Kistler's History of Captain America - Part 2

This is part of my files on the History of Captain America.

THE MARVEL AGE

In 1956, DC Comics brought back the super-hero genre starting with Barry Allen, the second character to be called the Flash. Eventually, Marvel decided it needed to follow this trend. DC had been reviving old super-hero names and powers for new characters, such as a new Green Lantern, a new Hawkman, etc. But at Marvel, Stan Lee decided to make some super-heroes from scratch, starting with the team known as the Fanstic Four. Only one of the four characters owed anything to a previously existing character. Teenager Johnny Storm acquired flame-powers and named himself the new Human Torch, becoming the Fantastic Four's literal hot-head.

Seeing how successful the new Human Torch was, Stan Lee decided to try and bring another Golden Age character back, this time more directly. In The Fantastic Four #4, Johnny Storm went to a homeless shelter where he discovered the Namor, the Sub-Mariner, who had been suffering from amnesia for many years apparently. Due to his amnesia and his later mistaken conclusion that his people had been wiped out by the surface world, Namor now became a misguided villain and would remain that way for a few years.

Interestingly, Johnny recognized Namor from a comic book he’d read. Evidently, Golden Age heroes had inspired many comic books depicting their adventures. This firmly established that the Fantastic Four and Marvel's Golden Age heroes all existed in the same universe and continuity.

So Namor was back and there was a new Human Torch. So it was no surprise when, in Strange Tales #114, Johnny Storm met yet another Golden Age hero who hadn’t been seen for years: Captain America!

... Except, not really. At the end of the story, it turned out that this particular star-spangled warrior was actually an impostor. Johnny was sad and reflected on how incredible it would have been if Captain America had actually returned to join the modern-day world. Stan Lee was apparently been testing the waters with this story.

And after seeing how fans reacted favorably to Johnny’s sentiment, Lee decided to go forward with the idea that was cooking in his brain. He would bring back Captain America for real.

A few months later, several of Stan Lee’s heroes joined forces to form a new team called The Avengers. Like DC’s Justice League, the Avengers was a team of solo heroes who would combine forces whenever there was a threat to big for any of them to tackle alone. Although a founding member, the Hulk found himself the object of suspicion from the others and soon left the group. A subsequent story showed him then joining forces with the Sub-Mariner to try and defeat the Avengers, in revenge for their mistreatment of him. The plot failed, naturally and afterward the Hulk and the Sub-Mariner made their escapes.

The Sub-Mariner subsequently made his way up the coast of Canada, towards the arctic circle. Eventually, Namor witnessed a tribe of Eskimos worshiping what appeared to be a human figure encased in a block of ice. Disgusted by these superstitious humans who could not recognize a frozen corpse for what it was, the Sub-Mariner lifted the figure and tossed the block of ice far off into the sea. Readers then watched as the figure was carried along into warmer waters and the ice began to thaw.

Nearby, the Avengers were trying to track the Sub-Mariner through the equipment on Iron Man’s submarine. To their surprise, they found the frozen figure floating in the waters. They brought him in and thawed him out some more, discovering that it wasn’t a corpse but a human man who was just barely breathing. The man was fair-haired, young and athletic, wearing an old and tattered U.S. soldier’s outfit. The Wasp then noticed he wore a colorful costume underneath his clothes and realized that this was the famous Captain America who hadn’t been seen in years ... and he still looked like a man in his early or mid-twenties!

Cap woke up then and immediately attacked the Avengers in a confused panic, screaming for Bucky. Finally, he calmed down enough to realize that his partner was dead and he looked at his “captors” in fear, unsure what to make of the costumed figures. They introduced themselves and asked who he was. He explained he was Captain America, but part of his memory was patchy. He remembered fighting a Nazi during the closing days of the war. He and his partner Bucky got on board a robot plane filled with explosives. Failing to disarm it, Captain America fell off, but Bucky remained on the plane trying to disable it. There was an explosion then and Captain America knew his partner was killed. Moments later, he fell into the freezing waters of the arctic circle and was frozen alive.

But he didn’t die, obviously. The super-soldier serum in his veins had been potent enough to keep his body alive, though locked in a state of suspended animation. And now here he was again. His mind and memory was a bit murky due to the emotional and physical trauma, of course.

This was, of course, a very clever way of Stan Lee explaining away any continuity errors he might make and also allow for the character to have a bit of an air of mystery for a time, such as not remembering the name of the Nazi he had been fighting during his last mission with Bucky.

In the years following World War II, Captain America had seemed dated, a man who had done his fight but had no place in the later world. Stan Lee displayed a bit of genius when he used that very problem and made it Cap’s problem. Steve was no longer a soldier battling spies and criminals even though the war he’d been created to fight was over. Now, this hero was a "man out of time." He had to deal with the fact that so much had changed over the many years he was asleep. Politics, culture, music, world events, everything.

Think about what would happen if you went to sleep one day and woke up five years later. You can’t. You realize how much happens in five years? If you fell asleep on September 10th, 2000 and woke up on September 10th 2005, you’d be shocked to learn what had happened in the world during the time in-between, not to mention just trying to keep up with new slang and pop culture references people made in every day conversation. Cap was far worse off. The last thing he remembered, it was the closing days of World War II. Next, he’s told we won the war years ago and have long since moved on with our lives. In the 60's, a time when people were starting to question the government and civil rights were bringing in a lot of debate, here came Cap who remembered a world where one could say quite seriously "if you can’t trust the FBI, who can you trust?" He was, in many ways, an alien among us.

Bucky’s death was written in for two reasons. 1, it gave Cap an air of tragedy, as his partner and friend was now gone and had died in an attempt to stop evil. 2, as stated before, Stan Lee really didn’t like sidekicks, especially when he was having fun making Cap part of a whole team.

Of course, this story about Cap and Bucky having their careers end before World War II seemed to invalidate all their post World War II comics with the All-Winners Squad and when they were "Commie-Smashers." But Stan Lee didn’t mind. No one had liked those stories that much and he figured not many would remember. Other writers would tackle the question of continuity quite interestingly in later years.

BACK IN ACTION!

This new direction gave Captain America a huge injection of life and fans loved it. Soon, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby began doing stories that took place during his early days in the war. Sometimes they would recreate old 1940s stories, tweaking them here and there. Sometimes they would create totally original stories, inventing villains whom Cap had fought back in WW II and who would appear later in the modern Avengers comics, thus letting fans know that these were enemies who had a history with Cap.

One such villain was the Nazi scientist Baron Heinrich Zemo. Zemo was an aristocratic killer who had actually been a bit political a rival of the Red Skull. During a battle with Cap, his mask was fused to his skin, forcing him to never again show his face and to eat all his meals intravenously. He swore vengeance against Cap for that and it turned out that it was he whom Cap had been fighting on the day Bucky died and that it was his robot-plane which had blown the teenage hero away.

Here the was a villain worthy of Cap's hatred. Not only was he a Nazi, but he had been responsible for Bucky's death and had been able to keep himself alive kicking into the modern-day. It seemed like a horrible joke that this evil man, a war criminal of the worst sort, would still be alive while a good person like Bucky Barnes had needlessly been killed.

To aid him in his attack against the Avengers and Captain America, Zemo assembled the first incarnation of the team;s opposite number: The Masters of Evil. The Masters and the Avengers fought a couple of times.

Finally, Zemo and Cap faced off again man-to-man. During the battle, Zemo's weapon misfired and he wound up causing an avalanche that crushed him to death. Cap was satisfied that Bucky was avenged, but years later would find that the cycle wasn’t over. Zemo had a son, Helmut, who swore vengeance against Cap for the death of his father. More on him later.

Eventually, Cap began truly carving out a new life for himself. When the original Avengers decided it was time for them to all go their separate ways, Captain America was chosen to lead the new team, one composed of three former criminals who now sought to make up for their past crimes: Hawkeye (formerly an Iron Man villain), Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch (both former members of the terrorist group the Brotherhood of Mutants, led by X-Men villain Magneto). Stan Lee loosely referred to this group of "Cap’s Kooky Quartet."

It was a major change for a super-hero team to lose all of its original members before the 20th issue even hit the stands, much less to replace most of the roster with former villains, but it worked. And now that Cap was starting to adjust to the modern world and was no longer deferring to folks like Iron Man, readers finally saw him as a leader again. In many later incarnations of the Avengers, Cap would constantly reassume the mantle of Avengers Chairman. In Joe Casey’s Earth's Mightiest Heroes mini-series, written many years later, he would credit Captain America with being the man who coined the team’s famous battle cry, "Avengers Assemble!", thus cementing his importance with the team's foundation.

For some, Cap became a cornerstone of the Avengers, along with Iron Man and Thor. In fact, many people came to feel that those three heroes in particular simply needed to be on the team, no matter what incarnation the group was in, and they became known as the "Big Three" of the Avengers.

Over the years, Cap became seen as a great leader among the super-hero community, thanks in no small part to his leadership role in the Avengers. Iron Man was a genius in armor that could help him give the Hulk a fight and Thor was a demi-god who was thousands of years old and commanded the weather, but both took orders from the soldier who was a man out of time. Cap was the general of super-heroes, the man you'd follow into Hell and who you'd trust to take on battalions of men all by himself.

Steve Rogers came to consider Thor and Iron Man as brothers. And like brothers, they fought, of course. More than once, Iron Man and Captain America would argue or even come to blows over certain matters, particularly Iron Man's occasional habit for manipulation, even if it was for what he saw as ethical purposes.

In an issue of The Fantastic Four, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the first black super-hero the Black Panther (who preceeded the extremist group of the same name by several years). The Panther was actually King T'Challa of the fictional African nation of Wakanda. Although his senses had been enhanced thanks to ingesting a special heart-shaped herb, T'Challa's strength, speed and agility were all human and the result of intensive training and exercise. He was a warrior king and eventually he and Steve met up and even had a scuffle or two before realizing they would be better off as allies.

It doesn't seem like a big deal now, but in the 1960s it was quite progressive for a comic book super-hero described as a "super-soldier" to recognize an African king as his equal in combat, much less to consider him a brother-in-arms. A while later, when Captain America decided to take a leave of absence from the Avengers, he nominated the Black Panther to take his place and brought him onto the team.

In a story written years later, it was revealed that Captain America had briefly met and fought against T'Challa's father T'Chaka, who had been the Black Panther before him. And T'Chaka had actually beaten Cap in their fight!

Another man Cap grew a kinship with was Hawkeye, though this relationship was far rockier. When Cap had first been made leader, Hawkeye had resented the man. Cap had no special powers, so why did he deserve leadership? What made Cap with his shield better than Hawkeye with his explosive arrows, net arrows, gas arrows, etc.? As a result, Hawkeye gained a rep as being the group's loud-mouthed jerk who would question Cap’s orders on the mere principle of doing so. But he was also a hero who would rather die than admit defeat to a villain and who risked life and limb for his teammates and innocent people countless times.

Eventually, Hawkeye and Cap reached an understanding and came to regard each other as friends. But even this never stopped Hawkeye from constantly questioning or circumventing Cap’s orders or strategies. At one point, Cap was so fed up with Hawkeye questioning his leadership that he offered the archer the position of chairman. Shocked by this genuine gesture of trust and the desire to simply make sure no one on the team was going to endanger the others by not following the game plan, Hawkeye agreed that Cap was a fine leader and he didn't need to replace him any time soon.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT AGAIN

Cap started having his own solo adventures featured in Tales of Suspense (which also showcased Iron Man stories). Many of these were modern day tales of Cap fighting crime outside the Avengers. At times, he would work with Nick Fury, head of S.H.I.E.L.D., a high-tech espionage and counter-terrorist organization. Together, he and Fury often fought against various terrorist threats, super-spies, and the Nazi-like organization known as HYDRA, a group of would-be conquerors whose soldiers wore loose-fitting hooded jumpsuits decorated by big yellow "H"s. Because nothing makes you flee in terror more than a guy with a big "H" on his torso.

Adding to the high-tech espionage atmosphere, Cap’s shield was modified by Tony Stark. By adding circuitry that was on par with his own Iron Man armor, Tony ensured that the shield could now actually alter its path in the air via magnetic fields, controlled by additional circuity interwoven into Cap’s glove. Likewise, Steve could now summon the shield to return to him if he dropped it or it was taken a short distance away. After a while, this idea was dropped and Cap removed the magnetic controls, later explaining that they had added an extra heft to the shield and made it harder to use.

Stan Lee also did stories that took place during Cap's days in World War II. Some of these were old stories that just got tweaked and revised somewhat. Others were completely new tales. With these flashback issues, Lee was able to create new alllies and enemies for Steve Rogers. One such person was Peggy Carter AKA Agent 13, a secret agent who fought Nazis during the war and who became a love interest for Steve.

It was also seen that Cap had fought alongside pre-S.H.I.E.L.D. Nick Fury, back when the man had been an army sgt. leading a group of rangers who were nicknamed the "Howling Commandos." This established that the two had a familiarity with each other already when Fury occasionally recruited Cap for S.H.I.E.L.D. missions in the modern-day.

Another modern-day character introduced who had a connection to Cap's past was the new Agent 13 who worked for S.H.I.E.L.D., Readers and Steve later learned that this Agent 13 was actually Peggy Carter's much younger sister Sharon Carter. As the years passed and Sharon remained relatively young (cuz folks age slower in comics but remain consistently planted in the modern-day), it became harder and harder to believe that two sisters had an ever-widening age difference (unlike Sharon, Peggy was cemented as having been acting during World War II and was forced to age). As such, writer Ed Brubaker eventually wrote in that Peggy was actually Sharon's great aunt, but the two had a very sister-like relationship due to their closeness.

Sharon Carter was a very interesting addition to the Captain America stories. Other heroes had to hide their heroic lives from their love interests, but Cap was among those Stan Lee creations who didn’t have to do such a thing. Like Hank Pym and Reed Richards, his love was a partner on many adventures. Sharon Carter may not have been a super-soldier, but she was a solidly trained S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who was good with just about any weapon you put in her hands.

This also allowed Cap to have more down-to-earth romantic problems. Superman's biggest conflict with Lois Lane was keeping his identity secret from her and making sure she never suspected who he was beneath the glasses. Since Cap was openly involved with Sharon, he went through the same stuff a lot of us would go through. He had to cancel a date because of an emergency Avengers meeting, he worried about her having a dangerous job, he argued with her about politics and how to best handle certain situations. And they also had to deal with the fact that at times they had to be co-workers on a mission, which certainly can be very trying. All of these human elements made Steve Rogers as interesting as his costumed identity.

Speaking of partners, Rick Jones (teenage buddy to the Hulk) stayed with the Avengers for a short time and underwent a lot of training under Cap’s tutelage. A few times, Rick even adopted the Bucky costume when he joined Cap in battle, but eventually decided it was not for him. Although he later left Cap’s side and pursued his own adventures alongside folks like the Hulk and the Space Knight named Rom, Rick maintained a special friendship with Steve.

While operating on his own, Cap eventually revealed to the public that he was Steve Rogers, figuring he had no family that needed to be protected via a secret identity. This was a pretty big change from comics, where most super-heroes would go through all kinds of manipulative games in order to protect their true name even from a girlfriend or family member.

But very quickly, Steve found himself subject to more frequent attacks and ambushes from his enemies. To put the genie back in the bottle, Steve got himself a dummy which he dressed up in a spare costume and then disguised with a latex mask of his own face. When HYDRA agents next attacked, Cap had the dummy stand in for him, allowing it to be riddled with bullets. When the HYRDRA men took a quick look at the "body", they saw that the face of Steve Rogers was latex and concluded that Captain America had only pretended to be Rogers in order to fool people into not researching his true secret identity. They then took off before anyone else showed up to arrest them, leaving in such a hurry that they didn't check the "body" more thoroughly and realize it was a dummy. Cap remained out of the picture for a few days and then resurfaced, secure that people now believed he was not actually Steve Rogers.

A bit of a convoluted story, which is probably why it has almost never been referenced since.

After leaving the Avengers for a while, Steve wound up getting a new partner in crime-fighting in Captain America #117 (1969). Sam Wilson was a kind-hearted Samaritan that Cap met after an encounter with the Red Skull. Sam was an athletic guy with a trained falcon called Redwing, with whom he seemed to have a mental link with.

After helping him out on a case, Sam stuck around with Cap and underwent intense training from him. Sam took on the codename "Falcon", at first acting as another street-level vigilante with nothing but his fists and his wits to help him out. After a while, he got a winged suit that let him glide on air currents. Years later, the Black Panther provided him with a techno-suit that let him actually fly.

Although the Black Panther was the first black super-hero, the Falcon was the first African-American super-hero, preceding the famous character Luke Cage by three years. The fact that he debuted in Captain America's comic and was portrayed as a partner and not a teenage side-kick spoke volumes during a time when civil rights was on the rise.

It is also important to note that he was just called "Falcon" and not "Black Falcon." Other characters such as the Black Panther, DC's Black Racer and the later heroes Black Lightning and Bill Foster all had names that advertised their skin color (Foster usually went by "Giant-Man", the second hero to take that name, but was also sometimes called the "Black Goliath"). In later years, there was a black villain named Black Mass and the Aquaman foe Black Manta was revealed to actually be a black man as well, hence the name. By calling Sam simply "Falcon", Marvel was indicating that we were supposed to look at him as a hero and not just a black super-hero. To promote him as a character and showcase that Cap considered him an equal, the covers of the comic series were changed from simply Captain America to Captain America and the Falcon!

The Falcon's influence extended into other comics. His nephew Jim Wilson became a good friend of the Hulk's for a few years, palling around with him. Years later, Peter David would have Jim push the status quo just like his costumed uncle by making him one of the first openly HIV-positive characters in comic books. There were also elements in the story that implied that Jim was gay and that the Hulk both knew and didn't care. Eventually, Jim died of AIDS related illness and is still remembered by many as a strong example of how far comic books can come in reaching out to everyone and being able to seriously comment on important issues.

ENEMIES OLD AND NEW

Alongside the Avengers, Steve fought various villains and cosmic menaces. Along with the Masters of Evil, there was also the time traveling Kang the Conqueror, the alien forces of the Kree Empire, the shape-shifting Skrull aliens, the Super-Adaptoid (an android who could mimic the powers of the Avengers), the evil scientist known as the Mad Thinker, the twisted Grim Reaper, and many others.

Two enemies had a special resonance with Cap. On different missions, the Avengers came across the mutant terrorist Magneto (who usually fights the X-Men) and the dictator/would-be-world conqueror Dr. Victor von Doom (arch-enemy to the Fantastic Four). Magneto had firsthand experience with the Nazi menace that Captain America had fought, since he'd actually been in the camps at Auschwitz and had lost his family there. As he grew older, Magneto became convinced that humans would one day build such camps for mutants like himself and he had decided to conquer the Earth before this could be allowed to happen (and weren't the more powerful mutants more deserving as rulers anyway?).

Dr. Doom was born of a gypsy clan that had been targeted by Hitler's forces in earlier years. Doom himself came to hate the aristocratic and tyrranical government of his country Latveria, who he viewed as responsible for his people's persecution and for the deaths of his parents. In time, he took over the country by force and had made it a nation where no one dared question his own rule, which he knew in his heart was just and necessary. He wanted to conquer the world not just for power but because he honestly believed he was the best man for the job. When he faced Doom, Cap couldn't help but feel he was looking at a new Hitler.

But what about having Cap fight a real Nazi after all these years? Despite the fact that World War II was long over, it still seemed wrong to have Captain America never fight the Red Skull again. So Stan Lee and Jack Kirby brought the crimson-faced baddie back. He revealed that towards the ending days of World War II, the Skull had suffered an accident in a lab full of experimental gasses. The gasses put him into a coma and preserved him in a state of suspended animation for decades until he finally awoke in the modern world. It was as if fate had decreed that he would not return until after Captain America had already come back to ensure his future defeats.

The Red Skull had to prove himself to the new generation of readers just as Cap had done, to show them he was not merely a nostalgic relic from a time long since passed. So first, Lee and Kirby finally gave the Skull something he’d been lacking since his creation: an origin story.

We learned that the Red Skull had begun life as Johann Schmidt (the German equivalent of "John Smith"), a guy who grew up as a social outcast. He came to be filled with hate for much of the world around him, bitterly believing that all he needed was a chance to prove to the masses that he was greater than them.

Working as a bellman at a hotel, Schmidt was serving food to a very special guest: Adolf Hitler, who had only recently risen to power. Hitler was arguing with his soldiers, claiming they were simple-minded fools. Seeing Schmidt in the room, Hitler pointed him out and said that he could teach this mere bellman to be a better Nazi than the soldiers who’d just failed him. Hitler then approached Schmidt and quickly saw that this young man held a bitter hatred for the world that rivaled his own. He decided that he would prove his claim was not merely angry boasting and took the young man under his wing. Hitler did not want him trained to be an unthinking follower like some Nazis were. Schmidt would be a thinker, a tactician, trained in the arts of military strategy, psychology and politics. He would be trained to fight and to lead.

In time, Schmidt became Hitler’s right-hand man, his personal soldier, liaison and representative. Hitler, fond of how effective propaganda was on the human mind, decided to make Schmidt a walking piece of propaganda himself. He gave his protégé a skull-like mask, colored red. As the Red Skull, he would be a living symbol of Nazi power. As Hitler presented himself as a father to the people, the Red Skull would be the terrible enforcer at his side for those who doubted or sought to betray the Nazi dream. His skull-like visage would be an image for Hitler’s enemies to fear and remember. But in time, Hitler himself came to fear the Skull, as his protégé’s power, influence and ambition all grew over time. And the Red Skull himself soon made it very apparent to his mentor that he intended to overshadow him one day.

As a stroke of genius, Lee also indicated that it was because of the Skull that Steve Rogers had been given the task of being a living symbol himself. Yes, he’d been the only super-solider to come out of Project: Rebirth, but that was only part of the story. After all, he could’ve been asked afterward to operate as a covert agent, right? But no. Stan Lee showed us that because of the Skull’s rep in Nazy Germany, he U.S. decided to turn their super-soldier into a living counterpart. They would fight one living nationalistic symbol with another. That was why Captain America was given a star-spangled outfit and such. In a way, our hero wouldn’t have existed without the Skull, at least, not as we know him. The cycle of their existence, that one helped create the other and that both were preserved by chance or destiny only to return to the world and fight again decades later, gave Captain America and the Red Skull an almost mythic quality and cemented them as two of the most intense arch-enemies in Marvel Comics.

That wasn’t all though. The Skull’s schemes were now grander. Before, he’d served Hitler, waiting for the time when he would eventually overthrow his teacher. Now, he answered to no one. Time and time again, he would organize followers and soldiers to help him on his quest for nothing less than global domination.

In one of the early stories, the Skull revealed to Captain America and the readers that Hitler had authorized the construction of several "Sleepers" to be hidden around the world. Each Sleeper was a robot with incredibly destructive power and formidable abilities, capable of laying several cities and possibly countries to waste. Hitler and the Skull had determined that if they died, the Sleepers would awaken years later at a pre-determined time and unleash themselves on the Earth, leaving nothing but destruction in their wake because if the Nazis couldn't have the planet then no one could! Now that is a scary friggin' story right there!

Having now returned after his long sleep, the Skull decided there was no point in waiting any longer and unleashed each Sleeper one-by-one. They would not completely destroy the Earth, but they would batter it into such a weakened state that he and his followers would find what remained easy enough to conquer. It was only thanks to luck, ingenouity and help from S.H.I.E.L.D. that Captain America was able to defeat the Sleepers and prevent World War III from occurring.

But the Sleepers weren't the only incredible weapons at the Skull's disposal. Later on, the monster came into possession of a Cosmic Cube created by the terrorist-scientists known as the Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.). The Cosmic Cube made thoughts become reality and the Red Skull saw a chance for godhood. Cap was able to defeat the Skull despite this great power and many adventures afterwards were told of how the Skull would again try to reclaim the Cube and use its power, only to lose it again and again and be forced to retreat rather than face capture.

Many years later, Ed Brubaker would posit that the Cube was a cursed device, corrupting your mind and eventually making sure your desired wishes did not turn out as you wanted them to yet also preventing you from ever giving up hope in it.

As I mentioned earlier, Stan Lee also did some stories that took place back in World War II and retroactively filled out some of Cap's history, introducing "untold adventures" and friends we didn't know about. Well, Lee also introduced new enemies that had fought Cap during World War II. Along with stories featuring Baron Heinrich Zemo, we also saw Cap and Bucky team-up with Sgt. Fury against the villainous Baron von Strucker, long before the Nazi would create the organization that would later be called HYDRA.

Years later, long after Stan Lee had killed off Baron Zemo in an Avengers issue, a new enemy was introduced who called himself the Phoenix (no connection to the X-Man character Jean Grey who would used that same name a few years later). This man called Phoenix was actually Helmut Zemo, the son of Baron Heinrich Zemo. Blaming Captain America for the death of his father, Helmut Zemo had trained himself to become Cap’s enemy. Despite the outlandish costume, Helmut Zemo was actually a pretty formidable enemy, relying on not just his highly developed physical prowess and fighting skills but also upon an arsenal of weapons he had at his disposal.

During the battle against Cap and the Falcon, Helmut Zemo fell into a vat of acidic chemicals. His suit had protected his body, but his mask had been off at the time and his face wound up horribly scarred. Whereas his father Heinrich had been unable to remove his mask, Helmut now was because of Captain America. In years to come, he would slowly rise from a reliable recurring Cap villain to being one of Marvel’s most fearsome baddies around.

But the winner for creepiest-looking Captain America villain? That would definitely be Arnim Zola. Created by the great artist Jack "King" Kirby, Arnim Zola was introduced as a biochemist and one fo the world's first genetic engineers. Arnim had found that the Nazis were fully willing to let him experiment on human beings and so he'd worked for Adolf Hitler. Zola mastered human cloning and mind transference and this allowed him to survive the war into the modern times by sending his consciousness into a new body he'd made for himself.

The new body is where the creepy comes in. Apparently, Zola decided that heads are for suckers, so he created a body that had no head and projected his face on a holographic screen that occupied his torso. In place of his head, he installed an ESP-projector that allowed him mental control over his genetically-engineered monster creations.

So we have a Nazi geneticist whose face is on his stomach. EWWW! Seriously, if that and his experiments don't creep you out, then there is something wrong with you!

Arnim also brought back one of Cap's true enemies. It turned out that before the war, he'd made a few clone bodies of Hitler himself and had given the Fuhrer his mind transference device. Thus, years after the war had ended, Adolf Hitler returned to fight today's super-heroes as the masked villain Hate-Monger.

I want you to absorb that. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby brought Adolf Hitler back to life and made him a super-villain. Although, it should be mentioned that no one was quite sure how well Zola's mind transference device actually worked and it was theorized by a couple of folks that this was a clone of Hitler who simply believed himself to be the original in a reborn body. Either way, weird and scary.

Dressed like a medieval Klansman, the Hate-Monger went against the Fanastic Four, Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. and, of course, Captain America himself. The Hate-Monger later learned of the cosmic cube and wanted to get control of it for his own agenda, intending to use its power to undo his defeat during World War II. The Red Skull showed up to aid his former mentor in this endeavor and brought the cosmic cube that was in his possession. Using Zola's mind transference device, Hate-Monger attempted to project his own consciousness into the cube itself, believing he would thus become a god and couldn't have the power taken away from him.

But the Skull had tricked him. This cube was faulty and only an empty shell. The Red Skull had not intended to once again become the lacky of a man he now felt was his inferior and so he'd engineered an alluring trap. Now the mind of Adolf Hitler (if that's who he truly was) was locked in the cube, unable to escape or interact with the outside world. He screamed for freedom and went insane from the isolation and eventually his screams stopped and his image faded from the cube, vanishing into nothingness.

Moral of the story? Even if you're the head Nazi of the world, never mess with the Red Skull.

OLD ALLIES, NEW TEAM

DC Comics had the Justice League. Marvel had the Avengers. Both were essentially the clubhouse of heroes who banded together to fight menaces too big for anyone to handle. Before the Justice League, there had been the Justice Society. And before the Avengers, there had been ... what?

DC Comics got some good nostalgia for their fans by occasionally doing stories starring the Justice Society that were set back in World War II. Marvel writer Roy Thomas wanted to do the same for Marvel. But what did he have? There was the All-Winners Squad, but their adventures had been published after World War II and so there was no way their continuity could still happen, since Captain America and Bucky had gone off the radar before the war had ended.

Roy Thomas wanted to reveal that before the war had ended, Marvel had indeed had a team of heroes. Wishing to focus on the All-Winners Squad’s original line-up (the Sub-Mariner, Cap and the original Human Torch), he intended that this team would be an earlier incarnation of the Squad that had operated when the war was still going on. Stan Lee, then editor, was down with the idea but wanted the name changed, believing it to be a rather silly and arrogant title for a group of heroes to have. I find this amusing coming from a man who called one of his heroes "Mr. Fantastic" and one of his villains "Paste-Pot Pete", but hey, that doesn’t mean he didn’t have a point.

Roy Thomas named his new/retroactively-old team "The Invaders." The idea was a hit and soon we learned that Cap and Bucky had met with the Sub-Mariner, along with the original Human Torch and Toro back in England in 1942. After saving the day from Axis agents, the heroes decided to form a team on the suggestion of Winston Churchill, who referred to them as "invaders" who would take the fight back to the Nazis. A team was born, a group of strange warriors who would argue with each other half the time, but would put aside their differences whenever they had to fight their enemies. When the three rushed into battle, they'd often shout, "Okay, Axis - HERE WE COME!"

As the stories went on, old heroes and villains that hadn’t been seen in decades were brought into the fold and joined in several adventures. And new heroes were introduced as well. We met Union Jack (one of several over the years) and Spitfire, both of whom joined the Invaders.

While the Invaders were busy in Europe, a U.S. analog of the team formed with the Whizzer, Miss America and the hero called Thin Man. This team was called the Liberty Legion and the Invaders were honorary members (and the reverse of that statement was true as well). So the Liberty Legion took on spies while the Invaders took on tanks in the battle field.

The Invaders fought Nazi menaces like Master-Man, Germany’s answer to a super-soldier (who, strangely enough, was named in reference to the main character from Death of a Salesman). There was also Agent Axis, the vampire Baron Blood, and teams like Super-Axis and, created years later, Battle-Axis (a team composed of heroes-turned-Nazis). All of these villains were simple proof that Nazi=scary but super-powered Nazis=even scarier.

The Invaders gave a sense of history for these Marvel heroes, as well as the Marvel universe in general. It was fun to see new takes on these guys and for new readers it was really the first time they got to see a younger Captain America in action with the original Bucky.

WILL THE REAL CAPTAIN PLEASE STAND UP?

Cap had a very clear history. And yet, there had been that revival in the 1950's when he'd been reintroduced as a school teacher and Bucky had been his student/friend. Stories where he fought a communist Red Skull and other "red" enemies.

But surely those stories could be ignored. Who even remembered them?

But new Captain America writer Steve Englehart (who also did a wonderful run with Batman over at DC Comics) wondered ... what if there were a way to bring those stories back into cannon without denying the continuity Stan Lee had established, that Cap and the Skull had both been locked in suspended animation just before WW II ended and that Bucky had been killed?

Could be fun.

And so it was in the modern-day adventures of Captain America and the Falcon that we learned the truth. As the 1950's began, a man whose name we never learned had developed on obsession about Captain America. Digging into recovered Nazi documents, he found notes on Operation: Rebirth that had been stolen before Dr. Reinstein had committed it all to memory and destroyed it. Using this, the man was able to piece together enough to make his own version of the super-soldier formula.

Originally, the man brought these to the government and suggested they use the formula to make him the new Captain America. The government agreed, believing Captain America could be a boon to the Korean Conflict. But when the conflict ended, the project was scrapped. The nameless man then decided to take matters into his own hands. Having learned from the notes that Captain America had been Steve Rogers, and finding old photographs of him, the nameless man had his face surgically altered to look like Steve. He even began operating under the name Steve Rogers, believing like many others that the real Captain America was dead.

Eventually, settled in as a teacher and awaiting the time when it would be right to act, this fake Steve Rogers met an athletic college student who idolized the old exploits of Captain America and Bucky so much that he’d actually given himself the nickname of Bucky. Though he wasn't given any other name originally, this kid was revealed to be named Jack Monroe in stories done many years later. The fake Steve recruited him, telling him that in those days of the Red Scare, America needed people like them to fight any communist and criminal threat. They both took his home-made super-soldier formula. Without the vita-rays to balance the formula out, the two actually gained superhuman strength rather than merely enhanced strength but there was a side-effect concerning their mental instability (this might also have been due to the fact that the fake Steve Rogers hadn’t recreated the formula as precisely as he’d believed).

We also found out that, around the same time, a communist agent named Albert Malik was assigned to use the Red Skull’s image and reputation to inspire fear in Soviet enemies. Donning an identical mask, Malik became the second Red Skull and it was he who had been beaten by this Captain America and Bucky during the 1950's when he attacked the U.N. building in New York. Years later, this would also be used to explain a continuity question concerning Spider-Man. In a Spider-Man story by Stan Lee, the webbed hero had learned that his parents had been killed when he was a child as part of a plot by the Red Skull (Spidey’s parents were government agents). Good story, but sadly it had seemed unlikely since the Red Skull would’ve still been under suspended animation when Spider-Man was a child (oops, guess Stan missed that). With the introduction of Malik as the second Red Skull, this continuity gaff was fixed, as we realized it had been this Soviet Skull who had killed Spidey’s parents.

But back to the 50's Cap and Jack Monroe. As said before, the home-made super-soldier serum affected their minds, enhancing baser instincts and personal prejudices. They began to believe that communist agents were hiding in places such as Harlem and Watts and it wasn't long before they came to the conclusion that anyone who wasn't a "pure-blooded" American was actually a communist enemy who was poisoning the country. Blacks, Asians, Hispanics. Anyone who didn't fit into their view of a proper U.S. citizen was a target. Eventually, they were captured by the government and both were placed in suspended animation (no doubt so scientists could study what their version of the super-soldier serum had done to their bodies).

Decades passed. The true Captain America came back. And then, years later, the fake Cap and Jack Monroe were awakened from their sleep and busted out. Still psychotic, they believed that America had been overthrown by enemy agents and that Cap and the Falcon were actually communist soldiers. A vicious battle broke out and Cap was forced to fight this twisted 1950's version of himself who was psychotic and weilded greater strength. Cap won in the end, proving to himself that the U.S. had no place for such racist and paranoid individuals who would corrupt the ideals of the country. And anyone who tried to prove otherwise would have to deal with people like him.

The fake Cap and Jack Monroe were taken in by the government again but then they were captured by the mental-manipulation villain Dr. Faustus. Under his influence, the fake Captain America took on the guise of a neo-Nazi known as the Grand Director. In his reign of terror across Manhattan, he promoted white supremacy and he and his soldiers, the "National Force", killed dozens of people. He even killed some of his own followers, all of whom were forced to wear outfits that would burst into flame at the Grand Director's remote control command.

Sharon Carter was one of the unlucky ones who was hypnotized into serving the Grand Director. Cap teamed up with S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and the New York vigilante Daredevil to try and stop the National Force. Finally, Cap confroned the Director and Dr. Faustus and was able to make the Director face his own psychosis and how he'd become nothing more than a Nazi, something the true Captain America had been born to fight. The Grand Director couldn't cope wit this realization and so he killed himself, finally bringing an end to the horror.

After the battle, Cap was looking for Sharon but couldn't find her. Nick Fury had the unhappy duty of showing Cap recovered video footage that showed Sharon dying hours earlier, another victim of the Grand Director’s schemes. His friend and lover was gone, her life taken by a man who had believed himself to be Steve's successor. Once again, the time-lost soldier was faced with how much his life could cost him.

But as time went on, it turned out that the Grand Director had not been the only person who'd taken up Steve's name and mantle following World War II.

Marvel stories had shown parallel universes before, alternate realities where history took a different turn somewhere. The Thing had journeyed to a world where it was Reed Richards rather than he who had become a rock-like monster as a result of the accident that had created the Fantastic Four. The Avengers had met the Squadron Supreme, a team from another version of Earth that had different cities from our own and different heroes and villains. Marvel decided to take the ball and run with it by producing a new series called What If ...?

Each issue of What If...? presented readers with a question which the writer then tried to answer. “What if ... Gwen Stacy had lived?” for instance, recalling the death of Spider-Man’s longtime girlfriend. "What if ... the Fantastic Four had never gained their powers?" was another possibility. Eventually, writer Roy Thomas wondered, what if the Invaders had stayed together as a team even after the end of World War II? And so, in What If ...? #4, we saw the nearly forgotten team of the All-Winners Squad. There was the Whizzer and Miss America, the original Torch and Toro. Sub-Mariner. And surprisingly, Captain America and Bucky were there as well.

In this alternate reality, right after Cap and Bucky went missing, the government was afraid of what such news would do to America’s morale if they believed their hero was dead. So, they contacted Will Naslund, a costumed hero called the Spirit of ’76 who had been inspired by Cap (and featured in The Invaders). Naslund was an athletic man and nearly the same height and build as Cap. He was asked to take on the identity, acting as if he were the original so that the U.S. and its enemies didn’t know that the star-spangled avenger was missing in action. To complete the illusion, Fred Davis (a friend of Bucky’s who’d impersonated him once in the past) was asked to become the new Bucky. Davis seemed younger than Bucky Barnes, but this was ignored. In later comics, it would be commented that the general public hadn’t seen too many photos of Bucky Barnes and had also been influenced by a simple desire that he was still alive.

The story showed Naslund and Davis attempting to become the new Captain America and Bucky. They joined with the former Invaders who, now with the war over, was called the All-Winners Squad. Although both heroes were athletic and skilled, neither were proper replacements for the men they emulated. Eventually, the Squad got into a battle with Adam II, an android created by the same scientist who had built the Human Torch. Adam II was out to cause some chaos and kill some people, including politician John F. Kennedy. During the battle, Naslund was attacked by Adam II who crushed him to death.

Jeff Mace, AKA the Patriot, was another hero inspired by the original Captain America. Witnessing the death of the second, Mace decided to help the Squad avenge Naslund’s death by taking on the guise of Captain America and helping them against Adam II. The heroes won but it was a hollow victory as they mourned Naslund. Mace decided to continue operating as Captain America, with Davis remaining as his partner Bucky, in memory of the first and of the successor who had given his life in battle.

Thus ended the story. But hold the phone! Who said it had to be only a "whaf it?" After all, Roy Thomas had written it in a way that it technically fit into continuity. It had been able to bring the old All-Winners Squad stories back into cannon without retconning Stan Lee’s story that Bucky had been killed in an explosion and Cap had been frozen before World War II even ended. In fact, this now offered fans an explanation as to how Bucky could have died in an explosion in 1945 and yet in a comic published years later been shot by criminals, replaced by the Golden Girl. The kid who was shot wasn’t James Bucky Barnes, it had been Fred Davis! All of these things could be explained away here.

So, this issue of What If...? actually became Marvel cannon. It was history now and we all simply assumed that after some adventures, Jeff Mace and Golden GIrl retired from the super-hero life in the late forties, which was when the original Captain America series had ended anyway.

Confused? Quick review. Steve and James "Bucky" Barnes become the original Captain America and Bucky. They get blown up by Baron Zemo. Bucky is killed, Steve is frozen, and WW II ends soon afterwards. William Naslund (Spirit of '76) and the young Fred Davis become the new Cap and Bucky. Naslund is killed and Jeff Mace (Patriot) takes over. Davis is shot and replaced with Golden Girl. Both soon retire. A couple of years later, fake/psycho "Steve Rogers" and Jack Monroe later become new Cap and Bucky of the 50's. They go crazy and are put on ice, essentially. Years later, the real Captain America returns. And there ya go.

While this may seem complicated, fans actually took to it and enjoyed the idea that Steve had become such a hero that others constantly felt the need to make sure his legacy lived on. It seemed then that Captain America was not just Steve Rogers but an ideal one had to live up to and which one was willing to die for.

When Steve later learned about how Naslund and Mace had taken up his mantle during the latter end of the 1940's, he was humbled by the idea that he had begun a legacy. Steve was at Jeff Mace's bedside when the retired hero finally died decades later, now a much older man than the original star-spangled avenger who'd inspired him. With his death and the deaths of Naslund and even the insane 1950's Captain America, Steve found himself humbled by the fact that fate had decreed he would outlive his own successors.

ART IMITATES LIFE

The Watergate scandal was a big shock for a lot of Americans. Captain America included. But Cap’s faith in the government got shaken even further in the next major storyline.

The organization known as the Secret Empire meant to take over the world, giving its highest members (all of whom were only identified by numbers) influence over Earth. Its leader was known only as Number One. Teaming-up with the Falcon, Nick Fury, Professor Xavier and the X-Men, Cap fought the Secret Empire despite his own reputation being ruined publicly by the villain called Moonstone (this was the first Moonstone, not his female successor).

During this story, the Falcon sensed Professor X’s telepathic cry at one point. Xavier said it was possible that the Falcon was a mutant, which could’ve explained why he had a mental link with his bird. Later writers would have a different explanation.

Just in case you couldn’t tell the story of political corruption was inspired by Nixon, the former President’s resignation was mentioned several times. What’s more, whereas Nixon had been aided by the group with the unfortunate acronym of C.R.E.E.P., this story featured a group called the Committee to Resume American Policy (C.R.A.P.).

The big shock of the story came when Captain America chased Number One of the Secret Empire into the White House itself. Number One ran into the Oval Office and Cap was shocked to see him unmasked. We didn’t see him, but he mentioned being unsatisfied with his position as a high ranking government official. He then shot himself in the Oval Office and Cap left, shaken and shocked. The implication was pretty strong. Although the Falcon and others weren’t told the details, Nick Fury, Cap and readers knew the truth. Number One had been Marvel’s then President of the United States (not Nixon, but a fictional Pres that took over at some point after him).

Steve couldn’t in good conscious continue his role of Captain America when he had no more faith in its government. He hung up his star-spangled costume and walked away. Later, Hawkeye attacked him under the cover identity of “The Golden Archer”, forcing him back into action. Hawkeye explained that just because Steve couldn’t continue as Captain America, didn’t mean he couldn’t keep on adventuring under a different guise and alias. Steve saw the logic in this and so created a new black costume with a cape and golden boots. He was now NOMAD: Man Without a Country!

During one of his first ventures, Steve actually tripped over his cape. He ripped it off, deciding there had been a reason he didn’t wear a cape before as Cap. As he began making his career as Nomad, fighting off the Viper and the Serpent Society, a Brooklyn teen named Roscoe that Steve and Falcon had met decided to pick up the slack of being Captain America. Roscoe took up the costume and tried his best to be the new Cap. Sadly, he didn’t last long. After only a few minor adventures, Roscoe was confronted by the Red Skull and tortured to death by the villain. His body was then left on a rooftop, tied to a chimney for all to see.

Horrified by Roscoe’s death, Steve blamed himself for making the kid think someone else needed to take up the mantle of Captain America. Believing that he could be Cap because he represented the ideals behind America as a country and not whatever administration was in charge at the time, Steve put his old costume on again to go fight his arch-enemy. During the battle, Cap found the Falcon attacking him at the Skull’s command. The Red Skull revealed that months before, he taken a criminal named Sam “Snap” Wilson and had used the Cosmic Cube to alter the man's mind, making him appear to be a suitable partner for Captain America.

Sam had begun a career as the criminal "Snap" after the deaths of his parents. Unable to deal with his loss, he’d turned from a decent person into a corrupt, womanizing, remorseless opportunist. The Skull repressed this side of his personality, regressing him to the kind of person he’d been before his parents’ death. This version of Sam Wilson (who had no memory of being "Snap") was the one Cap had met months back. As the Skull intended, they became allies and even partners. And now, the Skull had activated his sleeper agent to attack Steve.

It was also revealed that the Skull’s use of the Cosmic Cube on Sam is what gave him the ability to share a mental link with Redwing. Thus, Sam wasn’t a mutant as Xavier had theorized.

Sam eventually broke free of the Skull’s control and after many months he found himself able to get past his feelings of guilt for betraying his friend and teacher. Cap forgave him, knowing that Sam hadn’t been responsible for his actions.

Sam eventually came to terms with his returning memories of what he’d been like as Snap Wilson. He was now a whole person, one who remembered his criminal past but who also knew that he didn’t have to be that way, who remembered the hope he’d possessed before his parents death and during his time as Captain America’s partner. He wasn't just a super-hero anymore, he was an example that criminals could find redemption and become greater than they'd been before, proof that you didn't need to be bound by where you came from and how you lived if you wanted to reach for something better.

Years later, Falcon's mental link with his pet bird enhanced to the point that he could actually telepathically link with all bird life. He could communicate with them and command them. When fighting a villain who kidnapped a child, Falcon commanded several dozen birds to fly down and attack the criminal with their beaks and talons. What's more, Falcon learned that if he focused, he could use birds as long-range "cameras", allowing him to see through their eyes and thus giving him incredible spying capabilities when tracking down enemies.

Although Falcon parted from being Cap’s full-time partner, they were still trusted allies who would rely on each other many times over the years. Falcon even became an Avenger for a while, but then quit when he found out that the team's government liaison Henry Gyrich had only allowed him to join because he was black and thus would make the goup look more ethnically diverse to the public. Learning this caused Sam to doubt himself for quite a while, but eventually he got over it and realized that he'd earned his place with the group and over the years he would help them out even when he was no longer fully-active member.

Sometime after learning about Falcon's true origin, Cap began to settle into a new life. He got an apartment, made friends with several neighbors (including his new love interest Bernie Rosenthal) and started a more stable career as a freelance artist. For a while, he even illustrated the Marvel comic book that was loosely based on his real-life adventures.

In his heroic identity, Cap was shocked to learn that there was a new independent party who had nominated him for President of the United States. He pondered the question before him. Should he, a super-hero, run for office? He wasn’t much for sitting behind a desk and deciding policies. Then again, he was Captain friggin’ America!

After some soul-searching and advice from several friends, Cap decided he couldn’t responsible run for office. He was better serving an ideal of what America could be and being a representation rather than tying himself to particular political stances and having to choose between what agendas to follow.

UPDATING THE PAST AND PUSHING FORWARD

Cap’s past began to be developed more. It was revealed that some of his memories were false, implanted for him to give bad information to Nazis in case of his capture. With his real memories restored, Steve Rogers now remembered his parents’ real names and that they’d been Irish-Americans. His father had died when he was a boy and his mother some years after that. The idea that the people who made him into a super-soldier also implanted false memories would be adopted by the writers of Wolverine many years later. And longer after that, Grant Morrison would show it was no mere coincidence that both Wolverine and Cap happened to be part of experiments that involved memory implants and creating living weapons.

Around this time, Cap also regained an old friend. Readers met Arnie Goldstein, who had grown up with Cap when they were kids. Arnie was much older now, having aged naturally and without the aid of being frozen in ice. It was fun for Cap to have a friend who knew who he was but was not a fellow super-hero. But what was surprising for some readers was the quick realization that Arnie was supposed to be gay. Although they did not specifically have a scene where Arnie mentioned "by the way, I’m attracted to men," it was very clear through his relationship with his roommate that this was the case. This may not seem a big deal now, but recognize what step it was in the early 1980s to make Captain America’s best friend a Jewish gay man. Good for you, Marvel.

A new partner came into play too. Although the fake Captain America of the 1950s had died, his partner Jack Monroe was still alive. After Dr. Faustus had been defeated and the Grand Director had died, . The 1950s Bucky was taken in by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who helped him through his mind-control and the warped morality the super-soldier serum had given him. They reminded him who he was and filled him in on the history of the past decades while he slept. Now, able to re-enter society, he had no place else to go. Not knowing what else to do, he sought out Steve Rogers.

Steve took Jack Monroe in and offered him friendship. During a battle with Viper, Cap was captured. Jack was recruited by Nick Fury to help him out. Since Viper's worst defeat had been at Steve’s hands when he’d been using the Nomad identity, Fury decided to play with that psychological memory by having Munroe wear a new Nomad costume instead. So Marvel had a new team. Captain America and Nomad.

Of course, things weren't going to stay good for Cap. He had a girlfriend who he trusted enough to share his double identity with, a young partner who knew what it was like to be trapped "out of time", and an old friend of his who’d known him as the normal man he had been before Operation: Rebirth, the normal man he still considered himself to be. So, you just knew that the baddies were gonna be back soon to screw all this up.

First up to return was Helmut Zemo, no longer calling himself Phoenix. Now he was simply the new Baron Zemo, still obsessed with vengeance on Cap. Zemo's experiments on people he considered expendable led to the death of Arnie’s lover and to the creation of the villain Vermin, a savage rat-man who would become a recurring Spider-Man enemy.

Nomad and Cap wound up facing off against the Red Skull again, who'd teamed up with Baron Zemo and his own soldier Mother Superior. Mother Superior ran the Sisters of Sin, which included among their ranks a girl named Synthia who was the Skull’s own daughter, artificially aged in order to act as his assassin. Cap fought these soldiers and went through a physical and emotional gauntlet. He was poisoned by the Skull and his body began aging to how old Cap should’ve been, causing him to grow progressively weaker. What's more, Arnie was captured and forced to wear make-up as he was put on humiliating display, condemned for being gay as the Skull knew he was.

Finally, Cap faced the Skull himself, who had been rapidly aging ever since the results of the gas that had kept him in suspended animation had finally worn off. Determined to see his enemy die first or to be killed by him in battle, the Skull had arranged all this so that Cap would be enraged enough to engage him in a death duel. But despite his anger, Cap found himself pitying the Skull and could only hold him as the aged villain passed away in his arms. Naturally, Cap was soon cured of his aging and was restored to his prime.

Mother Superior and Synthia Schmidt would be fought several more times. A later battle would also include Crossbones, a new agent of evil and a deadly killer. Eventually, Synthia Schmidt was regressed to a child and taken in by SHIELD, whose agents adjusted her brain to make her believe she was a normal girl. And as for Syn's daddy ... did you really think we'd seen the last of him?

This is continued in Part 3.