POSSIBLE SPOILERS (I SWEAR I’LL KEEP IT TO THINGS THAT WILL HAPPEN IN THE FIRST 20 MINUTES OF THE MOVIE…OR PROBABLY WILL)
Inevitably, people tend to ask me which superhero I’d like to be. I don’t really have a full fledged answer. The answer is not Captain America, which shocks everybody. Here’s the secret to non-comic fans: Steve Rogers, Captain America, does not want to be Captain America.
Steve was a boy growing up in the height of World War II who was deemed unfit for military service. Unable to stand by and watch while the Nazis were, you know, Nazis, he did anything he could to enlist, eventually gaining the notice of higher-ups looking for candidates for a dangerous experiment. Steve instantly signs up and gets injected with super soldier serum. The idea is that, if it works, he’ll be just the first, the test model, of an entire army of super soldiers to march right over those damn Nazis.
Good news, it does work. Bad news (and spoiler) the scientist who created the formula is killed immediately after the successful test by a Nazi spy. Fearing that the formula would be stolen (and without the useful invention of computers with crazy encryptions or whateva) the scientist, Abraham Erskine, kept all the formulas where he knew they’d be totally 100% safe: in his head. Suddenly, instead of being a member of an army, Steve was the world’s only super soldier. On top of that, America knew it had to play up the super soldier and gave him a full uniform and heroic name, Captain America.
So Steve wasn’t a face in a crowd any more, he was the only example of his kind in the entire world, let alone in the war. More than that, he now had a big American flag on his chest and everything he did reflected that flag. Like how a teacher tells you before a field trip that you’re representing the school, Captain America was totally not allowed to misbehave when he went out.
Despite all these pressures, Steve always lived up to the name. He’s always known what it means to carry that weight and has been content to do it for his long, long life. Over the last ten years, writers have emphasized that point more often, first in the first arc of Captain America volume four (beginning in 2002) by author John Ney Rieber and fantastic artist John Cassaday. In the arc, terrorists take control of a small midwestern town, rigging the whole town with explosives while everyone is in church on Easter Sunday before breaking into the church and broadcasting live with the town’s news team. Cap is released into the fray and, amidst absolutely breathtaking art and some kids who are trained by the terrorists to kill, wins the battle by killing pretty much all the terrorists. He then goes directly to the camera and pulls his mask off, saying that this was Steve Rogers, NOT Captain America doing this and that the terrorists that will no doubt use this as a fuel for war should seek him, not America.
Current Captain America writer Ed Brubaker (probably the best writer in the Marvel stables today, also a horse) has also retconned (for non-comic book fans, retconning means changing events of the past with new narratives to make more sense in the context of the ever evolving hero) the story so that, even in war, Cap was the one making the speeches to rally the troops while his partner Bucky did all the dirty work, crawling behind enemy lines, slitting the throats of the guards, all the stuff a flag can’t be seen doing.
But here’s the thing: Steve Rogers is Captain America because he has to be. Look at some other popular heroes: Batman could EASILY change Gotham just as much by helping the infrastructure as Bruce Wayne, Superman came to Earth more or less AS Superman and it’s all he knows, Spider-Man stays a hero because of his “with great power” mantra but he could just as easily have stayed the pompous ass he became when he got his powers (the pompous ass that let his uncle die) if he hadn’t had that firsthand experience, Iron Man could, like Bruce Wayne, focus his life on Tony Stark and improving the world with his money and allowing someone else (as he has in the past) to be Iron Man, etc. Steve Rogers is Captain America because he felt the need to help this one time and now he’s the only super soldier America has and a living embodiment of an entire nation. Now, remember, when Steve Rogers originally tried to sign up, he was almost guaranteed to die if he had been allowed to enlist (hence why he wasn’t). If the serum hadn’t worked, he probably would have died. If the serum worked and Erskine had lived, he would have been one in an army destined for greatness. Every one of these scenarios ends with either him dead or him being able to hang up his uniform after the war. Instead, everything backfires and he becomes the one and only Captain America. He has lived up to it every moment of his time as Cap and always shoulders the responsibility like no other person in the universe could but he has never really wanted it. In essence, that is why he is the greatest superhero and the superhero that, if my superlife were started in a similar way to his, I don’t even believe I could emulate.
I’d probably just be Iron Fist and be done with it. Oh, or Sonic.
