How Marvel's Evil Hydra Captain America Has Deterred Me From The Character

Along comes the Marvel Cinematic Universe a few years ago and suddenly the character who I didn't care about in print, came to life for me on film, that being Steve Rogers/Captain America. As a young comic reader, I only enjoyed the Cap/Falcon team up series but never followed Rogers beyond that series. I could not tell you why. Probably because I was on a budget and getting wise to the ways of cross-overs and getting baited to spend more money outside my budget. But either way, I never caught on to Captain America.

But the Marvel movies portrayed a man, a leader and someone with a solid sense or conviction in such a way that they had me starting to rethink my adverseness to the character.

But just as I was thinking about checking it out, a new story line popped up in the comics a few months ago... and that of where Steve Rogers had been a Hydra agent all along, and in proving it, Marvel showed us his shocking, murderous ways.

I was shocked, as I'm sure that's the reaction Marvel was looking for, and I was so totally disappointed that this most robust, honest character, through all these years, just betrayed my trust. And so doing, so did Marvel. But I waited for a bit. Maybe it was a quirky twist of a story. But as time and a few months passed, it seems that it was not a quirky, temporary twist.

And it's a twist that violated my faith in Steve Rogers.


First off, kudos to Marvel for making me do a double take and forcing me to now hate this evil, secreted Steve Rogers. But it went so far as to now have me leery of the on-film Captain America.

Yes, the comics, the source for our film characters, have soured me on this boy scout hero of film to the point that I'm just not sure any more. Obviously, job well done. But the damage has been done.

The reason this is so, is that as the Marvel movies started hitting it out of the park, I started noticing that the comics were changing things around.

We've seen Sam Wilson/Falcon don the Captain America mantle. We know Bucky had done the same some time ago. (And that actor's contract calls for a bunch more films, or the potential of.) We've seen Thor lose his hammer and Jane pick it up and become the new god of thunder in the comics. We've seen a young lady step into the shoes (or suit) of Iron Man, and a myriad of other changes.

Since the movies are based on the comics, we've seen how they've so wonderfully translated to film. Jon Favreau just blows my mind in how much material from so many years that he so eloquently pulled together for that first Iron Man film. What a brilliant editorial mind! Just brilliant!

But being the cynical consumer that I am, I had to wonder about all the character changes that were taking place in the comics themselves.

Why? Are they just adding characters to keep story lines from going stale? Or are they setting up new and younger characters in the pages of the comics, so that when actor contract negotiations take place, Marvel has some leverage, because now they can point to how some of our long-term actors can easily be replaced if they cost the studio too much because they can pull in these new characters with new actors, so they can end up replacing the established cast with new, younger, cheaper actors to reflect character changes in the comics.

Yes, that's where I went. And because of that, I'm freaked out that this is what they'll be doing, potentially, with Captain America on film.

So now I am suspicious of everything they've shown us on film because in the comics, the Red Skull and that pesky cube keep coming back. (Red and the cube, it seems, is responsible for altering reality and making Cap the murdering, Evil Steve.) And since we have not seen hide nor hair of the Skull since his disappearance in the first Captain America film, well, I'm not holding my breath, but I am emotionally prepared for what ever could happen with the character.

Something I am seeing is that fans have been rather divisive about this Captain America comics twist. Some seriously hate it while others applaud the daring story direction change. And I get that. I remember HATING... HATE ING... how Shane Black cheapened The Mandarin in the third Iron Man film, but I did appreciate the daring angle he took, and how, much like in past years in the comics when Tony faced off with The Mandarin, we watched as Tony, reduced to just his wits, mostly, take on the forces surrounding The Mandarin in the film. But I HATED how Black did it. He cheapened the character on film.

It's really confusing to both hate and appreciate a story tweak.

So I have not liked the comics Cap twist, but rather than fall prey to buying the comic series to see what happens, I've been biding my time and waiting for various outlets to cover the story, so I've saved some bucks and have learned how things have fallen into place and what not in this insidious new twisted version of Steve Rogers. And it seems pretty amazing, from the outside looking in.

But damn, it takes patience to have to wait for coverage to come around, that's for sure.

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