User blog:Nausiated/Project 11/61: Captain America

Another milestone hit for Project 11/61: The first expansion of a golden age Marvel Character. In this case, I have added more material to my expanded history of Captain America. When I last worked on this page, I covered everything from his early life up to his first appearance in and then everything up to his being put in suspended animation in the year 1944 as seen in

Captain America's return in the modern era is one of the most heavily revisited periods in the Marvel Universe (next to I'd say the early career of Spider-Man) as such I had a LOT of material to go through here are some notes on this part of the project:


 * Captain America's revival was first seen in and it is revisited quite a few times in an effort to expand an modernize the tale. These retcons also re-examined all of Captain America's earlier exploits and fleshed out the whole "Man out of Time" aspect of his revival. Which makes sense since the Sliding Timescale was introduced. The disconnect between 1945 and the 1960s when a lot of these early stories were first published did not really focus on how different the world was after all that time. Although 20 years later, between the 40s and the 60s -- compared to the past 20 years currently -- not a whole lot had changed really. I suppose the changes were not much of a culture shock to Cap, or Stan Lee and Jack Kirby didn't really give that aspect much though. Most of these early stories mostly focused on Cap grieving over the loss of his partner Bucky and the mystery woman -- who turned out to be Peggy Carter -- during the war. Are these later retcons necessary? I think they are, they modernize the concept of these stories in a way that they can relate to modern readers while keeping the core concepts. Also as the "modern age" pushed forward on the Sliding Timescale they also expand on the massive advancements in technology, and historical events that have occurred since the 1960s so that the character is a little better rounded. Another benefit is the fact that these stories are no longer censored by the Comics Code Authority. Which limited the type of story that could be told. I strongly recommend checking them out. The two poignant ones are Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes Vol 1, which focuses mostly on the Avengers between  and  but spends time focusing on Captain America, especially near the end when it comes to recounting his final battle with Baron Zemo. Better still was the more recent Captain America: Man Out of Time Vol 1, which focuses primarily on the life of Captain America from his revival in  until the Avengers battled Kang in . It also adds an extra interesting niche that was never really explored: In a modern age where time travel exists, why didn't Captain America just return to 1945? Which I think is covered very well in Man Out of Time, it's a worthwhile read.


 * Like many Avengers in this era, a lot of stuff requires extra explanations thanks to various retcons and story expansions. Notable the various manipulations by Immortus that were revealed in.

Up next I will be doing an expanded history on the Avengers as a team, while I prep for my next task: Doing an expanded history page for Thor covering his entire history from his birth, all the way down to the first 10 years of "modern era" publications (Between 1961-1969) including all flashbacks and retcons.