A lot of Captain America's MCU storyline was taken straight from the comics - but that
doesn't mean all of his comic stories ended up in the MCU. For better or worse, these are
some of the most notable details and stories that the Marvel movie universe left behind.
In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Avengers are Cap's one and only superteam.
He does hang out with the Howling Commandos in World War II,
but that's more just a nickname for a military unit than anything else.
In the comics, however, Steve actually joins a superpowered group during the war.
Deep in the midst of the fight against Nazi Germany, Cap forms a team with the Sub-Mariner
and the original Human Torch to save British Prime Minister Winston Churchill from the Nazi
villain Master Man. When they decide to stay together, Churchill suggests the name "The
Invaders." The group that eventually would be called the Invaders were actually first
introduced as a team in a time-traveling issue of The Avengers, in which Earth's Mightiest
Heroes' surprise opponents are revealed to be the greatest superheroes of World War II.
Over time, the team adds Bucky and the Torch's flame-powered ward Toro. The mongoose-blood
powered speedster the Whizzer and his wife, Miss America, also become full members. The team also
includes British heroes like Union Jack and his sister, Spitfire, who gets her powers when the
Human Torch gives her a blood transfusion. There are a couple of dozen more active superheroes
during World War II too, so if Marvel ever decides to do another movie set during the war,
they'd have no shortage of characters to choose from - or team names,
as the original version of the Invaders was called the All-Winners Squad.
...on second thought, Invaders works just fine.
After the events of Captain America: Civil War, Cap gives up his uniform and goes underground.
In the comics, however, Steve Rogers has quit being Captain America several times.
The first and most famous instance comes when Cap goes up against an evil organization called
the Secret Empire, that had been using a disinformation campaign to discredit him.
Using the particularly imaginative alias of Roger Stevens, Cap goes undercover in an effort to track
down their leader, and the trail soon leads to Washington. The leader of the Secret Empire, #1,
then emerges from a flying saucer, before being defeated by Cap.
To Cap's surprise, #1 runs into the White House. While he isn't mentioned by name in the comic,
writer Steve Englehart later confirmed that #1 was, in fact, President Richard
Nixon. Nixon then kills himself before Cap can apprehend him, and a disillusioned Cap retires,
to the delight of girlfriend Sharon Carter and pretty much no one else.
In an effort to get Cap to remember how much he liked being a superhero,
Hawkeye shows up with a disguise and a weird, fake accent. When Steve tells him he won't be
Captain America anymore, Hawkeye gives him some advice: adopt a new identity instead.
So Cap puts his design skills to good use and reinvents himself as Nomad,
the Man without a Country. Before long, however, Steve becomes Cap again, when
the Red Skull returns to wreak havoc. After that, things pretty much go back to normal.
In the MCU, Cap has been lucky enough to be spared the indignity of a common rite of passage for
long-running superheroes: losing his powers. In the comics, however, Cap has had no such luck.
In Captain America #355, Cap gets a phone call from his ex-girlfriend
Bernie Rosenthal, telling him that her younger sister has gone missing.
He then realizes that members of his nationwide teen informant network had befallen the same fate.
Trying to find a way to go undercover, Cap asks the Eternal known as Sersi to turn him
into a 15-year-old version of himself - but when he is de-aged, he loses the effects of
the super-soldier serum infusion that made him Captain America in the first place.
Cap is usually one to have a pretty good plan in place for stuff like this.
This... was not one of those occasions. Powerless and shieldless, he wanders over to Port Authority
and basically blunders his way into reaching his goal: a "camp" for kids that is actually
a nihilistic death cult. Around the same time, he ends up being attacked by his old enemies Scarbo
and Mother Night, and the transformation trigger turns out to be the 50th time Cap gets punched.
Just when it seems like he's about to be beaten to a pulp,
he turns back into his normal self, defeats the villains, and tells the
kids at the camp to stay in school and obey their parents. That's Captain America, alright.
"How many more of these?"
Being a kid isn't the only indignity Cap has suffered in the comics.
Like any good superhero, he has also occasionally been turned into a full-blown monster.
Joining an all-star wolf lineup, Captain America is transformed into a werewolf by
Nightshade, who is building a werewolf army for a man named Dredmund - which
includes other wolf-based superheroes such as Wolfsbane, Feral, and Man-Wolf. To this end,
Cap is captured and injected with werewolf serum,
but it turns out the Super-Soldier serum allows him to retain control of his wolf form.
This enables him to not only beat up a whole lot of bad guys, but also use his natural
leadership skills to help convince the werewolves to fight with him and become Cap's own wolfpack.
After that, a bunch of nonsense happens including Dredmund becoming the Star-Wolf and Cable showing
up for some reason, but things get turned around when Man-Wolf injects Nightshade with her own
serum. This motivates her to develop an antidote, putting an end to Cap's lycanthropic adventures.
But that's not the end of Steve Rogers' many magical mutations. Years later, Cap is kidnapped
by the Jackal during the Spider Island storyline, and is transformed into the monstrous Spider King.
A slave of the Spider Queen, the Spider King is implanted with thousands of eggs.
When these eggs hatch, the resulting spiders are then supposed to infect anyone they bite
and turn them into a spider-mutate under the Spider Queen's control.
Cap is eventually defeated by Venom, who takes him to a facility for a cure. After this, Steve
helps lead the resistance against the arachnid menace - and brings them down once and for all.
"Evacuate the city, engage all defenses, and get this man a shield."
Everyone knows Captain America is basically half-shield, half-man,
and the Marvel movies have even seen him use a few variants on the classic design.
But in the comics, he once ended up with a very different shield than any seen in the MCU.
During one of his many battles against evil, Cap's seemingly
indestructible shield is affected by a Vibranium virus and torn to pieces.
He uses his original, triangular shield for a while, but that also ends up being destroyed.
So, naturally, Sharon Carter ends up giving him an energy shield to use.
While nothing could ever replace the strong, light, and highly-balanced shield that was
practically an extension of his own body, the energy shield nonetheless comes in pretty handy,
and Cap uses it on a number of his adventures.
Years later, after Steve Rogers hands over the Captain America mantle to Bucky Barnes,
he uses a different energy shield for his adventures. This one is comprised
of Zero-Point Energy, which allows him to throw it, allows him to throw it, strike his enemies,
and then dissipate it into the air. A new one is then automatically generated. Obviously,
nothing can really replace the original, but still… Pretty cool, right?
The aftermath of the 9/11 attacks was a grim and confusing time for the United States,
and the same was true for Captain America. In the MCU, however,
Cap didn't get revived until long after that tragedy took place.
Rebooting as part of the Marvel Knights brand, the first issue of a newly relaunched Captain
America series finds Cap sifting through the wreckage of 9/11. Nick Fury had tasked him to
track down the culprits, but Cap prefers to stay as part of the rescue operations.
That changes, however, when terrorists take the American town of Centerville
hostage. Cap infiltrates the town and attacks the mastermind of the crisis,
a terrorist named Al-Tariq. To his credit, the story does try to keep things as balanced
as possible. For example, Cap saves an Arab-American youth earlier in the issue
from a gang that was threatening to kill him as a misguided attempt at revenge for 9/11.
Similarly, the children that Al-Tariq has strapped bombs to are all victims of unexploded landmines.
When they realize they're being used, they help Cap defuse the bombs attached
to the citizens of Centerville, who are trapped together in a church.
Eventually, Cap grows suspicious, when he sees that Al-Tariq is wearing a piece of technology
called a CATtag, that is normally used to monitor vital signs. Fury
is characteristically shifty when confronted about this, and Cap soon learns that a villain
who was affected by the Cold War was planning to kill every American who was wearing one.
Inevitably, Captain America defeats this new bad guy and saves the day.
In the MCU, Cap and his archenemy the Red Skull fight just a couple of times in World War
II. In the comics, however, the Red Skull clashes with Captain America
on many occasions, until they engage in a final showdown near the end of the war.
Cap barely escapes the resulting explosion, but the Red Skull is trapped in a building
and exposed to gases that put him in a state of suspended animation.
After the Skull is revived from suspended animation, he proves to be a lethal nuisance
for years. He swipes the Cosmic Cube - aka the Tesseract - and almost destroys Cap with it. He
teams up with Adolf Hitler, in his Hate-Monger guise, then later traps him in the Cube.
He also activates Sleeper robots to hunt down Cap, because at that point, why not?
Later, the Red Skull becomes head of a commission that forces Cap to give up his identity,
and begins funding both anarchist and fascist organizations. Along the way,
he gets his head handed to him by both Magneto and Kingpin on two separate occasions,
becomes Secretary of Defense, and eventually has Cap assassinated after the events of Civil War,
in a last-ditch attempt to take over his body. Spoiler alert: it doesn't work.
In the MCU, Steve Rogers is the one and only American to have received the genuine
super-soldier serum. In the comics, however, there have been many men who have been given
a variation of the serum, as the government tried desperately to develop an army of super-soldiers.
One of these men is Isaiah Bradley, who was drafted into World War
II shortly after getting married, and quickly conscripted into an experiment
along with 300 other Black men in an effort to recreate the serum.
After undergoing a series of gruesome and highly unethical experiments,
the survivors become covert soldiers used on dangerous black-ops missions.
Bradley is later sent on a suicide mission to kill a Nazi scientist trying to develop a super-soldier
formula of his own. Bradley is successful in this mission, but is ultimately captured by the Nazis.
Eventually, he escapes, thanks to the efforts of some local resistance heroes,
but he is then immediately court-martialed and imprisoned upon his return to the U.S. - because
he had stolen a Captain America outfit and shield. Bradley then ends up in prison for
nearly two decades, and his mind starts to decay thanks to the faulty nature of his super-serum.
Over the years, Bradley quietly receives visitors who arrive to pay their respects
to the Black Captain America. His son Josiah and his grandson Eli both spent time as heroes,
with Eli forming the Young Avengers. And finally, once he learns of Bradley's existence,
Steve Rogers himself stops by his home to pay his respects to this long-forgotten hero.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus,
even more Looper videos about your favorite movies are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.