Avengers

[JamesVincent]

Best movie ever.

[JamesVincent]

I have always wondered, when Steve Rogers was found and thawed out, did he have back pay coming to him? Is he still on active duty? If so does he not get an Army captain's salary? And can he also collect Social Security? He is (technically) more than old enough.

In the comics, there is one flashback episode where in WWII Cap was teamed up with a group of Canadian commandos led by a Sgt. Jimmy Logan, later known as Wolverine.

Letting my geek flag fly.

I wondered whether they were going to tie together Captain America and Wonder Woman since she did work for him.

[Ragnar]

On Captain America's status when he woke up. Given that he was a draftee who was commissioned during the war, he would have been mustered out at the end of the war as most of the Army was no longer needed. So he would be a civilian again after some outprocessing from the Army.

However, since he was missing in action and presumed dead any benefits would have been terminated after a few years.

On the other hand, were he a prisoner of war he would have continued to receive pay and benefits. Also, he would have been automatically promoted with other members of his officer year. Its likely that he would have made Major around 1952, Lt Col about 1960 and Colonel in the mid to late 60's. But this doesn't apply since he was not a POW.

So it looks to me like Cap is being screwed by the gov. He hasn't been let out of the Army and they haven't given him the benefits he deserves. Is anyone really surprised by this?

[webhick]

I was wrong and I stand corrected.

A personal observation - the biggest problem ANY attempt at portraying Wonder Woman again on either the big screen or small screen (in a live action format) is that whoever plays her will be compared to, and likely found lacking, to Linda Carter.

Your opinion may vary.

Not if you cast RuPaul as Wonder Woman.

[JamesVincent]

I was wrong and I stand corrected.

A personal observation - the biggest problem ANY attempt at portraying Wonder Woman again on either the big screen or small screen (in a live action format) is that whoever plays her will be compared to, and likely found lacking, to Linda Carter.

Your opinion may vary.

I also stand corrected. One of those things I half remembered. As far as Linda Carter goes, yeah, theres a lot of problems in replacing her. Most of the Avengers, with the way they had been cast over the years (David Hasselhoff playing Nick Fury for instance) it was relatively easy to break away and do a good job, not much to compare against. And I personally think they did a damn good job casting them. Wonder Woman however.....

[Parvati]

I was wrong and I stand corrected.

A personal observation - the biggest problem ANY attempt at portraying Wonder Woman again on either the big screen or small screen (in a live action format) is that whoever plays her will be compared to, and likely found lacking, to Linda Carter.

Your opinion may vary.

Not if you cast RuPaul as Wonder Woman.

I'd pay to see that. (But only if John Leguizamo would be willing to do drag again as her sidekick...)

[Doktor Avalanche]

I have always wondered, when Steve Rogers was found and thawed out, did he have back pay coming to him? Is he still on active duty? If so does he not get an Army captain's salary? And can he also collect Social Security? He is (technically) more than old enough.

Answered in the order received:

Yes - he's MIA until he's either found alive or his remains are positively identified. If he's found alive (repatriated) he's entitled to back pay, all 60+ some-odd years of it.

If he's conclusively dead, his designated next of kin would get his back pay up until the time his remains were discovered. So, if it took 60+ years to prove his death, the next of kin will get 60+ years of his back pay (provided they lived that long to collect it - I currently don't know of any regulation that allows the designatee to pass on benefits to offspring).

Yes - if that was his rank at the time he went MIA he would continue to draw pay comensurate with his rank.

Yes - unless he's proven dead or repatriated he is still considered active duty.

Missing is a casualty status guided by United States Code that provides for missing members of the Military Service. Excluded are personnel who are absent-without-leave (AWOL), deserters, or dropped-from-the-rolls. A person declared missing is categorized as beleaguered, besieged, captured, detained, interned, Missing, or Missing in Action (MIA).

To be categorized as MIA, the casualty is a hostile casualty, other than the victim of a terrorist activity, who is not present at his or her duty location due to apparent involuntary reasons and whose location is unknown.

A Soldier who enters a missing status is entitled to the pay and allowances to which entitled when the missing status began or to which the member later becomes entitled.

As far as his Social Security benefits go...well, he'd have a hell of a lot of contributions made to SS by way of taxes but I think he actually could collect SS given his age.

[Kestrel]

MIA or AWOL? I think AWOL. Given the nature of the mission he was on when he disappeared, I'm betting his official biographer (script writer) will discover that someone filed AWOL paperwork on our hero years ago. When mission accountability is squirrely, it's a lot easier to protect your butt by doing that than it is to be on the wrong end of a major investigation.

True story: An Air Force NCO disappeared one day without a trace. No one seemed to know where or why; he was at work one day, and just didn't show up the next. He'd had ordinary problems at work, nothing really unexpected. He did have some typical marital troubles, he had two kids living with their mother in another state, but he made no attempt to contact them or any other family member after he disappeared. An investigation was launched but no trace of him was found. There was no activity on his phone or financial accounts. The only thing anyone could say was that there was no reason for him to disappear, and his car was never found.

After exhausting ordinary attempts to find him he was reclassified as AWOL, then declared a deserter, then officially mustered out. His two dependent kids were cut off from their benefits.

Fast-forward 10 years. A kid driving around one night went careening off the parkway just outside the air base main gate, and down a boat ramp into the river. Police and recovery teams spent days probing the murky water and thick mud looking for the kid. They found two cars. The first one belonged to the missing NCO. His remains were still inside.

No announcement was made about a settlement with the NCO's family for denial of benefits.

[Doktor Avalanche]

MIA or AWOL? I think AWOL. Given the nature of the mission he was on when he disappeared, I'm betting his official biographer (script writer) will discover that someone filed AWOL paperwork on our hero years ago. When mission accountability is squirrely, it's a lot easier to protect your butt by doing that than it is to be on the wrong end of a major investigation.

You also have to keep in mind Captain America was an important Army asset - an experiment subject in a Super Soldier program.

Doubtful they'd lose the paperwork on him.

[Kestrel]

You also have to keep in mind Captain America was an important Army asset - an experiment subject in a Super Soldier program.

Doubtful they'd lose the paperwork on him.

Yes, but was that program potentially embarassing to the top brass? We are, after all, talking about bio-ethical dilemmas on human experimentation. Everyone KNOWS what the Nazis did, and all loyal comic book readers KNOW what was secretly going on behind the Iron Curtain. Good heavens, what if the American public found out how deeply our own military leaders were involved in the same depravity? If the criminal element in our society got ahold of the super serum, no red-blooded honest American family would ever be safe again!

Better to quietly dispose of the evidence.

[The Observer]

Doubtful they'd lose the paperwork on him.

Need to keep in mind what happened to the Ark at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie.

[fortinbras]

Perhaps someone with supergeek knowledge of Capt America can clarify this.

Sometime in the 1960s, Capt America was found (underwater) and revived (in a comic book which I cannot now identify at all), and, when he woke up, he was babbling about Bucky and how they were in hot pursuit of Count somebody. I got the distinct impression that the Capt and Bucky ended up in the water either from a car chase or a roller coaster ride that ended badly. Apparently Bucky was with the Capt when he hit the water.

This evidently became the agreed-upon story for current comics, that he was somehow submerged while chasing this Nazi count.

But, my question is, what was story of his end (or what was the last story when his comic was discontinued) back in the 1940s?? Perhaps someone knows.

[fortinbras]

So drones were being used back in WW2! So why is everyone so upset that the US uses them more than a half-century later??

[The Observer]

A better example would have been the acoustic torpedo used in WWII. It was the first actual fire-and-forget drone for the purposes of selecting a specific target.

[Cathulhu]

Ok, comic geeks and fellow geekettes, it's time you met April and Maxi. They have a thing about comic art, especially the female poses.

http://maxiandapril.tumblr.com/

I love these girls almost as much as April loves her new shoes!