The very simple mistake above is that you confound "relevance" with "acceptance". Accepting, in fantasy, the terms of war is to make a pact with destruction.
It would be many times more relevant if Cap was the man with no weapon in the middle of a war.
For many years now in his mythos, Cap was the righteous one, the one who would do anything but kill. That was the beauty.
Frank Miller, in the
Fall of Murdock, makes Cap say that he serves no one, but the dream.
To make him use a gun, and to make him firing it all jerky, screaming, is just to add another battered war poster in a world already tired of it.
It's silly, non-imaginative, old-fashioned, anti-philosophical, you name it.
Relevance is in a total opposite attitude: making Cap a symbol, using a non-lethal weapon, being calm and assuring during a crisis is the core of the character.
That's not whining, Strykez: that's to think, reasoning, considering. You should know that after all these years (and
I remember you as the voice against this easy "labeling" attitude).
