Captain Confederacy
Captain Confederacy | |
---|---|
Publication information | |
Publisher | SteelDragon Press (first series) Marvel Comics (second series) |
Schedule | Monthly |
Format | mini-series |
Genre | |
Publication date | 1986 (first series) November 1991 – February 1992 (second series) |
No. of issues | 12 (first series) 4 (second series) |
Creative team | |
Created by | Will Shetterly Vince Stone |
Captain Confederacy is an
Publication history
Issues #1–12 were published beginning in 1986 by Steeldragon Press.[2] A special edition of issue #1 was also published with some revisions. John M. Ford plotted three issues of the first series and wrote one, issue #10's "Driving North". The series is, as of July 2015, available online — in a somewhat revised form — as well as having been collected in two trade paperbacks.[3][4]
The second series was published by Marvel's Epic Comics and can also be found online.[5] A connected story Yankee UFO, concerning a person from another alternative history where Ted Kennedy is President of the United States trapped in Captain Confederacy's world, was published online in 2008.[6]
Title character
The first Captain Confederacy, featured in the first series, is an out-of-work actor who agrees to undergo a biological experiment that grants him super strength, enhanced agility and healing abilities as well as limited psychic abilities, but those chemicals are addictive and are slowly killing him.[7] In the second series, the new Captain Confederacy is a black woman, pregnant with the previous Captain's baby. She has similar superpowers garnered from the same source.
Plot
The first series, published in the SteelDragon Press run, tells how the first Captain Confederacy, a
The second series focuses on the struggle to control the politics of the North American countries, at a world superhero conference in Free Louisiana.
World
In the alternative history, the
The means by which the CSA managed to retain its independence was never explained in the series. In the 2018 trade paperback edition, Shetterly's afterward explains that he purposefully omitted an in-universe explanation, because he wanted to let the readers' imagination decide this.
Each of these nations has its own propaganda heroes similar to the original Captain Confederacy, though empowered through different means and technologies (armored suits, drugs, etc.). Canada exists in some form, although it is not as large as it is in the real world. A version of the Underground Railroad exists within the Confederacy to help oppressed minorities escape to either the United States or Canada.
Outside North America, a
The technology of this world's 1967 (the year in which the story begins) seems analogous to the real world in about 1980. Although advanced technology was used to create the superheroes, it does not seem to be in widespread use by the general public.
Commercially, McDonald's is known for its fast food burritos — although it has plans to introduce a new ground beef sandwich with cheese, while KFC sells catfish, not chicken. Both chains seem ubiquitous within the Confederacy.
Science fiction is known by Scientifiction and appears more popular than in the real world. Margaret Mitchell wrote a well known book, Glorious Tomorrows, hinted to be an analog of Gone with the Wind but set in a victorious Dixie. The Beacon Hillbillies, an analog of The Beverly Hillbillies, is a television comedy popular in the USA that makes fun of the CSA. Patsy Cline and James Dean are still alive in 1967, with Dean becoming too old to play the "rebellious youth" roles that first made him a star.
Reception
Southern Magazine found the plots are intricate and creative, but noted that this is not a comic for children. Comics Buyer's Guide found the comic an "excellent alternate-Earth science fiction".
In Reconstructing Dixie: Race, Gender, and Nostalgia in the Imagined South by Tara McPherson (Duke University), McPherson wrote: "From the retooled Stars and Bars of Captain Confederacy's costume to the mapping of urban and rural southern places, the series takes up the symbols of the South and imaginitively reconstructs them, shaking loose the stock figures, geographies, and temporalities of southerness. If Octavia Butler and Kara Walker alter the meaning of the southern lady, Shetterly reconfigures the southern gentleman, unfixing his location in an idealized Civil War past, instead deploying him for a different understanding of our present".[9]
Heavy Metal reviewed the comic in June 2015, finding it to "address the South's old ghosts" and that the determination of if the comic was a successful examination of the current southern society of merely provocative is left up to readers to decide.[10]
A family who gave an issue of the comic to their 11-year-old son found the comic offensive, creating a minor controversy.[11]
According to the
References
- ^ "Who Remembers "Captain Confederacy"? (Not Coming to a Wal-Mart Near You) - Heavy Metal". Archived from the original on 2016-04-22. Retrieved 2016-04-24.
- ^ Markstein, Don. "Captain Confederacy". Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Retrieved 2 April 2020.
- ^ "Captain Confederacy".
- ^ Captain Confederacy paperbacks Archived 2015-07-21 at the Wayback Machine at CreateSpace.com
- ^ Second series of Captain Confederacy
- ^ "Captain Confederacy".
- ISBN 978-1476666723.
- ^ "Captain Confederacy".
- ^ Shetterly, Will (15 September 2016). "The posts that were at this blog..." Archived from the original on 2 February 2006. Retrieved 1 February 2006.
- ^ "Who Remembers "Captain Confederacy"? (Not Coming to a Wal-Mart Near You)". 25 June 2015.
- ^ Assemi, Yasmin (6 January 2006). "Family finds comic book gift offensive". recordnet.com. Stockton, California. Retrieved 25 September 2015.
- ^ "The Costs of the Confederacy".
- Captain Confederacy at the Grand Comics Database
- Captain Confederacy at the Comic Book DB (archived from the original)
External links
- Captain Confederacy blog, where the comic is being posted in serial format by Will Shetterly, along with related material
- Captain Confederacy at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on April 9, 2012.