We’ve finally hit it. The big
kahuna. The champion of champions. One of the greatest superheroes ever
created, Captain America. He’s one of my favorite superheroes, but then, how
could he not be? The dude punched out Hitler on the cover of his first issue. That’s
how awesome he is. But, like many a character, his origins are much more
humble. Let’s have a look at said origin, shall we?
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| In order to stop the Nazis, they send in a blonde haired, blue eyed superhuman... I wonder if anyone appreciated the Irony? |
Steven Rogers was born in the
1920s, the son of two Irish Immigrants, Sarah and Joseph Rogers. Life for Steve
was rough, even by immigrant standards. His father died when he before he was
ten, and his mother died of pneumonia before he was eighteen. He was able to
etch out a living, though, and even gathered enough funds to get into art
school. Yep, the future Captain America started off dreaming of being an
artist, specifically a comic book artist. But, he put his dreams on hold when
the Third Reich started gaining steam in Europe. He tried to enlist in the
Army, but was rejected. At this point in his life, Steve was as thin as a twig,
suffered from Asthma, and looked like a light breeze could knock him over. So, yeah,
not the best choice for serving in the US military. But, his resolution to
enlist and serve his country caught the attention of General Chester Philips,
who convinced Steve to sign up for the experimental Project: Rebirth.
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| That's one. Now, Hitler, prepare for the next 199 punches to the face. |
The project was directed by German defector Abraham Erskine, codenamed Dr. Josef Reinstein. Steve was given a
combination of injections, oral formula, and exposure to high energy Vita-Rays.
These different methods combined caused the willowy Steven Rogers to be
transformed into the super beefy, super powerful Captain America. Erskine
planned on replicating the experiment, given the success of Steve, but never go
the chance. He was murdered by a Nazi spy, who had hoped to steal all the info
Erskine had on the Super Soldier Serum. Joke was on him, though, because
Erskine intentionally never wrote down key steps in his process, so the real
Super Soldier Serum died with Erskine. Steve hunts the spy down, and avenges
Erskine. Sort of, some stories depict the spy stupidly running into some
machinery, others show Captain America punching the SOB into said machinery.
You be the judge. Given that there was only one Super Soldier now, the US government
decided to turn Rogers into a Patriotic superhero. They gave him a costume,
which he sketched up himself, a simple bullet proof shield, a side arm, and the
official codename of Captain America. He was assigned to Camp Lehigh in Virginia,
and was told to be as unassuming as possible. To do this, he posed as the
single most clumsy infantry private that the US Army has ever seen. Yep, there
was a time when Captain America’s secret ID wasn’t basic information. He also
met and befriended the young mascot of Camp Lehigh, Bucky Barnes. They two
became fast friends, and when Bucky finally learned Cap’s identity, he insisted
on becoming Steve’s sidekick. The team of Captain America and Bucky was formed.
While on their adventures, they stopped many a Nazi world domination plan, and
a number of pseudo-Nazi world domination plan. They became the most hated foes
of the Red Skull, Baron Zemo, Baron Strucker, and the evil HYDRA organization.
They were occasionally aided by members of the proto-Avengers’ group, the
Invaders. The Captain also traded in his original shield and side arm for a new
Shield, made of an adamantium/Vibranium alloy. It was indestructible, or as close
to it as a non-magic item can get, and serves as an excellent weapon.
Captain America and Bucky were
tragically lost in the final days of WW2. They were trying to stop the evil
Baron Zemo from destroying an experimental drone plane. They kamikaze plane
Zemo planned to use blew up before reaching it’s target, casting the Captain
and Bucky into the Atlantic Ocean. They’re both inaccurately presumed dead.
Years later, his frozen body is discovered and worshipped by an Inuit tribe.
Namor the Sub-Mariner, a merman with a severe dislike of mankind, tosses the
frozen legend into the sea. Why? Because he’s a dick, that’s why. The block of
ice is discovered by the Avengers, whom were looking for the Sub-Mariner, a
short while later. They’re of course shocked when the defrosted Cap wakes up,
even more so when he kicks all of their butts. After calming down a bit, the
Avengers explain to Cap what had happened to him, and that he was now several
decades removed from the 1940s. Despite the shock of losing decades, Steve
adjusts and shortly thereafter is made the leader of the Avengers.
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| That moment when you realize discovering a frozen legend and see him wake up despite being in ice for sixty years is the most normal part of your day. |
Over the next few years, Captain America
reestablishes himself as a force for good, by occasionally teaming up with old
War Buddy Nick Fury, and training several current and future superheroes, like
Rick Jones and Sam Wilson (aka the Falcon.). He also had to battle a corrupted
version of his legacy in the form of William Burnside, a dangerously insane man
that tried to be the Captain America of the 1950s. Burnside had surgically altered his face to resemble Cap's, and taken part of the Super Soldier treatment to gain similar powers. Unfortunately, he didn't know about the Vita-Rays, and without them his body and mind became...unstable. The fight didn’t end well, and it
left Captain America wondering if his role as a patriotic superhero is a “good”
role if it can inspire such insanity and fanaticism like that of Burnside. He
shelves the Captain America identity for a little while, becoming Nomad, the
man without a country. He goes back to being Captain America pretty quickly,
just so you know. He quickly became, or regained the title, of the most well known and respected superhero in the US and the World.
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| I wonder what's going to happen if he ever meets the Human Torch... |
Years later, Steve learns that his old friend
Bucky is still alive, and had become the Winter Soldier, the super assassin of
the former Soviet Union. After learning the terrible secret, Cap does
everything in his power to find Winter Soldier and try to save him. He ends up
using the Cosmic Cube to restore his friends mind. Shortly thereafter, the
Superhero Civil War breaks out. For those who don’t know the plot, several hundred people
are killed by the supervillain Nitro, these deaths were the tipping point for
many American who felt that so called “superheroes” needed to be held
accountable for their actions, both good and bad. So the Superhero Registration
Act was proposed. Under it, any and all superhumans had to register their names
and powers with the government. Some, like Tony Stark, felt that this would
give superheroes the accountability the public demanded, and would allow for
heroes to be better trained. Captain America, and his allies, felt that this
would just further complicate the lives of superheroes and leave their “normal”
lives (i.e. their families) vulnerable. And, of course, there was the danger of
what the government may or may not do with a veritable army of superbeings
under their thumb. Captain America fights hard against the pro-registration
side, but ultimately surrenders when he sees the collateral damage of the
Superheroes private war. He’s arrested, but is assassinated outside a federal
courthouse before he can be arraigned. The assassination was plotted by
long-time foe Red Skull, and carried out by superhuman mercenary Crossbones and
a brainwashed Sharon Carter (Cap’s ex.) Steven remains dead for a while, his
body supposedly buried at Arlington, but in actuality Iron-Man had it moved to
the bit of the Arctic where they’d first rediscovered Cap. Namor, who is an
on-again off-again good guy, volunteers to stand guard over Cap’s body. He is
eventually revived, and takes up his shield once more. Though he has since
passed it on to the Falcon, but I’ll go over that another time.
Steven Rogers gained his powers
from the experimental Super-Soldier treatment. The combination of serum and
Vita-Rays pushed Steve’s body to the peak of human physicality. He’s not really
“super” in any category, strength, speed or endurance, but he’s above average
in all categories and that combined with his incredibly sharp mind make him a force to be reckoned
with. He can fight harder and longer than any other soldier on the planet. Steve has a healing factor as well. It's nothing on par with his old pal Wolverine's, but it allows him to recover from minor injuries in hours and most major wounds in days. He
is a military veteran, schooled in every field that a soldier can be trained
in. He’s an expert hand-to-hand fighter, marksman, and survival techniques, to name just a few of his talents. He’s
also a skilled artist. Bet you didn’t see that one coming, did you? Of all his
equipment the most iconic is his disk-shaped Shield. The red, white, and blue
shield is virtually indestructible. Cap can use it both defensively, blocking
everything from Mjolnir to an angry Hulk, and offensively, flinging it like a
discus and having it ricochet off people and objects to return to him.
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| What was that about "there's nothing special about Captain America," little green man? |
Captain America has been used a
number of times in various Marvel series. There’s a lot of them, so I’ll just
focus on what I feel is his best appearances. But, I will say that shows like
the 90s X-Men, Spider-Man, and later X-Men Evolution all have at least one
episode dedicated to him.
The
Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes have the most close to origin version of
Captain America to date. He’s frozen in the 1940s after trying to foil the Red
Skull, and is uncovered in the present by the Avengers. He quickly becomes one
of their most beloved members, and even helps train his teammates. The other
heroes rally around him more than once. At the end of the season 1 finale, he’s
kidnapped by the alien Skrull and replaced by Captain Skrull. Skrull America?
No, Captain Skrull. Captain Skrull spends his time disassembling the Avengers,
seeing the Hulk arrested by SHIELD, ruining any attempt at peace with the
Skrull’s enemy the Kree, and so on. We don’t see the real Captain again until “Prisoner
of War,” where he utters the most badass line ever. While being interrogated by
the Skrulls he proclaims “Name: Steven Rogers, Rank: Captain, Serial Number:
54985870, and that’s all you’re ever going to get from me.” The Skrulls also
make the horrible assumption that “There’s nothing special about Captain America.”
Steve then orchestrates and escape, rallying imprisoned heroes and villains together.
Unfortunately, this inspires the Skrull to use Captain Skrull as their mouthpiece,
to try and trick humanity into surrendering to them. Plan might have worked in
Iron-Man, with some help from Dr. Doom, hadn’t discovered how to cancelled out
the Skrull’s shapeshifting, and if Cap himself hadn’t arrived in time. He
spends a few episodes rebuilding the reputation that Captain Skrull ruined. He
remained one of the top heroes of the Avengers after returning until the end.
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| With friends like these, I almost feel sorry for his enemies. |
He’s a major character in the new
Disney Marvel Universe, in shows like Ultimate
Spider-Man, Avengers Assemble, and Hulk
and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. He’s more or less a watered down version of the
movie Captain America.
He was the fourth character to get
his own feature film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Captain America: The First Avenger chronicles Steven Rogers’ rise
from scrawny New Yorker to the Super Soldier. He’s portrayed by Chris Evans,
whom surprised me by doing a phenomenal job at it. He battles the evil Red
Skull and HYDRA, ultimately sacrificing his life to stop HYDRA from bombing the
US with Tesseract enhanced bombs. He returns in The Avengers where he joins Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in stopping Thor’s
insane brother Loki and a Chitari army from conquering the world. His next solo
film was Captain America: The Winter Soldier,
where he discovers something wrong with SHIELD and that his old pal Bucky is
still alive and kicking. He also meets and befriends Sam Wilson, aka Falcon. He
rejoins the Avengers in The Avengers: Age
of Ultron, where they first take out a main HYDRA base, and then must stop
the evil AI Ultron from destroying life as we know it. He’s set to return again
in Captain America: Civil War next
year.
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| All it takes to stop an army. |
Why do I say that Captain America
is the one of the greatest, if not the greatest, superhero of all time? It is because
he’s not the strongest, or the fastest, or the smartest, but he’s the most courageous.
He stands and fights regardless of the odds, of his own limitations, or even what
he wants as just a man. It is his duty, and privilege, to protect everyone that
he can. He stands for the best parts of America, perseverance, honor, justice,
and fighting for the little guy. Here’s another way to look at it. In the Deadpool
story arc The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,
Captain America and Wolverine are kidnapped alongside Deadpool and shipped to
North Korea. There they help Deadpool learn a little about his past, and save a
group of North Korean’s forcibly mutated into facsimiles of the X-Men. At one
point, Captain America breaks off from the group, promising to hold of the
Koreans. He stands on the road, shield in his hands and against his legs. And that’s
enough to make the North Korean soldiers stop. The man is so intimidating, so
legendary, that all he has to do is stand at the ready to make trained soldiers
stop and thinking, “Do I want to cross this man?” And I think that might sum
him up best. He’s the man out of time, the legendary hero, the sentinel of
freedom, the original Captain America.
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