Captain America is one of the most important heroes in the history of comics. Superman was the first superhero, but Captain America was the first patriotic hero as we’ve come to recognize them. Captain America’s popularity has ebbed and flowed over the years, with the Marvel Cinematic Universe helping make the character a household name. Cap’s comic runs haven’t been as beloved as the MCU, but that looks like it’s about to change. Marvel has gotten fan-favorite writer Chip Zdarksy to write the book (Zdarsky wrote Cap brilliantly in Avengers: Twilight) along with artist Valerio Schiti, one of Marvel’s big guns on the art side of things. They make for an amazing team, and the latest Captain America #1 is an amazing read (go out and buy it now!).
The book kicks off with a Captain America year one style story, catching up with Cap after he was found in the ice by the Avengers. Cap reaches for the only thing from his old life that’s still around — the US Armed Forces. However, there’s another story happening next to this year one story. It starts on September 11th 2001, and runs up to the story’s present, showing a story that is very familiar to anyone who knows anything about Captain America. Did Marvel really just introduce yet another version of Captain America?
Steve Rogers Was Never Going to be the Last Captain America
So, Captain America #1 kicks off on September 11th, and shows a boy named David Colton witnessing the fall of the first tower from the streets of New York City. The captions talk about this moment and what it did to people, and readers can immediately see the parallel between young David and Steve Rogers. Much like Steve, David has just watched his country get attacked. The pain of that, of seeing his home as weak and watching his people die, changes Colton’s life forever, just as news of the Nazi atrocities changed the life of Steve Rogers. The book catches up with David a few years later, as he tries his best to get into the military. However, much like Steve Rogers before him, David is too sickly to get into the military. His eyesight is terrible, and he has severe, persistent asthma. However, David won’t take no for a answer. He wants to serve his country and fight for it. He wouldn’t let anything stand in that way. Now, who does that sound like? Zdarksy does an amazing job of capturing the jingoism of 9/11; there were some who made the whole situation out to be a clash of civilizations a la World War II, and this book shows the effect of that propaganda.
The next time we see him, Colton is getting beaten in basic training. He’s smaller than the rest of the recruits, and he takes a hellacious beating, all while they mock him as a cry baby. Standing impassively behind the whole thing is a drill sergeant, who looks like he carved from obsidian. Colton never stops fighting, though, and it seems as if he’s earned the respect of the drill sergeant. However, this isn’t the case, as the sergeant savagely beats him later in the night, calling him a waste and telling him he will get one of these soldiers killed. Colton keeps fighting and ends up in the infirmary, where all he has is a picture of Captain America and his asthma inhaler. As he reaches for the inhaler, an officer helps him, praising his toughness whole also calling him the weakest recruit ever, before telling Colton he can cure the kid’s asthma. As Cap prepares for his first mission back, we see a man wearing a flag shield walk into the room, before getting to the final page, which shows Colton from behind with the shield on in Iraq, on the day Saddam Hussein’s statue is pulled down.
There Was a 9/11 Inspired Cap in the Early ’00s of the Marvel Universe
I think one of the reasons that Captain America #1 is so good is because Zdarsky uses Marvel’s sliding time scale exactly the way it should be used. Zdarsky does a brilliant job of using the 9/11 in a way that few other creators have to tell a new Captain America story. Of course the United States of that time, if it had the tech, would have created a new Captain America, and someone like David Colton would have volunteered. For those of us who were of that age on 9/11, we had friends who reacted the same way Colton did. Some of the them joined. Some of them never came back, but the ones who did were all changed.
I’m very interested in how Zdarsky uses this new Captain America. There is so much potential for great stories from this idea, and a writer like Zdarsky has shown that he can tell these kind of stories — superhero stories that use the political ideas of their time brilliantly (Avengers: Twilight is a perfect example of this) to inform the narrative. Marvel has made a new Captain America, and Zdarksy using 9/11 as the basis for him is an idea that’s long overdue. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this kind of thing — Millar tried to do something similar in The Ultimates 2 — but I feel like this will be the best time.
Captain America #1 is on sale now (you should definitely pick it up and add it to your pull).
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