Animal Face-off: Lion vs tiger - July 11

While we are talking about AFO, how about one of its most, (if not the most) controversial episodes – the ‘Lion vs. tiger’ episode? By the great Caesar’s pale ghost? Fuck no!

As it was said before, AFO used to determine its victors by physical standards – the bigger and heavier combatant usually won. Thus, the walrus defeated the polar bear, while the brown bear triumphed over the tiger. The problem is that the lion and the tiger are very close in size, weight and strength, so determining the victor overall and forever more is impossible; you have to go case by case, and – animal cruelty, anyone? In the modern, XXI century, in broad daylight? Again – no. (And rightly so.)

However, when it comes to the lion and the tiger, the two animals are very similar, especially if you go at them from an anatomical P.O.V. You need to be a professional to determine whether the bones belong to a lion or a tiger, and a DNA analysis would be useful. With the brown and polar bears it is easier – the brown bear’s claws are longer but blunter, it is generally smaller than the polar bear…though the grizzly and the Kodiak brown bears of North America just might be as big as the polar bears are… never mind. Lions and tigers may have diverged before the 10,000-year mark unlike the brown and the polar bears, but they are still closely related and are built very similarly…which is where AFO’s problems began.

The lion and the tiger may have plenty of similarities, but people tend to perceive them very differently – the lion is the king of the beasts, a divine creature (in a positive way), especially in the monotheistic cultures of Europe and Middle East, while the tiger is not. In fact, it is often depicted as a villain…of course, so is the wolf…but if it is a man-eater, for example, (the tiger), then so’s the lion…the lion just had good PR, one that is not connected to reality in any way (there is nothing divine in the lion’s behavior, for example, and most of human presumptions about it are anthropomorphic and unrealistic clichés)…

Nowadays, these clichés about lions (and tigers, etc.) are not really believed in anymore, not consciously, but, in that particular episode of AFO, the lion won. In another episode, when the (African) lion was put against the (Nile) crocodile, it lost. Here, against the tiger, the lion won because of its mane…which proved to be useless against the crocodile, BTW…

Yes, like the tiger, the lion was featured in two episodes of AFO: once when the great cats went against each other and the second put the lion against the crocodile (and the tiger against the brown bear, remember?). The footage, featured in the studies of the animals in these episodes was subtly different: the ‘lion vs. crocodile’ episode featured real-life footage of a single Nile crocodile harassing a pride of African lions…and the lions were unable to overpower the reptile (this is probably why the crocodile won in the stimulation too). The ‘lion vs. tiger’ footage does not feature anything like that.

There is footage, much older than YouTube, of lions and tigers fighting – in circuses, fighting pits, etc. Usually the lion is depicting winning over the tiger, but the problem is that in some of the countries, including the former USSR, the opposite was true too. The problem is in the individual variations of tigers and lions, as well as in the fact that both of the great cat species have several subspecies, all of which are subtly different from each other. A fight between a lion and a tiger can go in any way; both animals are quite unpredictable, when it comes to each other, period.

Yet the lion won. Period. Because it has a mane and the tiger does not. This is one of the most ridiculous justifications one has ever heard – and on TV, on a professional, ‘grown-up’, program too! The truth is that AFO did not have to justify the lion winning – it could have ‘just’ won because was ‘tougher’, ‘bigger’, or something else – not because it has extra-lion hair on its neck and the tiger does not. A lion’s mane is like a peacock’s or a pheasant’s tail – it is used to impress the lionesses, not help the lion in a fight. In the ‘lion vs. tiger’ episode, the show’s staff/cast had allowed themselves to be prejudiced and to fudge the results – but because it was Animal Face-Off, it was okay…

No, I am being serious. Back, when ‘Deadliest Warrior’ (DW) was on air, I was a big fan of it, (and still is, BTW). If it were to air once more, (with new episodes, though I am flexible), I would watch it again, but…it was prejudiced, especially in S2 and 3. In S1, you see, the Russian Spetznaz won over the U.S. Green Berets fairly, and the show never recovered from this. S2 was fairly mild on the ‘patriotic’ scale, but S3 had George Washington and Teddy Roosevelt face-off against Napoleon Bonaparte and Lawrence of Arabia…and win. In addition, the fights – especially the final, one-on-one fights – were choreographed similarly badly. The U.S. people, including the audience of the DW show, do want to be proud of their country, but not if the odds get so blatantly doctored with, as it happened on S3 premiere – George Washington vs. Napoleon Bonaparte. Slowly but steadily, the S3 episode ratings dropped, and the fact that the show’s new owner wasn’t a Green Beret, but pretended to be one, only further made it unpopular – unpopular enough to be cancelled, even though their material and subjects were even more varied and interesting than AFO’s were; they lasted for three seasons, while AFO – only for one.

Conversely, however, AFO was better than DW in that there was less prejudice and favoritism amongst its cast/crew/staff/etc. The ‘lion vs. tiger’ episode was more of an exception than a rule; the rest of the episodes were done quite fairly instead.

This, then, is the ‘lion vs. tiger’ episode – an ugly duckling among the otherwise fine flock.

Pathfinder: half-dragons

Also, here are a dire bear and a dire tiger with a half-dragon template from the Pathfinder bestiary (volume 1):

HALF- DRAGON DIRE BEAR (CAVE BEAR) CR 9

XP 3,200

N Large dragon

Init +5; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, scent; Perception +12

DEFENSE

AC 20, touch 10, flat-footed 17 (+1 Dex, +12 natural, –1 size)

hp 95 (10d8+50)

Fort +12, Ref +8, Will +4

Immune acid, sleep, paralysis

OFFENSE

Speed 40 ft., fly 80 ft. (average)

Melee 2 claws +13 (1d6+15 plus grab), bite +13 (1d8+15)

Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft.

Special Attacks breath weapon (60-ft. line of acid, 10d6 damage, Reflex DC 23 half)

STATISTICS

Str 33, Dex 13, Con 27, Int 4, Wis 12, Cha 12

Base Atk +7; CMB +15 (+19 grapple); CMD 26 (30 vs. trip)

Feats Endurance, Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Run, Skill Focus (Perception)

Skills Perception +12, Swim +27; Racial Modifiers +4 Swim

ECOLOGY

Environment cold forests

Organization solitary or pair

Treasure incidental

HALF-DRAGON DIRE TIGER (SMILODON) CR 9

XP 4,800

N Large dragon

Init +6; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, scent; Perception +12

DEFENSE

AC 19, touch 11, flat-footed 15 (+2 Dex, +10 natural, –1 size)

hp 105 (14d8+42)

Fort +12, Ref +11, Will +5

Immune fire, sleep, paralysis

OFFENSE

Speed 40 ft., fly 80 ft. (average)

Melee 2 claws +18 (2d4+16 plus grab), bite +18 (2d6+16/19–20 plus grab)

Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft.

Special Attacks breath weapon (30-ft. cone of fire, 14d6 damage, Reflex DC 20 half), pounce, rake (2 claws +18, 2d4+8)

STATISTICS

Str 35, Dex 15, Con 23, Int 4, Wis 12, Cha 12

Base Atk +10; CMB +19 (+23 grapple); CMD 31 (35 vs. trip)

Feats Improved Critical (bite), Improved Initiative, Run, Skill Focus (Perception), Skill Focus (Stealth), Weapon Focus (bite, claw)

Skills Acrobatics +6, Perception +12, Stealth +15 (+23 in tall grass), Swim +25; Racial Modifiers +4 Acrobatics, +4 Stealth (+8 in tall grass)

ECOLOGY

Environment any forests, plains, and swamps

Organization solitary or pair

Treasure none

Animal Face-off: Brown bear vs. tiger - July 9

Few days ago, I have revisited one of AFO’s episodes – the ‘polar bear vs. walrus’ one. This time, I’m revisiting another episode – the ‘brown bear vs. tiger’. Technically, the tiger is the Siberian subspecies (as opposed to a Sumatran or a Bengal subspecies instead), but before we get into that…

‘Killjoys’ S2 seems to have gotten into the swing of it, focusing on at least two major plotlines: figuring one Dutch’s true past, and saving the ‘Old Town’ from ‘the Company’, (who is probably being run by a CEO called ‘the Man’ – ‘Killjoys’ are that imaginative, sorry). Fair enough, this isn’t any more stupid or flawed than ‘Agent Carter’ has been, and not unlike AC, ‘Killjoys’ is featuring a fairly small and tight cast of main and recurring characters, with a sufficient supply of sci-fi trappings thrown in for the necessary flavor. By now, the cast and the crew of the show have managed to get into a S2, (as did ‘Dark Matter’, BTW), now we got to wait and see if they reach as S3 level by the end of it.

Back to AFO. As I written earlier, the ‘polar bear vs. walrus’ episode was probably surprising to some viewers, as a walrus doesn’t look like a winning fighter with its bulky and ungainly body (on land; in the water, it’s another story). With the ‘brown bear vs. tiger’ episode, the issue (if you would call it such) was something else: it became very clear that the bear was going to win, especially if you went by the mechanical data, which was how AFO operated, after all-

…This was actually one of the bigger basic problems that plagued AFO since the first episodes (‘lion vs. tiger’ and ‘crocodile vs. shark’) – all of the data was physical/mechanical, and an animal’s habits/behavior were not taken into account. This physical/mechanical data dictated that a bigger/heavier animal was going to win, especially in a one-on-one fight, and while it was true in some cases, in others it was not. In this episode, yes, the brown bear did win, and in a straightforward fight it would win because it was bigger, heavier and stronger than the tiger were, but in nature? Size is not everything, as the same brown and polar bears can demonstrate…

Of course, none of the above means that I had not enjoyed the episode – I did. The way that the show compared a bear and a great cat (a tiger), in regards to jaws and claws and physical prowess; how they had compared and contrasted the two – as far as I am concerned ‘brown bear vs. tiger’ episode was one of AFO’s better episodes. It just was…CGI’d, but given that the alternative was to have a tiger and a bear fight for real, which is very inhumane, no one really complained about the CGI, nu-uh.

However, in a computer simulation, the brown bear won because it was bigger and stronger than the tiger, but so is a polar bear…when compared to a brown bear: a brown bear, on the average, stands 2.5 m tall on hind legs, while a polar bear is about 3.0 m instead. A brown bear has proportionately longer claws than a polar bear does, but the polar bear’s claws are sharper than a brown bear’s claws are. In strength too one would probably expect the polar bear to have an edge over the brown, especially if one checks using mechanical props, (top-notch or not), not unlike what lion has over a tiger, but-

However, in comes the real life. Due to global warming, the polar bears have been moving south and the brown bears – up north. In recent years, they have started to encounter each other for real, and some scientists have recorded footage of their interactions. It went like this: one night, a group of polar bears have discovered a whale carcass and were eating it. Along came a single brown bear (well, a grizzly bear, because this was in North America rather than Siberia), smaller and/or shorter than the polar bears were, and it…promptly chased them around the carcass, eeyup. Attitude matters, as does experience, and mechanical stand-ins with computer calculations cannot account for this. People who operate mechanical models and run computer calculations can, but it is much harder without live footage – and the episode of ‘bear vs. tiger’ did not really have any footage of bears interacting with tigers. If it had, it would have shown that bears can usually see tigers off…so why there was no footage? No one knows, I bet…

Anyhow, the brown bear chasing polar bears around is one point. The polar-brown bear hybrids is a different one. Yes, there are lion/tiger hybrids, but they occur only in zoos and are sterile, just as donkey/horse hybrids are, for comparison. Brown/polar bear hybrids are found in the wild, and they are not sterile, either. Considering that the polar bears have become their own, independent species only 10,000 years ago and that some scientists believe that brown bears can evolve into a polar-bear-like-form (or a subspecies?) yet again, how is this for a lab study (of bears, tigers, etc.)? Study of animal bodies and bones is one thing, but it cannot compensate for the study of animal behavior. AFO did try to keep animal behavior in account, (though not so much in the ‘brown bear vs. tiger’ episode), but the main focus was on jaws, claws, teeth, horns, tusks and etc., and this had limited the scope of the show, causing AFO to be cancelled after just 12 episodes. Pity, because the show was a good one.

Pathfinder: divine guardians

Also, here are a couple of divine guardians, (polar bear and walrus, duh) from Pathfinder Bestiaries, 4 & 5:

DIVINE GUARDIAN EMPEROR WALRUS CR 9

XP 4,800

N Gargantuan animal (cold)

Init –1; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +25*

DEFENSE

AC 20, touch 5, flat-footed 20 (–1 Dex, +15 natural, –4 size)

hp 126 (12d8+72); fast healing 5

Fort +14, Ref +7, Will +8

Defensive Abilities ability healing; Immune cold, disease, mind-affecting effects, poison; Vulnerable fire

OFFENSE

Speed 20 ft., swim 60 ft.

Melee bite +16 (4d6+15/19–20) or slam +15 (2d6+15 plus trip)

Space 20 ft.; Reach 15 ft.

Special Attacks

Spell-Like Abilities (CL 12^th; concentration +10)

At will – dimension door, hold portal

3/day – alarm, knock

1/day – arcane lock, augury, clairaudience/clairvoyance, commune, dismissal, guards and wards

STATISTICS

Str 31, Dex 9, Con 22, Int 6, Wis 19, Cha 10

Base Atk +9; CMB +23; CMD 32 (can't be tripped)

Feats Diehard, Endurance, Improved Critical (bite), Iron Will, Vital Strike, Weapon Focus (bite)

Skills Perception +25*, Sense Motive +5*, Swim +22

SQ blessed life, divine swiftness, hold breath, sacred site

ECOLOGY

Environment cold oceans

Organization solitary, pair, or herd (1–3 and 5–20 walruses)

Treasure none

DIVINE GUARDIAN DIRE POLAR BEAR CR 9

XP 4,800

N Large animal (cold)

Init +7; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, scent; Perception +23*

DEFENSE

AC 22, touch 12, flat-footed 19 (+3 Dex, +10 natural, -1 size)

hp 115 (10d8+70); fast healing 5

Fort +14, Ref +10, Will +6

Defensive Abilities ability healing; Immune cold, disease, mind-affecting effects, poison; Vulnerable fire

OFFENSE

Speed 40 ft., swim 20 ft.

Melee bite +15 (1d8+9), 2 claws +15 (1d6+9 plus grab)

Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft.

Special Attacks

Spell-Like Abilities (CL10th; concentration +13)

At will – dimension door, hold portal

3/day – alarm, knock

1/day – arcane lock, augury, clairaudience/clairvoyance, commune, dismissal

STATISTICS

Str 29, Dex 17, Con 25, Int 6, Wis 20, Cha 18

Base Atk +7; CMB +17 (+21 grapple); CMD 28 (32 vs. trip)

Feats Endurance, Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Run, Skill Focus (Perception)

Skills Perception +23*, Sense Motive +5*, Survival +11, Swim +21

SQ blessed life, divine swiftness, sacred site

ECOLOGY

Environment cold coastlines or plains

Organization solitary or pair

Treasure none

Animal Face-off: Polar Bear vs. Walrus - July 7

With AoS on the leave until September, my blog suffers from a small hiatus of reviews. There were River Monsters, but, sadly, they have jumped the metaphorical shark – the last season, (one of the shortest ones yet), was committed to ‘mysteries of the deep’…

Okay, make no mistake – JW is still the man, and RM is still heads ahead of the swill that had been aired on ‘Shark Week’, for example, but compared to the previous seasons, ones that were focusing on proper fishing rather than something reminiscent of MonsterQuest, (which wasn’t a bad show in itself, but RW is still the better one), RM has certainly jumped the shark…and left the rivers for the ocean. It should rename itself, then, since it no longer deals with the rivers, and other bodies of freshwater, eh?

…That said, the main issue with the S8 of RM is the abruptness and shortness of the season – clearly it is not as popular as it once was, and perhaps it is time to end it, on a high note, before it is ended on a low one instead – but we got distracted. There are other good shows airing on the TV at the moment – the first season of ‘Preacher’, the second season of ‘Killjoys’ and of ‘Dark Matter’, the latest season of ‘Mistresses’ – but none of them are so intense as AoS, or AC (‘Agent Carter’) had been, which, considering that AoS isn’t all that great itself lately, is just sad.

(Of course, this isn’t just the TV – the movies too seem to suffer from something similar, and lately they are even scrapping their plans for various sequels, they are trying to achieve something original…so, we’ll have to see how it works.)

In any case, while I have been enjoying the new shows, I still went out to look for some old favorites of mine, including AFO, (‘Animal Face-Off’). It was a very good show back in the 2004, and certainly no less, (and no more) scientific than ‘Shark Week’ had been, for example. (And still is – ‘Shark Week’, that is). Sadly, after a single season, it got cancelled, but that is another story – you can still see it online even now, so let us not bitch too much about it.

Therefore, the episode I watched today was ‘Polar Bear vs. Walrus’, and the polar bear lost. Why? AFO, (being the sort of show that it was), has actually given the answer, (indirectly), to its audience, especially to those who had been paying attention to all the experiments done on (any given) episode.

What is a polar bear? It is a predator, a mammal of the order ‘Carnivora’. As such, basically, it is a typical carnivore, with teeth-studded jaws and powerful paws, armed with formidable claws. Like other bears (brown and black, for example), it uses paws to subdue its prey and teeth and jaws to dismember and eat it. If you compare skulls of a bear, (regardless if it is polar, grizzly, or black), and a weasel (short-tailed, long-tailed, etc.), and some other carnivore (or even their relatives, fur seals and sea lions), the skulls will be quite similar, especially if you look pass the differences in sizes and size-related differences. (This fact hints at the fact that weasels and bears are related to each other, however distantly, but we are not talking biological classification now.)

Put otherwise, a polar bear has a standard tool kit of a carnivore, not counting its’ size and strength. A walrus has not. It has a very different kit - one that is suited for defence, including against polar bears in question.

Technically, a walrus is a pinniped, not a carnivore, but the two orders of mammals are closely related to each other, BTW. Diet-wise, a walrus would eat shellfish and similar creatures rather than anything else, but in the past, there was some (anecdotal) evidence of orphaned walruses growing up to be more active hunters – of seals and similar sea life. I.e., it does have some mental hardware to be as formidable as a polar bear is, and perhaps even more so.

Moreover… as it was said before, the polar bear is a typical carnivorous mammal; it is also the biggest carnivorous mammal on Earth in the modern times and it is the top mammalian predator in the Arctic (not counting the killer whale, but the killer whale doesn’t live in the Arctic all the time – the polar bear does). It preys mostly on seals, but it will eat anything else, from the lemming (a small, vole-like rodent of the north) to the walrus in question – and everything else, alive or dead, in between. Sometimes it even captures the belugas and the narwhals – a northern species of toothed whales… The walrus has evolved precisely to stand-up to it. It has specifically evolved to be powerful enough to fend-off a polar bear – the big size, the thick armor of blubber, and the tusks: the polar bear’s presence was a powerful factor in the walrus’s evolution.

Yes, the evolution went both ways, and the polar bear, especially in theory, can take down a walrus…but it would rather eat something else. A ringed seal, or a harp seal, or a bearded seal…for example, not a walrus. Anything else but a walrus, really. And when the polar bear does charge a walrus, it is usually a cow or a calf – not a bull in its prime, as it was on AFO. A fight between a polar bear and a walrus is a long and exhaustive affair, unlike what AFO has shown, and moreover, the walrus has a better motivation (usually) - it is fighting for its like, unlike the polar bear...until the last few decades, when the global warming changed everything. 

…To add injury to insult, AFO has shown a polar bear hunt a walrus live, from footage that would later shown, (in 2006), on David Attenborough’s ‘Planet Earth’ TV series. There, a polar bear did attack a walrus – and the walrus got away, while wounding the polar bear very badly in the process (it died later on). I.e., polar bears tend to attack walruses only from desperation, and usually they lose. Usually, because lately the global warming had hit both them and walruses very badly; with the pack ice melting, both animals are being increasingly driven to the shoreline, where the polar bears have an advantage, especially in speed. If you ever see a TV program called ‘Polar Bear Battlefield’, you will see a pack of summer-weakened walruses being successfully overrun by equally hungry polar bears – and the bears won.

Polar bears and walruses have lived alongside each other for several thousand years at least, and have learned to coexist with each other within the cold Arctic Ocean and the adjoining tundra. Now humans are changing this balance of power – and both species are the losers. Let us reverse this disturbing trend of global warming – before it is too late.

Marvel comics - Civil War revisited and co. - June 30

The second installment of Captain America, (Steve Rogers, as opposed to Sam Wilson or anyone else), has made an appearance. Basically, Cap is still Cap; he is just hailing Hydra because of a certain sentient cosmic cube. And the Red Skull. And Maria Hill. And God knows whom/what else. Yay.

Well, no, but only because Marvel has done another rotation on a spot and returned from where it has come. This sort of thing isn’t happening only in Marvel; in the Archie-related comics too, but-

However, the Archies have something that Marvel does not have – oodles of comics that are not interconnected with each other, for example. Archies do not care about continuity at least some of the time – they just publish comics with a brief punchline, and that is it. Marvel does not really do that – it goes for continuity, even in newspaper comics (spider-man?). As such, when it does about-face and returns to its roots, it…really returns to its’ roots, without having gone anywhere else at all. The entire Marvel universe just stands in one spot lately, without going anywhere.

Yes, things were different in the past: there was the death of captain America (well, a death, anyhow), a Skrull invasion, a dark age when Norman Osborn and his cronies were in charge, and then it was over, and MCU appeared for real, and suddenly a Marvel interconnected universe was…not real, but more three-dimensional than how it was in the comics because it was live, on screen, yeah? Therefore, now the comics are trying to imitate MCU, and so far, it involves a Marvel Civil War. Civil War II. Seriously? Yes, when you ‘borrow’ from yourself, it is not exactly copyright infringement; it is (just/still) unimaginative. The comics just do not know where to go, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are a good example of that.

Yes, we’re talking about the characters from the TV show, only now they have been adapted into the comics…precisely as they were seen on the TV: there’s Phil and Mel, the FitzSimmons, Daisy, who got her own thing but lately is hanging around with ‘team Coulson’, as is Deathlok (who didn’t appear in AoS S3 at all, BTW). Grant has finally made his appearance, and yes, he has still betrayed S.H.I.E.L.D. for Hydra, but if on TV it took him the better part of S1, here it is more along the lines of a couple of issues, so it doesn’t have the same impact, plus the readers usually know that Grant is ‘a bad guy’ so there’s no surprise either. Basically, the Marvel comics are running with the old material, just presented in a new package, rather than creating anything original, whether it is S.H.I.E.L.D. or captain America. Right now, cosmic cubes seem to be the order of the day…aside from Civil War, revisited. Sigh.

End

Captain America - agent of Hydra? ?? May 27

Now that AoS S3 is over, AC has been cancelled, and ‘Most Wanted’ has been cancelled pre-production once more, Marvel must have been bored, or something, since it came up with the idea of Captain America/Steve Rogers being an agent of Hydra all along. To paraquote the Old Testament book of Leviticus, the Hell?

Let us start again. In ‘Civil War’ the movie, captain America came off the screen as a right arsehole at times, especially when it came to Tony and his family. Tony himself can be a big-mouthed jackass from time to time, but he tries, he really tries, and the entire ‘Civil War’ movie is actually based on this. Steve has ideas of what a heroic life should be life, and so does Tony, and neither of them like each other’s idea, and then along comes colonel Zemo with his own grievances against the Avengers, and it all goes to Hell, and Stark and Rogers aren’t talking to each other anymore, and the Avengers are outlawed, and -

Okay, ‘Civil War’ was a very impressive piece of mass media, let us be honest here. The characters were well rounded and real people, the background and its details was awesome too, and Black Panther and Spider-Man were introduced (and will be getting their own movies in the future), and the Ant-Man kicked ass too.

Of course, this being the MCU, there was at least one sticky point – Ant-Man the movie. In the credits scene, the audience saw Cap and Falcon actually capture Bucky and working on de-brainwashing him; the Accords are mentioned too. Then comes ‘Civil War’, which seems to be ignoring this scene, as Barnes is out at large once more, and not really de-brainwashed too. Tough break, Ant-Man the movie.

Otherwise, however, ‘Civil War’ fits well enough with the rest of the MCU continuity; in many ways, it seems to be a direct continuation of the previous Captain film, ‘The Winter Soldier’. Now what?

Let us start with an important point – Hydra is gone in MCU. The Avengers, the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., had finished it off between the ‘Age of Ultron’ film and now. Crossbones/Brock Rumlow, who is an important Hydra-related villain in the comics, (and ‘Winter Soldier’ movie) is killed in the first half-hour of the film and is forgotten almost immediately in all the fallout that follows. Hydra as such is gone in MCU, general Talbot in AoS has destroyed it with S.H.I.E.L.D.’s help, so that’s it, the odds of Hydra returning to MCU is possible, but until the next MCU movie or series features it coming back, (and Werner von Strucker, for example, is still alive in AoS) it is gone. Case in point – Helmut Zemo. In the comics, he is an important figure in Hydra hierarchy; in MCU, he was a native of Sokovia, a colonel of its’ secret service, who had an axe to grind with the Avengers because of the ‘Age of Ultron’ events: his family got killed. He was not Hydra, he helped the Avengers to fall apart all the same – so it is quite likely that any villains that the Avengers, (or the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) will face in the future, will not be Hydra. Fair enough. So-

So now, Marvel comics release a new Steve Rogers series, where Captain America is an agent of Hydra. The Hell?

Yes, Marvel comics and MCU tend to be treated as separate entities, but they (especially the comics) seem to be blurring the lines, especially with the comics’ AoS story lines. S.H.I.E.L.D., by now, has become established in comics, and it seems to be reflecting the MCU, as Avengers and agents (and an occasional X-Man or so) interacting openly with each other in the universe. Now what?

Into the mix comes Grant Ward, who, in the MCU, was a Hydra agent, who eventually became a host for Hive, an InHuman villain in the last part of AoS S3, who almost turned a large part of the world’s human population into InHumans or Primitives – take your pick. Grant was a controversial character – odds are, that at first the writers planned to redeem him…and then changed their mind; but frankly, AoS the TV series constantly suffered from continuity gaps, canon controversies, some nasty characters who were supposed to be ‘White Hats’, and etc.; the point is that some people hate him, a lot, and others are solidly behind him, precisely because of this controversy, which is why, one suspects, the show had him finally killed in mid-S3 finale, and Hive became an independent character instead.

And also? AoS S3 finale was reminiscent of the first captain America film finale, where Steve and Peggy say good-bye and Steve vanishes, until Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. discover him in the Arctic. That is fine, except that here it was director Coulson, rather than Lincoln Campbell, who was supposed to perish alongside Hive.

To elaborate: ever since the mid-season S3 finale Coulson was growing increasingly haunted by him killing Ward on Maveth and needed repentance/closure/whatever for his actions. On the other hand, the first episode of S3 showed Daisy and Lincoln working their powers in perfect tandem to defeat Andrew/Lash; it was one of the worst episodes of the entire series, but still it was canon.

Again, it could have been a very dramatic finale – Coulson sacrificing himself to stop Hive, to fix his mistakes and shortcomings, and to give his adopted daughter, Daisy, and her new boyfriend, Lincoln, a fresh chance to be themselves, their own people, free from the past influences of Hive and Grant Ward. If, six months later, Daisy and Lincoln were on the outs, it would still work and create a further dramatic conflict between the team members, not unlike to how it went on ‘Civil War’ between the various Avengers…but it did not happen. Instead, Lincoln is dead, Daisy is swinging in the wind, and Coulson was demoted from his directorial office in S.H.I.E.L.D. This, too, can work – after all, after the Avengers’ Civil War, we had an ‘age of Darkness’ – we had Stark as a director of S.H.I.E.L.D., we had Osborn (and hey, he is Spidey’s archnemesis, so maybe he will appear in MCU in time?), and we had all sort of nastiness afterwards. Maybe Coulson’s demotion will make sense in S4 when it comes to screen…but mostly, this is just another AoS clusterfuck. Ian Quinn is gone, the Koenigs are gone, Hunter & Morse are gone, Deathlok, Joey – they all just left the show without a reasonable explanation. At least Mitchell, who played Lincoln, had closure for his character, cough.

Back to the comics – now, the comic version of S.H.I.E.L.D, has Grant Ward in it – as S.H.I.E.L.D. spy in Hydra, at least for now, (building an army of Iron Man rip-offs, in a plot similar to Iron Man 3 movie), and Captain is Hydra. Already there are theories that the Red Skull has used a cosmic cube to accomplish this, but it does not matter. People are upset. People are pissed. Moreover, people are claiming that the writers for ‘Steve Rogers the Hydra agent’ have ripped-off this idea out of AoS S1 (Grant Ward). Now what?

Well, it is ‘just’ a comic – people will get over it…eventually, because it is captain America, so odds are that this idea will go down like a lead balloon especially at first (and later on too, if this trend picks up momentum). Comics themselves are a confusing medium of mass media, especially Marvel with their interactive and intertwining plotlines, so odds are that the shock of cap being Hydra will be buried, eventually.

However, an aftermath, an aftertaste will remain. People will not forget how their beloved character was turned into a ‘Nazi’ (something that MCU tried to distance itself from, especially on AoS, again), and since the Internet is a ‘global village’ of sorts, this controversy will cause problems, especially among Marvel fans, for a time at least.

However, wait! Cap’s predicament is supposed to reflect on real world’s issues! Donald Trump and the right wing! No, just no. Trump is a most unpleasant man, but he, currently, is executing one of the basic features of the American society: equal opportunity for everyone. He saw, for himself, a chance to become the president of the U.S., and he took it. On the other hand, an American citizen named Krystal Lake, (works in Home Depot), used the same opportunity not to enter politics, but to order a custom cap, with a pithy slogan: ‘America was never great’ or something along those lines. As a result, Trump may become president of the U.S., while Lake has a cap with a pithy slogan, the end. The moral?

Yes, Americans are a people with a freedom of speech and they use it, and they will keep it, and yes, the American president is elected by the people (and for the people…maybe). Guess what, there are plenty of people behind Trump, and no pithy message will be able to change this, not alone.

Do you know what happened in Russia, after their WWI misadventure? The Royal family was deposed, but not by the Communists, no. By the aristocracy and intelligentsia, by the people who would be later depicted, (sometimes), as monarchists. They were not, not really – they honestly intended to depose the monarch and create something between a democratic republic (the U.S.) and a constitutional monarchy (the U.K.), not the USSR. Only, while they discussed, debated and talked, Vladimir Lenin (look him up on the Wikipedia, if you don’t know him) and his communistic comrades got together, produced several simple and straight-to-the-point slogans, and won the hearts of the masses – workers and peasants, primarily, but the rest of the social strata of Russia of that time was present too. The result? The USSR. Was it built to last? Gorbachev broke it from the inside, and ta-dah, we have Perestroika, and then, 25 years later, the U.S. finally realized that one more victory like this one, and they will be undone, so they…got involved in Middle East, and northern Africa, and now they are much more undone than before, for Obama the democrat just continued what George Bush II the republican has started, and- Enter the Trump.

Trump is not a very good person. He already backed out of a debate with Sanders, for example. However, he is a man with concrete, specific ideas, and people appreciate it. The international democracy, the global village that the U.S. has been practicing since the Cold War and beyond isn’t for everyone – hence the rise of new right-wing practice, hence the growing insistence that the Middle Eastern refuges go home or wherever/whatever, just – out of Europe. If Trump wins the election, he might be the American version of Gorbachev – but pithy slogans on custom-ordered headwear will not prevent this – and neither will comics. How does Captain America, as well as the rest of Marvel relate to the ‘Trump situation’ directly? They do not. As a result, Marvel is stuck with Cap being Hydra, and – nothing more, at least for now. Maybe Tony is a member of the communistic Leviathan or something like that, who knows? It is not the point.

The point is that Marvel has overshot its’ mark completely. If Captain America being Hydra is some sort of a pithy statement, that is. Otherwise? It is just another plot twist to boost up the sales, in the worst traditions of AoS the TV series, and it will reverberate/backfire on the Marvel comic series as such as well.

End