Special Relationship

Patriotic heroes used to exist for patriotic reasons, so what does it mean for international diplomacy when a Briton recreates Captain America and an American reinvents Captain Britain? Matthew Craig shows some national interest.
26 July 2004

The people in the house opposite mine take every opportunity, no matter how slight, to drape their home in national flags. Rain or shine, sleet or snow, the house is covered in ratty Union Jacks, St George's tea towels, and ancient, hastily taped football banners. To look out the window, you'd think it was still The Queen's Jubilee.

Taking pride in a geographical accident always seemed to me to be a bit like claiming you invented the television just because you remembered to record the snooker. I regard hiding behind a flag - any flag - to be the first resort of the arsehole, politically speaking.

So I'm not what you might call a patriotic man. I don't stand up for the national anthem, I've never watched the Queen's Speech, and I laughed like a drain when 'Derek' Beckham missed that crucial penalty during the European Championships.

But no matter how convincing my air of cynicism might be, no matter how disdainfully I regard The Last Night of The Proms, there's just one thing that I can't quite shake off: I am absolutely fascinated by patriotic superheroes.

Patriotism and superheroes have gone together like peanut butter and jam since the wartime dawn of the genre. Bright, shiny, and symbolising everything that the Allies wanted to believe about themselves, the superheroes were perfect little propaganda tools, selling everything from War Bonds to the importance of recycling.

And while the superheroes strode briskly into the realms of Jingoism - 'Superman versus The Japoteurs', anyone? - they weren't the only ones.

Captain America is probably the most widely recognised patriot hero. Created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in 1941, Cap's duty was defined from issue #1, where he could be seen chinning Hitler on the cover. Ever since then, Cap has always straddled the line between straightforward action and broad political commentary.

Sometimes, of course, he stood more to one side of the line than the other. From the Commie-basher of the 1950s, to the 'Man Without A Country' stories of the '70s and mid-'90s, Captain America has often been both ultrapatriotic and deeply critical of The Land of The Free - as well as finding time to occasionally run into a burning building to save the Stars and Stripes, just to make a point.

More recent efforts at telling overtly political stories have met with mixed reviews. John Ney Reiber's New Deal saw a post-9/11 Captain America searching for survivors at Ground Zero, and later confronting modern terrorism and American foreign policy head on. While Marvel was able to sell a metric shitload of propaganda-style posters off the back of John Cassaday's sumptuous artwork, the story wasn't as well received as it might have been, with its frustrated raw tone and vaguely anti-war sentiment.

Similarly, Robert Morales and Kyle Baker's excellent Captain America novel TRUTH debuted to mixed reviews. However, when Morales was replaced as writer of the primary CAPTAIN AMERICA comic, the general perception was that Marvel Comics wanted to move the character away from potentially controversial stories, in order to grease the Hollywood/licensing wheel. After all, nothing says 'Summer Blockbuster' like 'Captain America punching Haliburton in the belly', right?

Indeed, one look at Robert Kirkman's recent first issue of CAPTAIN AMERICA, and you might be forgiven for thinking the last eight years hadn't happened: Cap's punching his way through a garrison of faceless 1960s-style jumpsuited "terrorists", side-by-side with his generic blonde supervillain ex-girlfriend, while in the shadows...stop me if you've heard this one before.

And while it's a little sad, given the positive mainstream reaction to books like TRUTH (and given that terrorism isn't quite as faceless as it used to be), it comes as no surprise to me that Marvel Comics wants to have its cake and eat it. They want Captain America to be a generic superhero and a national fetish object, depending on the mood they happen to be in that day.

But can they have it both ways? Can you cash in on the reader's patriotism one minute, and then claim that the characters are apolitical the next?

It occurs to me that wearing a national flag is like wearing a school uniform or a football jersey - whenever you put it on, you are affiliating yourself with, or representing, that school, that team, or that country. So saying, "oh, it's not political" is either hopelessly naïve or deliberately avoiding the truth. Either one can be dangerous.

Flags are symbolic shorthand, representing a place, a people or a set of values. You put a handsome, indefatigable white man with blonde hair and blue eyes in a star-spangled jumpsuit, and people are going to see exactly what you think of America. You have a demigod getting half a hard-on putting the Stars and Stripes back on top of the White House - and saluting the President while doing it - and you're sending a message.

Of course, the message changes, depending on who's listening. People identify with characters that remind them of themselves, after all, and while little Tony might think that Captain America is the coolest thing since sliced bread, Hector down the street might wonder where all the Latino superheroes are. Investing a fixed set of qualities in anything is going to risk excluding everyone who doesn't fit those criteria.

Whether they represent the best or the idealised qualities of a country, patriot heroes mean something, because flags mean something (and if you don't believe me, I'd like to introduce you to my Uncle Sam, and his friend John Bull...).

If you accept that patriot heroes have a symbolic quality above and beyond other superheroes - for example, Spider-Man wears a spider on his chest to symbolise the source of his power, whereas Captain America himself symbolises something, whether it's the American Dream or, more dangerously, the American Ideal - then when you see American creators inventing new national heroes for other countries, you might be forgiven for wondering, "what message is that sending? Is that really how Writer X/Company Y feels about that country?"

Creating characters that represent a nation, whether it's a nation in a geographical or anthropological sense (eg: the Welsh versus the British) can be said to be an assessment of that nation - intentional or otherwise.

And in a roundabout way, this brings us to Captain Britain. Created in the late 1970s by Chris Claremont and Herb Trimpe, the original version of the character was fairly inoffensive, with his natty red suit, his medallion, and his Spider-Man team-ups. However, it was only when Alan Moore and Jamie Delano took the character on that he really began to feel British.

Despite rising to prominence in the politically turbulent eighties, Captain Britain never had the same political layering that his American counterpart enjoyed. This is perhaps a little surprising, given his strong connections to Arthurian mythology, and the strong political leanings of writers like Alan Moore. Although, when you consider that he was a given to dark moods and a lot of moping, you might be forgiven for thinking that Captain Britain reflected the national mood of the time, if nothing else.

What Captain Britain also had was a quaint attachment to Old Money and English Aristocracy. This was something he shared with the only other British patriot hero of note, Union Jack, and it stands in stark contrast to the Yuppie/Novueau-Riche 1980s, and even the more lefitst 1970s.

Captain Britain and Union Jack haven't usually fared well at the hands of non-British writers. Maybe it's because they were created by American authors who didn't have a feel for British culture (though Claremont can claim Britain as the land of his birth). Or maybe they just didn't do their homework. Either way, it meant that both characters were more closely associated with one part of the British Isles than with the place as a whole.

I suspect that British authors have a much more laissez-faire attitude to questions of nationality, and what that means for these characters, than their American colleagues. This makes for curious reading, as American writers - who grow up in a country where national and personal identity are intertwined much more tightly than in Britain - don't treat these characters as politically symbolic either.

So while it's great that these characters avoid the sort of execrable jingoism that has plagued other patriot heroes in the past, what's the point of draping them in the flag in the first place?

I'm always wary of any new attempts to foist British superheroes on us from the other side of the Atlantic. Given that a lot of the time, American writers demonstrate a lack of understanding of "Britishness" that borders on the savant, it begs the question, "whose bright idea was that new Captain Britain, anyway?"

The New Captain Britain made her debut in the pages of THE AVENGERS (recently collected in the 'Lionheart of Avalon' trade paperback, written by Chuck Austen). Her origin parallels that of the first Captain Britain, Brian Braddock, in that she was rescued from death by otherworldly beings (in this case, the original Captain) and offered the chance to become a champion. However, where Braddock was a weedy student, the son of an aristocrat, the new Captain, Kelsey Leigh, is a single mother, and a victim of violent crime.

On one hand, this sounds like a good idea to me. Superheroes with tragic pasts are a staple of the genre, after all. And I've long been sick of the notion, fostered in recent times by Richard Curtis and Guy Ritchie, and propagated by every American TV show from ER to THE FAMILY GUY, that Britain is a country made up of plummy-voiced public-school inbreds and Vinnie Jones. If nothing else, Kelsey Leigh is a welcome departure from the usual stereotypes.

But on the other hand, lets look again at the new Captain Britain and her Colonial counterpart:

Captain America: Frail army reject whose love of country and desire to serve is so great that he allows mad scientists to test super-steroids on him.

Captain Britain: Emotionally damaged victim who sacrifices herself to save Captain America.

So the ideal American loves his country more than he loves his life...and the ideal Briton loves America more than she loves her life... or her kids?

Is that what Marvel Comics thinks of Britain? It hardly seems respectful of the notorious "Special Relationship," does it?

But that's not all: in her debut story, the New Captain Britain is attacked by Arthurian sorceress Morgan LeFay. Kelsey discovers that injuring Captain Britain results in a sympathetic injury to England. (This is stated quite clearly in the dialogue: England is the source of Captain Britain's powers, as opposed to the whole British Isles. Once again, "England" and "Britain" are shown to be interchangeable concepts.)

The truth, of course, is very different. Britain is far more than just England, and Captain Britain has several million more people to defend than Marvel Comics would have you believe. And as if to add insult to injury, once she finishes her first fight, Britain's great defender signs on with the big boys and fucks off to America.

She's not a superhero: she's Catherine Zeta-Jones!

The new Captain Britain isn't the only national icon to be reinvented by Johnny Foreigner. Scottish writer Mark Millar's 'Ultimate' version of Captain America would, at first glance, appear to be a bang-on parody of American military machismo. Ultimate Captain America is gung-ho proactivity at its best: constantly in motion, ready with a slap, prone to blurting out the most godawful politically-incorrect one-liners at the drop of a hat, he's only slightly removed from the soundbite and action movie-inspired mentality that brings us real-life dick-waving like 'Operation: Infinite Justice', 'Shock And Awe', "Let's Roll," and "We Got 'im!"

Despite the light-hearted and slightly satirical cast to the character, Millar's Captain America is also very much the conscience of the ULTIMATES comic. He's a weapon first, a man second, and in many ways a critique of America's constant drive to be the world's pre-eminent military power. But mostly he just hits people in the face.

Millar's Ultimate Captain America is more convincing, perhaps, than The New Captain Britain, primarily because he is more strongly identified with the country he's named for. Millar uses Captain America to say something about America, and that's far more valuable in the long run than all the broken jaws in Christendom.

Perhaps it's because we here in the UK are far more widely exposed to American culture than Americans are to ours. Perhaps it's because Millar wanted to make a specific point about America, and Captain Britain's creator didn't. Perhaps American audiences (and authors) just couldn't give a shit about putting that much effort into something that isn't directly relevant to them. Either way, while both characters are tied inexorably to the spirit of their home nations, whatever that means in the 21st Century, Ultimate Captain America represents an outsider's view of a country that the New Captain Britain doesn't.

It's clear that while the New Captain Britain isn't a bad character, she's still a fairly generic one. Making her run through half the King Arthur myth before she gets her superpowers doesn't make her a British superhero. Moving her to America certainly doesn't. Whether Marvel Comics has eschewed creating a well thought-out new superhero with a sense of topicality in favour of creating one to simply retain the copyright, or whether they have created one that smacks of slightly provincial attitudes, it would be a waste of the name if the character was plugged into the sort of ordinary superhero adventure that is the Avengers' stock in trade.

Despite appearances, comics do not exist in a vacuum. People see these things. People read these things. And people understand these things. In a medium founded on symbols and semiotics, where people read so much into every line and word, can we really afford to be so careless with our depiction of other cultures? Can we really afford to alienate potential readers with defunct stereotypes and characters that exclude more than they include?

When people will fight to the death over flags, land, or gods, can we really afford to be that blasé about characters that might impinge on their values, or their sense of identity?

In short: Is it enough, these days, to simply fly the flag?

Matthew Craig is a writer from the West Midlands.

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