Things I Think About #17

I keep hearing that one of the big things that's going to happen during Civil War is Peter Parker is going to realize he doesn't like being beholden to Tony Stark. Stark's given him so much: a home, a job, a new cos. . . cos. . . costume. Supposedly, Peter's going to feel the strings attached, and distance himself from Tony, be his own man once more. Which is good. I'm all for it. But I realized, I'd seen this before with Tony Stark.

One of the first comics I owned was Captain America #331, where Steve Rogers stops being Captain America, because he can't bow to the governments' will. He figured they'd make him leave the Avengers, possibly join the Freedom Force (it's the new odd couple, Captain America and the Blob), and probably send him to Nicaragua to help the Contras. There was a shot of Captain America, in a jungle, leveling a machine gun at some guys. Even at five, Calvin found that rather disturbing. Anyway, Steve turns in his stuff, which leads to John Walker becoming Captain America, and when he flames out, he becomes USAgent. So we owe his existence to Captain America giving up. Thanks a lot for that character, Cap.

Anyway, while he couldn't be Captain America, Steve Rogers still wanted to do the right thing. He had fought as Nomad before, but he'd given that identity to Jack Monroe, and he wouldn't just take it away. So he eventually calls himself "The Captain", and yes he always said 'the captain' and guess who provided him with a new costume and shield? Can you guess? That's right, Tony Stark! Boy, what a friend! To go and do a thing like that for a guy, what a true-blue pal, who would never attempt to exploit someone's goodwill towards him! Except. . .

Tony had ulterior motives. See Tony was at this time in his life, where Spymaster had stolen the designs for his armor and sold it to all sorts of people. So Iron Man runs around beating the beejezus out of all sorts of people, and scrapping their armor. Unfortunately, this included the Guardsmen, who were security at the Vault (Marvel's super-prison). Tony had figured that by giving Steve the new costume, that The Captain would stay out of the way, and Tony could attack a government facility unimpeded by his friend. Silly drunky. The Captain did get involved, Tony went through him anyway, and Rogers is left feeling that he can't be in Tony's debt. Does seem familiar to anyone else?

Now I'm not saying that because they've done this before, it's necessarily a bad idea. The dynamic between Parker and Stark is different than between Steve Rogers and Tony. Peter's more impressed/intimidated by Stark's wealth, fame, power, so it's probably harder for him to say "No thanks" to Mr. BigShot. By contrast, Steve Rogers is intimidated by no one. Still, Peter shouldn't have allowed himself to be so reliant on Stark in the first place, and if Civil War helps him realize that and go back to being self-sufficient, that's fine with me. And it isn't like somewhere down the line he and Stark couldn't still be friends. Tony and Steve patched things up, eventually.

The odd thing to me is that I thought of this because of Thor. There was an issue when Thor came back to Earth after a long absence and he finds out from Rogers about all this stuff that's happened. That issue was really damn cool, and I'll have to talk about it someday.

I suppose, the moral of all this is, "Never trust rich people". Or maybe "Never trust rich people with a history of drinking, and who risk their necks flying around in high-tech suits of armor." Especially suits of armor that look like that.