Babylon 5. I've never much liked his comic work, but I think maybe giving him characters that are essentially blank slates as far as the modern Marvel universe goes, it could be fun.

I'm not sure the culture shock angle will work as well. 12 is a big number. I don't know how general my experience is, but when I spent a year out of the country, I'd had a lot of fellow foreigners as friends. And while culture shock still happened, even just being able to talk to someone in the same situation and go "Yeesh, isn't this fucking weird?!" and have them go, "Yep" goes a long way.

They'd certainly have different experiences than Steve did, being as Steve was completely alone when he awoke. And Nick and Namor were never frozen, so there are some interesting possibilities.

If they're unhappy and want to change things, that could be fun. And it could put characters like Cap (who'll probably be back by then) and Nick Fury in awkward positions.

I hope Straczynski's a bit more careful about politics than the folks who did Ultimate Captain America were. Because all other characterization issues aside, that was a bit annoying. I find it really hard that a man with Cap's background -provided it's mostly the same, of course- would be characterized as so much of a staunch Conservative. (in the modern sense). This is a man who grew up poor and hungry in New York City during the Great Depression. Policies like Roosevelt's New Deal would have likely saved his life. Wartime America had a number of different programs as well regarding resource and food consumption. Considering how patriotic and idealistic he was back then, it would seem that he'd embraced these ideas pretty whole-heartedly. Which makes fiscal conservatism really really unlikely.

As for social conservativism, that really doesn't make a whole lot of sense either, if you think about it. He's a New York city tenement brat who would have spent his impressionable early childhood in the Roaring Twenties. During the Great Depression and the Wartime period, he would have had other things to worry about. The social conservativism that Steve's behavior in Ultimates brings to mind really looks more like post-War backlash than anything else. And Steve would have already been frozen by then. Sure, Steve might be naive or personally uptight, but the shocked/aghast/disgusted attitude really doesn't make any sense. (I personally think Cap would be a lot more disgusted by seeing all the uneaten food/unnecessary packaging material in a garbage can than anything else. Our society produces waste in an amount that must be truly nightmarish to someone from that background. I always kind of wished that'd be addressed more, especially considering he is/was close friends with a millionaire.)

I'm not saying Steve's necessarily a bleeding heart liberal either, but I don't see any way the conservativism portrayed by the Ultimate version makes any sense, provided any of the pre-serum backstory made the universe-hop in tact.

Anyway, I'm not saying that a character from that time period can't be either fiscally or socially conservative. It's very plausible. But I hope that the characters' politics, if addressed, are developed in ways that make sense with whatever backgrounds are established for those characters. Things like socioeconomic status, place of origin, and personal experiences are pretty vital components when it comes to someone's personal politics, and shouldn't be overlooked.

Also, being from the forties does not necessarily mean a person's politics would be the same as that seventy-year-old guy down the block who's lived through and had his experiences molded by the subsequent decades. Yeesh. From the forties =/= old =/= automatically conservative.

But anyway, I've always thought Straczynski did a decent job at presenting fairly well-rounded politics in Babylon 5, so I've got some high hopes for this area. 12 characters means a lot of different viewpoints could be addressed interestingly.

So yeah, I'm pretty interested in where this goes. And heck. If it sucks, at least I'll have a good measure of annoyance to use as blog-fodder.