By Eric Drumm
CAPTAIN AMERICA #25 tore a hole through the heart of the Marvel Universe. When Steve Rogers fell, everyone who ever put on a mask and fought for freedom and justice felt as if they had lost a brother, a comrade and a friend. FALLEN SON: THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN AMERICA, written by Jeph Loeb ("Heroes" co-executive producer), took us on a tour of the halls of sorrow. Now, we are finally laying our friend to rest in FALLEN SON #5, the funeral of
Captain America.
Each issue of FALLEN SON brought us through a different stage of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. To take on such a doting task, Jeph Loeb says he first needed a little push from the House of Ideas before he dove head first into the project.
"We were at the creative retreat last December," recalls Loeb. "It may just have been my instinct, but I don't think there's been a story like this in 10 or 15 years, not since the death of Superman. This is a huge story. We [will] hit on the right day, and the media will pick it up, and forget about it--it's a home run. So what should we do? Should we have an annual? What should we do? We were trying to figure out what kind of special story that we could tell, and in what format.
"And that's when JMS [J. Michael Straczynski] decided to speak," Loeb adds. "What those of us that are mere mortals don't understand is that when JMS speaks, it's kind of like Zeus--like lightning bolts from Olympus. And he decreed 'It will be the five stages of grief, DENIAL! ANGER! BARGAINING! DEPRESSION! ACCEPTANCE! SO SHALL IT BE!' And everyone in the room was, 'Well, I'm not arguing that with him.' But the moment he said it, I had it. I could literally see the comics."
Once the idea was set into motion, all Loeb's creative force needed was an artist. In the case of FALLEN SON, it was five. Industry icons Lenil Yu, Ed McGuiness, John Romita Jr, David Finch and John Cassaday all lent their pencils to give Cap the sendoff that he deserves. Each taking an issue, the series had become a stomping ground of artistic giants, and Loeb couldn't have been more happy or honored to have them make his eulogy to Cap fly off the page.
"I can write as beautiful a song as I want, but if the singer doesn't know how to sing it, it doesn't make much difference," explains Loeb. "The thing about comics is that they are a visual medium, and I do my best to write to an artist's strengths so that they will give me back on the page things that excite them and a kind of storytelling that they excel at. And I think that if I've had any success in the business, it's because of that. And I would like to think that people that I've worked with have found their greatest successes with me because I write the script for
them, and it's never more true than on FALLEN SON. These guys just brought their A game. I think they looked at each other and thought, 'Well, I'm not going to be the chapter that sucks,' and that paid off hugely."
With all the heavies gathered, the stage was set to give Cap the final salute that he so greatly deserved. With a flagship character dead, it was up to Loeb to make sure that he got a hero's burial. He found the task to be a monumental, yet rewarding..
"It was an honor," Loeb says. "I knew the story I wanted to tell. I had the benefit of knowing that [CAPTAIN AMERICA scribe Ed] Brubaker had already written the aftermath of the funeral, so that I had kind of a structure. I knew how Tony [
Iron Man] had behaved and I knew that Sam [the
Falcon] was the keynote speaker. Those were hard decisions to make when you are trying to do something this big, but he made it easy for me. The rest was mine to tell, and along with [artist] John Cassaday, I think we did about as good a job as certainly I could do."
After Cap was taken from us, there was no question that the media was going to want to know about the shot heard throughout the Marvel Universe. How would heroes react to their beating heart suddenly coming to a stop, to their beacon of light being snuffed out so violently? When there is a death, there is a funeral, so it was obvious that the build-up of FALLEN SON would lead up to the inevitable permanent internment of the Sentinel of Liberty. No stranger to the press, Jeph Loeb took the blitz in stride. However, the real honor for Loeb is that the attention from FALLEN SON has helped him honor the memory of his son Sam in new ways.
"You know I have this other job, this little thing of being an Executive Producer and writer of a show called "Heroes" (Monday nights at 9 p.m. on NBC), and that tends to get a little bit of press," he slyly jokes. "That tends to keep me on my toes. But of all the times I've worked in comics, I never could have experienced anything quite like this and that's unusual and fun. But the real bonus of it is that I've gotten emails from families who have children who are sick, from families who have lost their sons, just sort of reaching out. I've done projects that were specifically to raise money for Sam's college scholarship such as ONSLAUGHT: REBORN, and this is just something that I talked about, and probably because it got picked up by the mainstream media its been reaching more and more people who now have an opportunity to hear about Sam's story in addition to this much larger and more media[-friendly] story of the death of Captain America."
As FALLEN SON comes to its conclusion, the world will be able to see how one soldier's life could affect so many. The friends he made, the lives he saved and the principles he stood for will ring out across Arlington and will forever echo throughout the Marvel Universe. Cap will serve as an inspiration for all time, but first we must all say goodbye. In FALLEN SON #5, we will see just how much he meant to everyone in his final hour, and Jeph Loeb says that this scene has just as much personal significance as it does in the Marvel Universe.
"The concept of having people stand up in [the] story where the
Falcon asks soldiers from World War II to stand up, and people who were inspired by Cap to wear a cape and a mask in the '40s and '50s to stand up and [Falcon] sort of goes through all the various people that Cap's life influenced was based on something that I had done at my son's funeral because I wanted to show how many lives this boy had touched. So it doesn't matter whether you knew him from comics or from high school, you knew him from drama or from television shows. It was just extraordinary to turn around and suddenly realize that we're connected. And that's a really important moment for me in the story, because it's where it's all building to. I think that the splashes which are John Cassaday's interpretations of moments in Cap's life that I asked him to draw are extraordinary, and I think that people will be sort of surprised by the last five pages. It has its own ending to it that is unique and I talked to Brubaker about [it] and [he] thought that it was the smartest way to end not only [the] story, but the legacy that was Captain America."
When the tears dry and we all head home, Captain America will still be in our hearts. He was a man who seemed unbeatable, and his inspiration will follow not only Marvel superheroes, but also the people who've read his stories for the rest of their lives. For Jeph Loeb, as well as the rest of the world, FALLEN SON was a way to cope with loss, and now that the acceptance is setting in, we can all start to remember Cap as he always was: a hero.
Join us as we salute Captain America one last time in FALLEN SON: THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN AMERICA #5 by Jeph Loeb and John Cassaday.
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