Douglas Coupland All The Way Down

After almost a decade of working for the publisher, Ed Brubaker is leaving Marvel with Winter Soldier #14, in January. Since Brubaker’s departure from The House of Ideas means his departure for superhero comics more generally, this seemed like a good time for a short comment on his importance to the genre:

I’ve always gotten the sense that Brubaker believes in superhero comics, that he believes in what they’re capable of, and that he believes that they can affect the culture at large even if they don’t often reach beyond an, unfairly stereotyped, niche market. That he is ambitious in this way is evident, of course, in his politically resonant work on both Captain America and Winter Soldier, but I think it can also be seen in his incredibly well respected Daredevil issues and the Gotham Central series he wrote at DC with Greg Rucka, and in his flawed X-Men work, and in his abortive run on Secret Avengers. His attraction to the big idea, to the conspiracy that takes years to unravel, to the story that takes dozens of issues to unfold, is clear in all of his work, but his ability to use the combination of medium and the genre as a certain kind of more- or less- subtle allegory is what sets him apart from even from the talented writers, writers like Matt Fraction, Jonathan Hickman and Jason Aaron, that are guiding Marvel’s bold new direction. What Ed Brubaker gifted to us, more than almost a decade of excellent stories, was a renewed sense that not only could mainstream superhero comics be culturally important, but that they could also be literary, particularly if their readership was willing treat them as such.

More at the link. 

brianmichaelbendis:

Captain America by Steranko