2nd Hand Marvel Panel Convention Reaction:

Okay, newsarama's got a write-up here and I have two reactions mostly.

The first is the reaction to a new Young Avengers mini-series:

But he and Cebulski announced that there will be a five issue mini-series in January that will focus on the Young Avengers, with each issue done by a different writer and ocusing on a different one or two characters. The writers will be:

Ed Brubaker - Patriot in #1.
Brian Reed - Hulkling meeting Captain Mar-vell in #2.
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa - Wiccan and Speed in #3.
Paul Cornell - The Vision in issue #4.
"We haven't said who's doing the fifth issue. So there will be more Young Avengers stuff on the way."

Okay, this is awesome news, in my opinion. I love anything that further connects Patriot with everything and anything Cap, Brubaker writing is a damn good sign. I like Brubaker. I like Patriot. This should be awesome.

And also I'm really excited about #2 because I have such a thing for long lost relatives reuniting and I really really wanted Teddy to meet that side of the family. :-)

My other reaction is more to the commenters of the post than to the post itself. See, okay, Captain America's death comes up three times. in the panel write-up. Specifically here:

How can you have Captain America ongoing with no Captain America? Brevoort: "So far so good." Will we see him again? Brevoort: Yes. "On a lot of tombstones. "He's dead. Steve Rogers is dead. As for what that means for the Cap book, yeah, we're going to continue publishing it."

The next fan asked, to the laugh of the audience, so when is Steve Rogers coming back? Brevoort: "Dead. Steve Rogers is dead. Dead."

Here:

Another fan asked about whether Steve Rogers is really dead. Brevoort: "They threw his body in the ocean ... Namor's watching it right now ... Every six months they poke it with a stick ... He's dead!"

And here:

Why did Cap have to die? Brevoort: It was an opportunity to tell new stories about Cap. "In some ways, he's more beloved now than when he was alive," he said. Now Marvel can tell stories about what role he played in the Marvel Universe.

And of course the first few posters are all in the "He's dead forever!" camp. (Perhaps common sense shows up later, but I stopped reading on account of pain from eyes rolling too far into my brain.)

Okay, am I the only who noticed that "He's dead" is not actually an answer to if/when he's coming back?

Seriously, and it might just be my bias speaking, but I read those and come out with even more of a certainty that he's going to be back.

Brevoort has many times in which he could just say "We're not bringing him back. He's dead for good." He explains about the kinds of stories they can tell. He establishes that he's really dead (in an emphatic and overly humorous way that tends to read very playing-to-the-audience) and...that's it.

Honestly, anyone who asks those kind of questions at a convention panel and expects a straight answer is idiotic anyway, since panelists can and do LIE. Brevoort didn't even do that. He dodged the question with a literal answer!

But seriously, this was all planned. All of it. And anyone who doesn't think it's going to end in a resurrection has never read a comic book. This character's been around pretty STEADILY since the forties. So much so that they had to retcon whole decades as other men to unfreeze him from the ice.

There's a MOVIE coming out in 2009.

They never put anyone else in the damn costume! ('xcept Clint, but that doesn't count)

I'm not saying that people can't HOPE he stays dead for a while or bemoan his inevitable resurrection, but dude, it's going to happen. (Honestly, I figure it'll be at the end of the storyline starting in October. The signs seem pretty indicative, but I've been wrong before.)

...this is why I try not to read message boards. Too much silly outweighing the insightful. All you smart message board people ought to get blogs. :-)