It’s not the team they’ve put together, but what a team. Radical President Barry Levine and Exec VP Jesse Berger sign on as producers along with Sam Worthington (yes, that Sam Worthington, he of Clash of the Titans and Avatar fame), who brings his Full Clip Productions onboard to exec produce. Worthington himself is locked in as, Graham Bricke, the curmudgeonly charming lead, and F. Gary Gray (The Italian Job, The Negotiator) attached to direct. And Levine and Berger’s Radical Pictures partners with IM Global’s Stuart Ford to finance the now much-anticipated Last Days of American Crime. But it’s not the team they’ve put together. It’s the idea itself.

“I cannot represent the American Government: the President does that. I must represent the American people. I represent the American Dream, the freedom to strive, to become all that you dream of being. Being Captain America has been my dream.”
—Steve Rogers

 
As America’s new president Gerald R. Ford takes office and the last U.S. troops leave Vietnam, it doesn’t take Steve Rogers long to return to his calling as Captain America. During his time as Nomad, he realizes that the Captain America identity could be a symbol of American ideals, not its government. It wouldn’t be until 1987 that Steve Rogers would again be forced to make the choice between his government and his principles.

“The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking… the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind.  If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”
- Albert Einstein

In the early and mid-1950s, comic book sales dropped more than 50 percent. Superheroes became passé, and under pressure from the U.S. government, comicbook publishers essentially abandoned violence and made their superheroes pacifists, all thanks to a German-American psychiatrist named Dr. Fredric Wertham. His now infamous book, Seduction of the Innocent, blamed the rise of juvenile delinquency in America on comic books, in part, because of the mentor/ward relationship between popular costumed heroes such as Batman and Robin, Captain America and Bucky, and Green Arrow and Speedy. His assertion was that these pairings were really homosexual in nature, as well as pedophiliac. Of course, there were other accusations but this was a big one in the superhero genre. He felt, and convinced millions of parents that, comicbooks were poisoning America’s children, almost single-handedly destroying the comic book industry.

By 1956 Superhero comics were on the rise once again, thanks, in part, to Showcase #4 from DC Comics, which reintroduced the Flash, a character popular in the 1940s. Significant changes were made to modernize the character, including his persona, his name, costume and origin. After The Flash’s success, DC began bringing back other members of the Golden Age, including Hawkman and the Green Lantern, making similar changes to compliment the optimism of the Atomic Age.

“A man’s country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle.”
—George William Curtis

Steve Rogers, like many other Americans during World War II, wanted to join the Army to defend his country. Rail thin and malnourished, the military would not let him join. Instead, the U.S. Government invited Rogers to join a top secret military initiative, Project: Rebirth. Intended to enhance U.S. Soldiers to the peak of human perfection, he was given a serum and exposed to vita-rays, transforming him into a super soldier.

During the process, the inventor of the serum, Dr. Josef Reinstein, was murdered by a Nazi operative, leaving Rogers the only successful test subject. The U.S. Government used him as a special agent meant to inspire and rally fellow U.S. troops to combat.

Wearing a costume made with the colors, stars and stripes of the American flag, and bearing an indestructible shield, he was known as Captain America.

“I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt

The 1930s were a turbulent time as the Great Depression left many Americans in despair. In response, President Franklin Roosevelt created the New Deal, a series of expansive government programs focused on relief for the unemployed, recovery of the economy and reform of America’s financial system. By the late 1930s, the country had begun to slowly recover.

I’ve always hated mandalas. Almost intuitively, right from the very beginning.

Not the mandalas themselves so much, those seemed like 12-dimension maps imagined by Garret Lisey. Not mandalas themselves, but the meditation associated with them. The act of needing to destroy them immediately on completion. That seemed like the highest crime of all. Destruction of the beautiful before it could fully exist.

When in Tibet a few years ago, witnessing the completion of one such mandala just killed me. And in that moment I knew, knew in my soul that doesn’t exist, that I’d achieved A True Enlightenment. And what was that Enlightenment? That I loved money, infrastructure, everything that Russia (where’d I’d visited just prior) was in the face of what Tibet lacked.

And of course that wasn’t the case at all. That wasn’t the true, True Enlightenment.