Captain America, but with GWOT Veterans

Chip Zdarsky's new title

As much as I love Marvel’s lineup of characters, I’m not subscribed to any of their ongoing titles, which surprised me when I realized it the other day. Then I heard about this new ongoing Captain America title and it came well-reviewed, so I tried it out and the first issue was very strong.

It starts out with the basics—Rogers fought in WW2, became a Super Soldier, then disappeared (this time in the English Channel) and stayed frozen until the modern day. Now he’s a man out of time, trying to carry on in a world that might not be all about his values.

This made me curious, so I looked it up: the original Cap comics debuted in the 40s during the War, and then went on hiatus in 1950 due to low sales. He was a WW2 character and WW2 was yesterday’s news. Then in 1964 they introduced the “frozen man” story in an Avengers comic, and now we get the key piece where he’s from another era.

Obviously they’ve stretched the frozen period over the years. They made a bad movie in the 1990s and he was frozen for 40 years. Then the MCU came along, and he was chilled for almost 70 years. Now we’re at an 80 year interval, and Rogers has been awake for a week. He wastes no time continuing his work as a hero, though he isn’t fully dialed in on what’s going on with the world.

But the story isn’t so much about that—it’s about a side character named David Colton who, like Steve Rogers, was a half-blind asthmatic when 9/11 happened, and he had a deep burning desire to serve his country in the wake of the tragedy.

More on him in a minute.

Rogers’ first challenge is to run down a guy who shot a cop and stole a motorcycle, ostensibly so he can blow up the UN headquarters in New York. Cap faces off with the guy and rather than beat him to a pulp with some poorly-written lectures, he reaches him on a deeper level.

I never served, but I’ve talked with a number of GWOT veterans over the years and this sentiment has come up several times in the conversation. A lot of them—like many veterans of foreign wars—felt like everything they and their friends bled for was discarded by the country in their absence, that they were wronged, and that little else matters.

I thought this was a well-written way to include this idea in a comic without being trite, dismissive, or childish about it. If the question is “How would Cap handle a GWOT vet in this situation?” then this feels like a deserving answer. You want him to be a noble leader, a man of timeless values who doesn’t embrace cynicism like everyone else. That’s his core.

For the rest of his arc we see him meet Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, and the new Howling Commandos. Meanwhile the David Colton character gets his bell run in basic training, yet refuses to quit. I’m pretty sure these are flashbacks to early 2002.

At which point he’s approached by a superior officer who coyly offers him a super soldier serum, since he has the moxie they’re after.

I won’t post the final image of the book, suffice it to say that by mid-2003, Colton not only got the serum, but a lot more that put him on Captain Rogers’ level.

Now the question is: what happened to him over the next 20 years?

I like this. At some point we’ll be so far down the road that it’ll be a big ask for Rogers to be a 1940s man in any setting, but for now we’re still in a window where WW2 is in living memory. But we’ve been out of the GWOT for a couple of years now and those veterans have created their own generational culture that can impact this character. I want to see where it goes from here and I hope they write it well.

This is cool. I recommend issue #1. We’ll see about #2 next month!