Look, we
really have to talk about the abominable and head-shakingly awful
Original Sin.
But to do so, I've got to spoil some major revelations from
Original Sin #5 from last month, as well as this week's
Original Sins #5.
So if you haven't read them yet, or are waiting for the trade, you'll probably want to come back later.
Spoiler-filled rant commences after the pictures of 5 original sins that are all better than
Marvel's event...
SPOILERS commencing...
now!
So the whole Original Sin
debacle is supposedly about the death of
The Watcher, and the theft of his eyes. Those eyes keep "
exploding," releasing many of the deep, dark secrets
Uatu has seen over the years. Blah, blah.
But what the series is
really about is figuring out what to do with
Nick Fury.
Not the new, younger,
let's-cash-in-on-Sam-Jackson-as-Fury-even-though-he's-always-wearing-a-spandex-thing-that-Sam-Jackson-would-never-be-caught-dead-wearing guy. No, the problem Marvel has is, now that young Fury is around, and
Maria Hill is entrenched as leader of
S.H.I.E.L.D., what the hell do you do with the "
old" Nick Fury?
The obvious answer is,
you turn him into a genocidal villain.
Original Sin has
Identity Crisis-envy so badly, I'm surprised that they haven't had
Batroc violate
Aunt May. The entire series is about
deep, dark revelations of "sins" that make us reevaluate our heroes. Because who wants nice heroes when we can have folks who have violated our trust and their own morals? Besides, it's more fun to
shit on characters...
So for older Fury, they've gone and rewritten/refocused history, like this:
In
1958, Fury and his Defense Intelligence squad stumble upon an alien invasion:
His guys are wiped out, but Fury (and Earth) are saved by the appearance of
a mysterious flying, gun-toting dude:
Our savior dies in the fight, but not before he sends a bomb through the portal that destroys the entire alien world on the other side.
The entire world:
Well,
Howard Stark shows up, and expositions us. The dead hero was
Woodrow McCord, the "
man on the wall." (Don't bother looking it up--you've never heard of him before, and you will never hear of him again) You see, Stark and others have been scavenging lost alien technology for years (a la
Torchwood...
ahem) so they can protect Earth from the alien threats that they know are out there. And there is always one man--answerable to no one, who uses all the goodies to do whatever is necessary to save us all:
And since McCord is dead, we need a
new "man on the wall," and Stark recruits Fury to be that man.
Q: Well, if the job is so important, why only have
one man on the wall? Why not
two, or
three? A whole squad?
A: Don't ask
sensible questions about
nonsensical retcons!
Fury takes the job, moves operations to a super-secret stealth satellite, and begins to protect Earth.
How?
By
assassinating alien leaders who lust after our planet:
By wiping out threats before they become so big that super-heroes might become involved:
By going all
Guantanamo on captured aliens:
And, yeah, eliminating entire planets. Yes,
ELIMINATING ENTIRE PLANETS:
Now, Fury did this while still working for the
CIA, and then S.H.I.E.L.D., basically pulling a
Peter Parker/Clark Kent and finding an excuse to run off whenever a cosmic-level threat reared its head. Seriously, we're shown him ditching an important briefing when he "
forgot it was...my Aunt Matilda's birthday."
Eventually, though, Fury got himself a corp of
LMD's who could cover for him when he was extincting entire species.
Also, the
Infinity Formula in his blood stopped working, so he's
ridiculously old now.
So any recent interactions with a Nick Fury who looks like he always have have most likely been with a
Doombot LMD. This has the benefit of conveniently (and
lazily) hand-waving away any difficult continuity questions that might arise from this silliness.
Of course, there are other questions:
Q: So where was the "man on the wall" during
The Invasion? Why did he let the
Skrulls invade?
A: Uhhh...
Q: Where was all-powerful Nick Fury during the
Kree-Skrull War?
A: Uhhh....
Q: Hey, how come
Nick Fury and his Howling Weapons Of Mass Destruction didn't stop
Thanos' alien fleet during Infinity?
A: Uhhh...
Q: Hey, speaking of Thanos, the bastard has attacked Earth and thereabouts any number of times. He's
precisely the type of thing Nick took the position to stop. And pro-active Nick has weapons capable of killing a Watcher--why didn't he just put a bullet in the Titan's head at any time, like he did to other alien threats?
A: Look, you're
not playing fair by asking logical questions that we never thought about!
So, in other words,
Uber-Fury saved Earth from countless cosmic threats--except the ones he didn't.
Now look, I understand that
Jason Aaron is trying to give us a "
subtle" critique of the American "
neo-cons," and of many of the things the Bush administration did post-
9/11.
All well and good (if not exactly timely). But why the
hell do you have to shit all over Nick Fury to make that happen? I've read my fair share of Nick Fury comics, and I
never got the sense that he was the type who would endorse, for example,
killing every man, woman and child in Germany in order to stop the Nazis. Which is essentially what he's doing here, with his "
watch entire races die screaming before they can attack us" protocol.
There are
other characters in the
Marvel Universe who might fit better into this role, if you insist on having it.
Tony Stark is a fine example of an asshole I can see rationalizing all of this as OK. There are others. But why the hell spoil Fury? Why make him into a ruthless, evil version of
Captain Jack Harkness? Only because you're trying to get rid of him in favor of the new younger guy.
Oh, but wait, there's more.
In this week's
Original Sins #5--a tie-in series which tells shorts stories about folks dealing with the "sins" they learn about from the Watcher's eyes--we have a story which doesn't do that at all. Instead, they decide to ruin another favorite character!
In this one,
Dum Dum Dugan offers to give Fury a transfusion of his blood, in order to "
kickstart" the Infinity Formula in Fury's system. Hey,
it's worked before with the Super-Soldier Serum, and, as Dugan points out:
Oh, dear. Nicky has to break some bad news to Dugan:
It turns out that Dum Dum died back in
1966--yes, nearly
50 years ago--after catching a random bullet in a raid on a
Hydra complex.
Wait--then how have we been seeing Dugan in so many stories since then?
Ah. So
every appearance of Dugan in the modern Marvel Universe--heading up S.H.I.E.L.D. squads, chasing
Godzilla for two years,
everything--has just been a LMD that
thinks he's Dugan.
Fuck you, Marvel.
Anyway, this information causes "
Dugan" to read Fury the riot act, and call him on all of his "I'm the only man who can do this so rules and morality don't apply to me" bullshit. Finally:
Once again,
fuck you, Marvel.
We've twisted continuity past any reasonably breaking point, and
pooped upon the legacy of two of Marvel's oldest characters. Why? All because you want to replace one of them with a guy
who more closely resembles a movie actor.
You know, Marvel, if that's what you wanted, you just could have had elder Nick die, oh, I don't know,
a heroic death. You didn't
have to turn him into a self-justifying/deluding genocidal maniac and symbol for a decade-old political debate, while rendering decades of stories into so much unrecognizable sewage. Except, of course, you wanted to capture some of that Identity Crisis magic.
It is possible that, in the final issue of Original Sin, that they will reveal that "bastard Fury" is
himself just another LMD, and the "
real" Nick Fury will be found, or revealed to be long dead, or in some way not responsible for any of this. I don't believe in a minute that will happen, but hey, it's not out yet, so who knows?
Still, the damage has been done. The reader can now
never take any previous appearance of Fury at face value--was it really him? An LMD? Following his secret bastard agenda? And if he somehow survives, well, we're in
Doombot territory now--no one, reader or character, will ever believe it's the real article again. Ditto for Dugan.
Marvel has effectively taken every single story of two long-term characters and coated it with a slimy, cynical coat of "
ha, you thought you were reading about heroes, but we know better, because we're more 'adult' and 'edgy,' you were fooled all those years hahaha" revisionism.
As much as I love comics, there are some days when I really
hate comics. I think I'd better go read some
Bandette....