One Man's Nazi... Marvel's Marketing Misstep

So here's where the situation stands in the Marvel Comics Universe, vis a vis their crossover event, Secret Empire:

Captain America is the bad guy and, for all intents and purposes, has always been the bad guy since his origin. He's an agent of Hydra, the outfit that has ever been looking to dominate the world because dominating the world is a cool job to have.

Of course, Captain America has not always been the bad guy. You weren't reading about the adventures of a secret double agent doing deep cover for a villainous entity while he stood up for the Red, White, and Blue. The Marvel Universe reality was rewritten (I won't delve into the *cough* technical details; it's a cosmic entity that can rewrite history/reality on a whim. Let's just call it "magic" and move on) such that Steve Rogers' past was changed, aligning events to have him brought up the Hydra Way. Nurture beats Nature in this scenario. So, presto: Captain Hydra.

Here's the problem with this: In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America did not originally fight the Nazis of Germany. (You doubt me? Go back and rewatch CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER and see.) No, instead, he fought the Hydra from...Hydraland? It was all very vague and non-threatening and non-triggering. Which, I suppose, is a safe choice for a movie-maker these days wanting to make a family-friendly superhero movie.

But here's the problem with that: We all know Captain America fought the Nazis. So all those soldiers that Cap was fighting in his movies, despite the Hydra name associated to them, became synonymous with Nazis. And when the comics world shifts to match the movie world better, we end up not with Captain America, but Captain Nazi. (Don't let the fine folks at Fawcett know. We don't want a trademark war on our hands.)

In SECRET EMPIRE #0, Captain America's master strategy came to a head, and Hydra ends up taking over the United States. They're everywhere, and they're in control. Because reality changed.

Basically, Marvel is doing their version of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, another fine story by Philip K. Dick and now an Amazon video serial about Nazis taking control of America through reality changing.

To immerse the readers into what it would be like to suddenly wake up in a world dominated by Hydrazis, Marvel appealed to comic book stores to get the staff to wear shirts with the Hydra symbol on them.

And here is the problem with that. In their attempts to avoid direct Nazi references earlier, Marvel has supplanted the swastika with the Hydra symbol. To many readers, the two are now synonymous (with the exception that the Nazis commited genocide and, oh, were real people). Some comic stores took offense because they did not want to represent those ideals. They saw dressing up as imaginary Hydra agents as being the same as dressing up as literal Nazis.

I get it. It's not really in the best interest of comic book stores to encourage a bizarre cosplay involving genocidal stormtroopers who march in lock-step to the whims of an evil empire bent on domination, just to encourage people to read a book.

Oh, wait.

Bleeding Cool's Rich Johnston touched on the same topic, albeit from a much less snarky angle than the one from which I'm approaching it.

There's a lesson to be had here, somewhere. A case study for future marketing classes to dissect, analyze, pass along. But I think it all boils down to this: When you replace Nazis with a different group, all you've really done is created another name for Nazis.

Or maybe it's that if you get overly upset about the actions and machinations of a completely fictional group in a comic book, it might be time to reassess reality. The real one, not the rebooted one.