A while ago I got every single issue of The Avengers on DVD. (Marvel Comics, not the BBC series.)

Mostly, the stuff from the 60's is dreadful - The Wasp is a ridiculous, empty-headed boy-crazy bit of fluff, and Hank Pym a wildly misogynistic jerk. Iron Man can't utter a sentence without saying something about being "Transistor powered!" and Thor is ... well, I don't doubt he inspired Abba, you know? Even Captain America doesn't get off scot free - his obsession with Rick Brown and the rest of the "Teen Brigade" (who the Avengers send to fight super-villains fairly often) is unwholesome at best.

But sometimes, we get little glimpses of just why Cap is the coolest of all the super-heroes - and while he's delivering a smack-down to Baron Zemo, he utters a tirade that is worthy of here repeating: "I was adept at every form of hand-to-hand combat known to man while you wer stil safe in your laboratory, serving your Nazi masters! Where is your braggadocio NOW, Master of Evil?!! I still remember how you snered at democracy...how you calle d Americans soft... timid...too spoiled to fight for freedom! You mocked free men! you boasted of your contempt for liberty!! Feel my GRIP, Zemo! it's the grip of a FREE MAN! [Hmm, Masonic hints?] Look into my eyes, tyrant! They're the eyes of a man who would DIE for liberty! The world must never again make the fatal error mistaking compassion for weakness!! And while I live, it WON'T!!!!"

It's important to note that while Cap is hollering about compassion, he's giving Zemo a mach two faceplant into the cement. Now that's American compassion right there - compassion for the world by thumping Nazis! I'm not sure how many Nazis are left, but I could definitely get behind a policy of a solid face-kick any time they forget just how brusque American compassion can be. Of course, most of them probably live in Michigan and listen to death-metal, but that doesn't really change my opinion even a little bit. It's about ideology, not ethnicity. See, if you despise an intolerant ideology you are not yourself intolerant - and if you then go on to roundly beat the ever livin' snot of proponents of that ideology, you're not a violent psychopath, but actually a champion of liberty!