Death of a legend? [SPOILER alert!]

Can you feel the heat from your computer? That's the nerdfury setting aflame that corner of the Internet devoted to comic books, in the wake of Marvel Comic's shock assassination of Captain America in issue 25 of his own title.

This move seems to have caught the fans totally unprepared; unlike DC's Death of Superman in the 90s which was heralded months in advance. I'd had no idea this was coming until I saw it announced on Marvel's official website in the past few days. And since then the Internet has been on fire with an unprecedented outpourings of anger and annoyance at the House of Ideas.

Marvel's own forums has a 27-page (and growing) thread on what a bad idea this is ...

Ninety-nine per cent of posters are very unhappy with this post-Civil War development, with many threatening to drop most - or all - of their Marvel subscriptions and many others putting this on a par with flag burning at a time when American patriotism is a very touchy issue!

Personally I haven't seen the issue yet, but will judge it on its merits as a piece of storytelling and, as long as it is well written (and it is Ed Brubaker after all) will stick with it to see how it pans out. Of course, at the end of the day, we mustn't forget that this is a comic book and so there is every possibilty that the Steve Rogers gunned down by a sniper is, in fact, a clone, a Life Model Decoy (LMD) robot, an alternate universe Captain America or some other 'get out of jail free' card.

My own theory - again based on not having read the comic! - is that the whole thing has been staged and this Steve Rogers is an LMD supplied by Nick Fury (former head of SHIELD, now working underground) so that the real Steve Rogers can (for the time being) ditch his alter ego in the wake of the Civil War and reinvent himself until things cool down/the law changes etc Isn't there a new "mysterious" character in the underground incarnation of The New Avengers (Ronin) who could well be Cap/Steve Rogers?