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jordandwhiteqna:

ahhthehorror:

jordandwhiteqna:

elshiki:

jordandwhiteqna:

jeeprhyme:

jordandwhiteqna:

Thanks for expressing your concern to me.

First off, I do always like to say that you are entitled to your own opinion. I am not trying to negate your feelings–they are yours and no one can take that from you. But you wrote to me, so I am going to do what I can to answer/explain from my point of view.

There are a few things in your ask that ring of the telephone game. There are sites out there that are taking the story and the facts and spinning them into different meanings than intended, and then THOSE stories are getting more play than the actual facts of what is happening.

I don’t believe Marvel is asking employees to dress as Hydra agents…I think they were offering them T-Shirts with the Hydra logo on them. Hydra are the villains in this story, they are a big part of it, so promoting them makes sense, to me. Again–I edit the Darth Vader books, which are about a traitorous murderer who works for an oppressive fascist regime that literally blew up multiple planets. He’s the main character of the series, but I hope it’s clear you’re not meant to emulate him.

I don’t believe there is any comic where Magneto joins Hydra.

Now…I have not heard anything about actual white supremacists using Hydra to celebrate their own beliefs. If this is actually true…yeah, of course, that is horrible. It also makes them pretty foolish, because again…it’s pretty clear to me Hydra are the bad guys in this story. The story judges them harshly and invites the reader to do so as well. So…to point to them and hold them up as your ideal is a poor choice for a lot of reasons…not the least of which is that the good guys tend to win in comics, the vast majority of the time.

Because there is definitely no difference between Hydra and The Empire. Nope. One of these is definitely not linked to an organisation that killed millions of actual people, nosiree.

I get what you’re saying, of course.

I would argue that there is no real world connection between Hydra and the Nazis. It’s a connection that only exists in the make-believe fantasy adventure stories in comic books. There is no real Hydra to make a deal with the real life people who did the real life things that we all condemn. 

So the problem is with a fictional history.

To counter that, Marvel has said “The fictional history has changed–that part that people have a problem with is no longer true,” and the critics are denying that, pointing back to earlier fictions. But the idea that Hydra is thousands of years old is just as true as the idea that they worked with the Nazis…because both are false, Hydra is not real.

If the problem is that they were EVER associated with a real life group as reprehensible as the Nazis…then, I don’t know what to tell you, that makes it sound like the problem is the choice that they made in the 70s to begin writing stories about Hydra that connected with Nazis. You’re right–it is a questionable thing to write the perpetrators of one of the worst atrocities in all of history into a family adventure series…but it was a choice made many decades ago. They appeared in Marvel comics just as they did in Indiana Jones and lots of other pop culture adventure stories.

If anything, one would think the use of Hydra would be an effort to DISTANCE what should be relatively innocent entertainments from something so terrible as the Holocaust. To NOT force people to think about the most horrific events of the past 100 years when they read a comic, but still deal with something that feels palpable and has stakes.

And again, it’s very important to state–Hydra are bad guys in Marvel Comics. Stories with them in it are not Civil War style “both sides have their merits” type stories. Hydra is wrong, full stop. The stories judge them harshly and encourage the readers to do the same.

And again–I am sure I am not changing anyone’s mind by writing this…and that is fine. Every reader (or potential reader) is entitled to their own opinion and interpretation of the stories and ideas. I am just telling you my point of view on the story and matter at hand.

I’m obliged to push back on this part: “The fictional history has changed - that part that people have a problem with is no longer true.” This claim has the moral nuance and emotional logic of a child who argues “you shouldn’t punish me because today is Opposite Day.” There was a deliberate artistic choice to tell this new story about a new bad guy group but use all the old iconography associated with the old nazi-based fictions. Saying there’s nuance if you read the book doesn’t erase the reader’s abhorrence at the story being told.

The problem *absolutely* is that the fictional group was ever associated with real world nazis, but you have noticed that public umbrage isn’t aimed at people who worked on Marvel titles in the 1970s, or people who worked on Indiana Jones.

You’ve acknowledged you’re not trying to negate people’s feelings but at the same you’d prefer people didn’t associate Hydra with the holocaust when people very clearly do. That’s what’s most immediately frustrating: Marvel and its employees have economically benefitted from the fiction’s close association with reality, but have become suddenly shy about it now that readers are disgusted by this story. It’s an unwillingness to take the temperature of the room that, at this point, is read as deliberate.

I say that I am not trying to negate people’s feelings because I am not. I am not a spokesman for Marvel, I am human being who works at Marvel, and I’m trying to have the discussion with people about what they are feeling and why and then telling them my own thoughts and feelings on it.  So far, in this most recent batch, people have been very civil and I think it’s going well. And again, I should note…I don’t work on Secret Empire, I just think it’s a good story. Well, full disclosure, Deadpool (which I edit) is tying in to it. But I am not working on the main series.

Regarding the idea that the fictional history has changed…I guess I don’t see what the problem is with revising a fictional history with more fiction. Neither events actually happened, so if the people making the stories about Hydra have actively said that in their minds they are no longer affiliated with nor had their origins in the Nazis, that seems (to me) to be equally as true as Hydra being a Nazi splinter group in that both are made up stories.

Please don’t take this as me being facetious or condescending, because I am asking this earnestly: if the problem is with the inclusion of the idea of Nazis in the 70s-80s, why are people not made at the people who made that decision? Again…PLEASE don’t read this in a sarcastic know-it-all tone, I am really asking. Is the argument that this past inclusion was a mistake and but that we should chalk it up to the time it was done, and steer clear in the present? If so, I am not sure why retconning Hydra away from being founded by Nazis isn’t a good thing.

And, I guess, in the end the even larger point is that even if we DO all agree that Hydra are Nazis, or have been Nazis, or share some goals with Nazis while disagreeing with others…what is a complete certainty is that they are presented as the bad guys in the story. They are presented as wrong. The fact that Captain America is Hydra is not a good thing, it is a terrible thing that the story does not support. No one involved thinks Hydra is in the right–just as I assume no one making Indiana Jones thought the villains there were right.

A story where Nazis do bad things and everyone knows they are bad and all the good guys oppose them…doesn’t seem like a bad thing to me. I am not trying to deliberately not take the temperature of the room–I can see that people are upset about the story and series. It’s just that from my point of view, I cannot wrap my head around why. The closest I can come to understanding why people are so unhappy about it is when I see evidence of people being upset by misrepresentations of what is happening in the story rather than what is actually happening, like the people mad about Magneto joining Hydra. 

Anyway, thank you for responding, hopefully people are finding the discussion informative.

I think the reason people aren’t accepting the retcon, at least from what I’ve seen people say, is that they feel like it’s a cop-out. Like it’s an excuse. Like these changes are only being made to try to shut people up – if the retcons had been made ages ago, I don’t think people would be so opposed to them.

I dont think it helps that legit neo-nazis are known for being historically revisionist. Denying the holocaust ever happened, putting emphasis on the so-called “good” things Hitler did. Etc. Liberals also seem to be pretty reactionary, quick to go for the jugular before they fully understand an issue… And there’s a big culture of that here on Tumblr. I think they confuse being reactionary with being radical or something. Idk. Anyway, I think that’s played in to the backlash against this to a certain extent. What’s especially important to note is the timing of this story, because I think that’s the main reason why the backlash is so overblown and cynical.

The issue with Cap being HYDRA is generally seen as disrespectful to his Jewish creators, and his historical use as a propaganda tool which helped encourage the Americans to join in on the war. We are at a point in history, once again, that the threat of fascism is looming… instead of seeing Captain America on our side in today’s struggle, as he “ought” to be, he’s messing around with HYDRA (who are the fictional embodiment of both the Nazis, and of today’s fascists – Trump, Farage, Le Penn).

People are afraid that Marvel is trying to make HYDRA – and by extension, modern day fascism – the good guys, or at the very least a sympathetic group. The reason people fear this, and what seperates this from Indiana Jones, is that Cap is the embodiment of all that is good in the world, at least from a symbolic level; he’s Marvel’s Superman, he’s Marvel’s Aslan, he’s Marvel’s Christ figure. It’s almost like blasphemy.

You, your co-workers, and your generation of fans, know that Cap is far from perfect. You don’t see him as a Christ figure, I assume. But to my generation – a group of very anxious people, who by and large are sick of the way this capitalist society shits on us – he is, because our introduction to him has been the MCU. Which, as you’ve said before, exaggerated HYDRA’s Nazi involvement in a way that the comics never really did. The MCU is also competitively shallow in how characters are written, Cap is less nuanced and complex in the MCU. Movie fans dont see him as flawed and human in the same way that comicbook fans do. He’s more of an idealised figure. Most of the people opposed to Secret Empire, I presume, are new readers of my generation. So our opinion of Cap is largely shaped by the MCU – and the backlash probably stems at least in part from that.

Some interesting insights here, thank you for sharing. I am going to have to think over some of it, before I can get my thoughts on it in order. But I appreciate it.

Regarding the Hydra retcon, I think (and someone please correct me if I am wrong) those happened back in Jonathan Hickman’s Secret Warriors series, well before Secret Empire was a glimmer in anyone’s eye. It certainly was not “ages ago” by any stretch, but I think it might have been a full 2 Cap writers ago, when Brubaker was still on the book. So it definitely was not in reaction to any criticism of this series, for sure.