America's 250th Birthday Special: What If... Captain America Woke Up Today
For America's Birthday, Kev felt it prudent to comission something special.. and upon reading it despite being exausted by a long week.. I saw just how important it was this come out now, for 250 years, a tale of both what america truly means.. and the nightmare it can easily be... and at times these days absolutely is.
What If? was a series marvel started in the 1970's, running two volumems and continuing in one shots and mini series to this very day, a way to ask what would happen if say the latest crossover went bonkers or spider-man never learned great power with great responsibilty or the all new all diffrent xmen died. It's a mix of obviousy bad outcomes and ones where it's a lot muddier and where something going well may still be bittersweet.
What If? Captain America Were Revivied today is one of the series more famous stories and while I haven't read it till today, I had heard of it, a unique use of the format not to just ask the question.. but to say something with the story itself. About america, what we are, what we easily become, and why cap means so much.
The point of divergence is simple: in the sacred timeline, Cap was frozen during WWII with Bucky seemingly dying. This being the 60's his frozen body was found.. by an inuit tribe that worshipped him as a god till Namor, incensed he wasn't the god they were worshipping, threw the chunk of ice into the ocean and before you can say "What the acctual fuck was that Stan?" , the avengers found him and after a brief kerfuffle he quickly joined the team and the rest is history, and like most history we just kinda tried to forget the racist part and move on.
IN this timeline Namor just.. takes a slightly diffrent route and isn't found and as a result neither is steve. Captain America never returns.
The first ripple is a pretty clever one: Eary in the Avengers history, they basically broke up, all the founding members deciding they had too much shit going on and disbanding, but letting Cap start the team from scratch, recurting recently reformed bad guys and fan faviorites Hawkeye, Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch into the legedary and very stan lee named Caps Kooky Quartet. Out of universe Stan wanted to pit a weaker team of characters without an ongoing against the big threats, raise the stakes and also make the book feel less redunant for those curious.
Here the Avengers just disband over Rick Jones objections, and life goes on. Other heroes presumibly do their job for them or some of the avengers take some of their shit solo. Obla dee, obla da life goes on and we don't have time to get into the massive ramifications of a world without avengers. Not what's in the title.
Instead one of the oldest stories in history plays out: somem angry weirdo who happens to be in the right place ruins everything for everyone. To understand how though I have to introduce ya'll to one of my faviorite Cap antagonists and one whose been criminally underused: William Burnside
Wiliam was created by vetran marve writer Steve Englehart to answer a continuity issue: Whie Cap was established as having come straight out of the 40's, something now key to teh character, there were attempts to bring him back, swapping the Nazi's out for "Commies", and even making Red Skull a communist because to Stan Lee those are apparently the same thing. Oh stan you and your red scare bullshit... I still miss you.
So Steve had a rather creative solution: This cap was wiliam burnside, a teacher and obessive cap fanboy who found the super soldier serum that made cap who he is... but without the vita ray that went with it slowly went ma and was frozen. Some random asshole, as in this story woke him the fuck up.
The diffrence is here, no one knew teh diffrence: Burnside had renamed himsef steve, no one knew it wasn't him, so he quickly filled in where the original cap was supposed to go, waking early, fighting his foes, and barely scraping by through tv apperances.. all while it was clear the momdern world didn't agree with him. People genuinely protesting for their civil rights was seen by him as weakning america against the communist threat, making us more vunerable by not being united. Or to translate from white bullshit "SHut up and take the scraps we give you for the betterment of us whites.". It's the same shit we get today, this idea that america shoudlnt' better itself and that somehow we're being TOO good to people a bunch of white assholes with too much money are putting under their boots. I"ve never been through this, therefore racisim dosen't exist or matter.
Naturally Burnside gets recruited by a far group that really isn't that far off of what the Right were doing at the time after getting Regan Elected: Slowly radicalizing their members and punching down on those they deemed lesser. Whie this was never absent, see Nixon, it really started to creep into the garbage we deal with today back then, with many a group making issues like Abortion inherently pollitica instead of "A right everyone shoud have". They use a diffrent party ikely to avoid upsetting republicans.. but it's really the same strategy: get someone charmastic to back their bullshit and try and make it SOUND resonable when it's really racist nonsense that hurts anyone not deemd white, paticuarlly black people.
It's paticuarlly damming one of the things.. is as discriminatory jobs bill that is more about putting people "to work" than acctually helping those who can't, something we graple with and something I relate to as someone on disablity. The Black Community sees the same old bullshit playing out and tries to protest.. but a sniper attacks cap in a false flag to end any peacefu tension and riots rightfully break out nationwide.. .and lead to black people getting walled off in ghettos and ignored.
It's this facist nightmare that cap wakes up to, found by a sub that almost understandably ends him thining he's the other cap, but luckily at least one WWII vet is left alive. Things have gotten only worse; walled ghettos, facist tropers carrying helmets and this is just with one senator in new york who was able to succesfully banish the ff and make iron man disappear. The party is on the verge of making the white america of their dreams and only one man can stop it.
The resitatnce is naturlaly a bit cagey at first, consiting of Nick Fury, Spider-Man and Sam Wilson, the woud be falcon, with spidey ready to understandably shoot cap on sight.. but submarine man vouches for him and Cap having served with Nick, knows shit only the real cap would know... and presents them the advantage they need.
What stands out is Cap is... completely horrified by this. Many a right winger bemoan how cap or superman is WOKE NOW, and THEY RUINED HIM and A MAN FROM THE 40'S WOULD NEVER BE THIS PROGRESSIVE , the later being used an excuse to make Utimate Cap, the original not the cooler new one, an asshole. But really.. they were always woke on some level: Cap had already hung up the shield after watergate and Superman was champion of the opressed early on before he got a hobby of marrying Jimmy Oleson to a gorilla. Cap was always woke and it's a trend teh 80's would only enfroce, quitting when the goerment tried to tell him what to do and giving his epic "i'm loyal to nothing except the dream" speech in Daredevil just two years after this. Cap could be a bit stiff and a stickler for the roles, Mark Gruenwald's same run that woud have him quit would define that but never at the cost of real freedom. Cap being prgoressive.. is ideaislim, that a man even from back then always thought of a better future and adapts to ours so well for the most part because of that. There's a lot to unpack, a lot of garbage to clean, but he'll never stop fighting.
So his response to america walling up it's citzens and becoming the white supremacist facist state he fought against.. is to storm the stage to fight Commie Buster Cap's freedom five: Himself, Bucky, Some Douche in a Hoood, a lady they hired just for modeling purposes, and .. Hawkeye. I thought the main comics had done clint dirty, still do, but holy shit. Hawkeye the facist.. jesus fucking christ. Might be hte only thing i disagree with in this comic and only because Clint's been through enough. Putting him on the stage with two facists, an abetter of facists and a man in a literal hood... what.
The final fight has Cap easily take Burnside, laying into him about his racist bullshit, how this isn't america.. america is fragile, it's worth fighting for.. and after laying out this racist piece of whit with the help of your friendly nneighborhood spider-man lays into america
Well, I say America is nothing! Without its ideals — its commitment to the freedom of all men, America is a piece of trash!
A nation is nothing! A flag is a piece of cloth!
I fought Adolf Hitler not because America was great, but because it was fragile! I knew that liberty could be snuffed out here as in Nazi Germany! As a people, we were no different than them!
When I returned, I saw that you nearly did turn American into nothing!
And the only reason you're not less than nothing —
— is that it's still possible for you to bring freedom back to America!
It's a speech we realy fucking need these ddays, with tons of racists, faists and opportunitsts trying to use america as an exxcuse to do henious shit.. when the country was founded for freedom... it's not about dominating others, about lashing outa t groups or about naked opportunism. It's about freedom, i'ts about a place for everyone and acepting others and your own faults, of trying to be fucking better. America was founded on possibily.. but it was also founded on slavery and hypocricy nad poeple fought had to end the former and still grapple with the constant latter. Facisim can happen here and is already trying to, we are not inhrently great because we're american.. our country, at it's best, far from where we are now.. is great because we constantly strive to be better. No matter what facist jackass sitsi n office we fight because laying down, accpeting this as normal or okay or something we can do nothing about isn't acceptable. I can do ittle.. but I can at least say this isn't okay. This is who we are sometimes, racist, afraid, selfish, colonalist.. but it's not who we are at our best. It's not what america ais and caps' just as right about that as he'd be about our currnet hellscape. And as he turns down them all following him the onus isn't on him to fix america. but on us.. the people in the crowd.. and us reading. WE can't do evertyhing.. but we can certainly try. And sometimes just doing the best we can, being a kind person, helping those around us is enough.. and frankly I coud stand to do more of enough.
