Captain America is currently suffering an identity crisis.
During Marvel’s 2017 event series, Secret Empire, it was revealed that Captain America’s past been warped by a Cosmic Cube and that he has been a sleeper agent for Hydra (a Nazi-aligned terror organisation) since World War 2. Cap was eventually proclaimed himself Hydra Supreme, taking control of the United States and enforcing a fascist regime.
Not a comic-book person and more into the Marvel movies? Imagine if The Winter Soldier ended with Cap deciding that, actually, Robert Redford is right and then he lets the Helicarriers gun down Hydra’s enemies.
This evil version of Cap was eventually defeated and the good Cap restored, but the damage had been done. Hydra conquered the world and they did it with Captain America’s face. Now it’s time for writer Ta-Nehisi Coates and artist Leinil Francis Yu to pick up the pieces in the new Captain America comic series.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of America’s best cultural critics and writers; that’s a fact. He’s also a damn fine comic-book writer, helming Marvel’s Black Panther title since 2016.
This probably doesn’t come as a surprise, but the majority of writers and artists who have worked on Captain America comics have been straight, white men. Coates is the first African-American writer to helm a book bearing Captain America’s name since Christopher Priest’s Captain America and the Falcon in 2004. (Lu is a Filipino artist who broke into the American comic market in the mid-nineties.) It’s a new perspective and experience that’ll help steer Cap into a fresher direction.
Coates describes his run as being, “an exploration of what it means to be Captain America in a time when people are questioning what America itself is.” This isn’t Red Skull attempting to make a super-weapon or Thanos trying to wipe out half of the universe. Those problems are comparatively easy: throw shield, punch them until they stop. What Cap is reckoning with here is something deeper, more personal. What do you do when an American icon, a symbol that the entire nation looks up to, validates the hateful views of bigots? How do you come back from that and set things right? You can’t punch away a divided America.
Captain America has always been the moral backbone of the Marvel Universe. They guy who is objectively good, who you could always trust to make the right decision. But Secret Empire broke that vow of trust. “How does the world feel about Steve?” Coates explained in a commentary for Captain America #1. “Who trusts him to be Captain America now? It’s an existential crisis.”
The general public doesn’t see any difference between the real Steve Rogers and the Hydra Supreme. They remember an “American Stalin who looked just like [Captain America]”, who executed dissenters and established concentration camps.
Coates and Lu drive that point home during a moment in issue #1. Cap stops a group of muggers but is visibly shaken when one of them shouts, “Hail Hydra!” at him. When Cap goes to check on the victim—an African-American woman—she runs from him, afraid. The people who hated him love him; the people who loved him now fear him.
This is Steve Roger’s redemption arc as much as it is America’s. Captain America has always represented an idealised version of his nation. A symbol of freedom and paragon of greatness that all Americans should strive to achieve; do better, be better. Now he’s a man attempting to reckon with his image being co-opted as a symbol of hatred, while also trying to figure out how the country whose flag he wears like a second skin fell so easily to this hatred. “This is a comic book about ideals in actual crisis. What happens when we stray too far from our ideals?” Coates explained in his commentary, “Hydra was able to take over — in [Cap’s] view, we had forgotten something.”
Coates is a smart writer with an important voice, while Lu is a great artist whose art captures the blockbuster aesthetic of the Marvel movies. It’s still early days, but so far it looks like Coates and Lu are creating a Captain America story that reflects the current political climate. If you’re a Captain America fan or just looking to pick up a good comic, you need to get your eyes around this. It’s only up to its second issue, so you’ve got no excuse not to catch up.
You can catch Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Sydney Opera House on 2nd September as part of ANTIDOTE. Go ask him who would win in a fight between Captain America and Black Panther.