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Captain America Vol 1 155

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We took Captain America! We can take a darkie and a frail!

—Bucky (Jack Monroe)

Appearing in "The Incredible Origin of the Other Captain America!"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

Antagonists:

  • Captain America ("Steve Rogers") (Main story and flashback) (Origin revealed to be the Captain America of the 1950s)
  • Bucky (Main story and flashback) (Origin revealed to be the Bucky of the 1950s)

Other Characters:

Races and Species:

Locations:

Items:

Events:

Synopsis for "The Incredible Origin of the Other Captain America!"

In Mosca Cay, Steve Rogers and Sharon Carter are having the times of their lives, fooling around on a deserted beach. They're about to go for a swim when Sharon suddenly cries out at the sight of young man, who takes off running - a man who is the spitting image of Steve's dead partner, Bucky Barnes. Steve gives chase, but is lured into an ambush, where the man and his partner knock Steve unconscious with a synchronized pair of punches. And just as the younger man resembles Bucky Barnes, the other man is the spitting image of Steve Rogers himself...

The fake Steve switches clothes with the real deal and attempts to lure Sharon Carter in for an ambush, but she spots the imposter's lack of a sunburn and realizes it's a trap. She takes off running, and the fakes give chase. The phony Rogers is just reaching out to catch her by the ankle, when he is intercepted by a charging Falcon.

Falcon and Carter attempt to battle the two crazy fakes, but are defeated by a combination of a ruthless feint and brutally applied superhuman strength. They waken aboard a flying plane, tied up and alongside the real Steve Rogers; the phony Captain America, now in uniform, stands before them, as his fake Bucky flies.

The fake Captain America hatefully welcomes them back to consciousness, and declares his intent to tell them his origins before he kills them. He calls himself the Captain America of the 1950s, and explains that he was a child of only 11 when the real Captain America made his debut in 1941. He was devastated when Captain America was pronounced lost in 1945, and dedicated his life to studying him, to the point he graduated summa cum laude in American History with a thesis on Captain America.

In early 1953, he flew to Germany, wanting to read the Nazi intelligence reports on their most hated super-soldier foe. There, he made an incredible discovery: a copy of the super-soldier formula had existed all along, hidden in the files of a minor Nazi spy named Kerfoot. As Kerfoot had been killed in a bomb blast the next day, the file had never been properly followed up on by either the Nazis nor the Americans, with both sides remaining ignorant to its true value.

He immediately returned to Washington, but he didn't just give' the formula to them. He demanded it be used on him instead, hoping to take up his idol's role and fight in the then-raging Korean War. He even went so far as to get plastic and vocal chord surgery, so he looked and sounded like the real Steve Rogers. And then, on the very day he was to become the new Captain America, the Korean War was finally ended. And so the plans to unveil him as the new Captain America were shelved, as it was deemed politically inconvenient.

The now-purposeless would-be super soldier took up a professorship at a small Connecticut Academy, the Lee School. There, he met a boy who was both the spitting image of Bucky Barnes and an equally huge fan of Captain America. The false-Steve couldn't resist spilling his secrets to this like-minded youth. Later that year, the Red Skull made his apparent return, now allied with the Communist cause and holding the delegates at the United Nations building prisoner. Desperate to help, believing America needed them now, he took the super soldier formula, sharing it with his new Bucky Barnes, and they saved the delegates.

Now they had a purpose: to battle the secret agents of Communism that sought to subvert and destroy America. The madman fondly reminisces of this as a glorious time, before noting that eventually, he and his Bucky seemd to "outgrow" the world, finding Reds that nobody else seemed to recognize - especially in places where those with "impure blood" congregated, like Harlem and Watts. Washington decided that their new Captain America was losing it - 'schizophrenic paranoia', and 'mental degredation' caused by the use of the injected formula without the counterbalancing vita-rays. They ordered the commie-smashing duo to turn themselves in, and when they refused, gassed them unconscious and locked them away in cryogenic stasis, where they stayed... Until Nixon's visit to China so incensed a devotedly anti-communist scientist in charge of maintaining the cryo-pods that he released them to resume their commie-smashing campaign. And their first target; the new Captain America, whom the fanatic believes was created by the US government to replace him.

The real Steve Rogers refuses to tell him who he is, calling him out as a fanatic. When Captain Commie-Smasher gloats about how he's succeeding, Falcon can't resist taunting him that he gave himself away as a fake by forgetting to add the iconic red-and-white stripes to the back of his costume. The madman slaps Falcon across the face and storms off in a rage, vowing to kill them.

Once he's gone, the real Steve Rogers frees himself, explaining he chose to wait to hear the madman's story. He expresses sympathies for how the unstable formula corrupted the man's mind, whilst freeing the others to join him in taking them both down.

Solicit Synopsis

So you think you know all about the beginnings of our star-spangled stalwart? Well, wait'll you read - the Secret Origin of Captain America! A shocker!

Notes

Continuity Notes[]

Publication Notes[]

  • This story is Vol 1 1023Z (as noted at the bottom on Pg. 1).
  • John Costanza lettered the splash page of this issue.
  • The plot of Captain America of the 1950s returning to the Marvel Universe belongs to Editor Roy Thomas.
  • This issue contains a letters page, "Let's Rap With Cap". Letters are published from: Garnet H. G. Barcelo, Rick Bedard, Kevin Zimmer, and Philip Healy.

Trivia

See Also

Links and References

  • The Grand Comics Database: Captain America Vol 1 155 [1]

References

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