More Captain

Really push to define the political stances of superheroes. Rarely an easy task. Earth-616 Captain America fit snugly in the New Deal Democratic mold: taming the great beast of government & using it to help people, no matter what their race or creed. A hero to buy off labor with. But just as Ultimate Spider-Man (Earth-1610) is making out with Kitty Pryde instead of Mary Jane Watson, Ultimate Captain America differs in his politics. More reactionary, more righteous, more violent. In short, a modern paleo-conservative.

You cld see the two Captains as heroes of their eras. Cap 616 was made
1941, in the wake of the New Deal, in a war of "superpowers" empire against empire
(in which at least two poles signed themselves as "for all") Ultimate Cap is in
the image of unipolar global conflict management
(monopoly dressed up in coalition blue
ultimate because unmoored at last from history
          final authority
an infant fantasy of the immortal
          : a guy draped in the American flag
                   leading a military detachment
          into a Mid East nation
                   for "peacekeeping"



Ult Cap was made in 2000
(cos Clinton got here first

the diff being between
the neo-cons & neo-libs
mostly of strategic affiliation
not of principle

2.

*What are continuities?* Most of the action takes place on a continuity
known as Earth-616. As far as how the world is going right now, it seems like
we’re on 616. It’s possible that they could come out later & say otherwise.

Time branches out, creating alternate realities at key points (moments
pass & generate conditions for the whatever-the-next at all levels
-- cat knocks down cup etcetera in the field of possible "responsibilities"
but add to these other, outset responses (mostly exclusive) so you get a world
in which China her financiers never foreclosed the bulk of U.S. debt, dragging
the whole shebang into panic, devaluation, & an economic coup etc.
in retaliation 5 yrs after the May '99 embassy bombing.

A continuity is not the same
as a dimension or universe; characters like Mephisto & Dormammu
hail from alternate dimensions, & the Celestials another universe,
but they’re down with the 616. As the present condition of nations is
of many antecedent changes, some extremely remote & some recent,
some gradual, sudden and violent etc. (sez Mr. Lyell
Those "realities" spawn other continuities at similar junctures:

Looking back into the chronicles of nations (Lyell sez
how the fortune of some battle or innocent development
has influenced the millions our contemporaries
when it has long been forgotten by this population



The enumeration

1. probably invented by the Time Variance Authority,
which keeps tabs on the continuities as they appear
2. The name used by the Dimensional Development Corp.
for the mainstream universe it hopes soon to open
to the market
3. There exist hundreds, probably thousands of continuities. A warp known as “The Nexus of All Realities” exists in a swamp in the Florida (Earth) of Earth-616. For the most part the generation of continuities doesn’t matter, as most beings are unaware of their existence, even at the moment their universe is born from another. “It is spring: life begins to assume its normal appearance as of ‘today.’ Only the imagination is undeceived” (Williams). There are, however, organizations that monitor & sometimes manipulate the continuities. These include the Time Variance Authority & Kang the Conqueror’s forces.
4. Incidentally, for the non-comics readers, 616 is code for
“will never have a boyfriend/girlfriend.”