Death of Captain America

In life there are very few constants. One of the constants in life was Captain America. He was an American soldier fighting for the good that America represented, even killing for it when necessary. He understood the sacrifice that needed to be made, that the common good came before his personal and material needs. If you were stronger, faster and more athletic then everyone else, how many of us would just become athletes or a celebrity? Steve Rogers was a solider who then gave his body to science, was granted powers far beyond those of mortal men, and stayed a soldier.

He has battled Nazis, Communists, and terrorists, not to mention supervillians and common street thugs. He bleeds Red, White and Blue and has literally wrapped himself in the flag. Captain America wears an A on his mask and that A stands for America. (In one of my all time favorite moments, an alien pummels him and then asks if he surrenders. He then gets up and fights the alien, and then says, pointing to the A, "Surrender, Surrender? You think this letter on my head stands for France?") He represented all that was great with this country and now he is dead, very dead.

How did he die? Well, it is all reality TV's fault. Someone had the bright idea of putting superheroes on a reality show. On one of the episodes the superheroes find some supervillians and then fight them. In the course of the struggle they vaporize an entire school and parts of an entire town. The government decided that superheroes could no longer be trusted and that they had to be regulated and registered. Captain America was put in charge of the registration and did what anyone who believes in this country would do, he quit, jumped out the window and started the resistance. After months of leading the fight, Cap turned himself in to bring the registration law up for judicial review. As he was being escorted out of the building he was shot by a sniper. (Supposedly, his ex-wife.)

And in one page, without any warning, they killed off a great character.