Captain America’s arc came to a largely satisfying conclusion with Avengers: Endgame, with Steve Rogers using the science-magic of the quantum realm to time travel back many decades and live out his life with his beloved Peggy.
But it did mean that we can only wonder how the MCU would have dealt with some of his other comic plotlines, like when he was an agent for Hydra, and that time he was hooked on ice.
Yes, you read that right. Captain America had a meth problem in the comics.
The run of comics in which this little-loved piece of drugs-are-bad finger-wagging occurred was in Captain America issues #373 to 378, back in the innocent pre-Breaking Bad world of 1990.
You might want to strap in because this is a ride.
So: Fabian Stankowicz decided that he wanted to destroy the Avengers for… um, reasons? And used his technical nous to create a mighty robot body and fight them as The Mechano-Marauder.
Iron Man kicked his shiny metal ass, thus setting the precedent of him being beaten by everyone: Spider-Man, Thing, Black Widow, Wasp, She-Hulk, and David Letterman.
Yes, that David Letterman. He hit him over the head with an oversized door handle, apparently. As I said, it was a ride.
Anyway: Fabes then changed his allegiance to the goodies and reinvented himself as Mechanaut, who also sucked and didn’t get to join the Avengers. However, he was offered a staff job helping upgrade things for the real heroes who couldn’t be beaten by middle-aged TV hosts – but the pressure got to much for him and he started using meth.
After sending him to rehab Captain America went to the meth lab where Fabian’s dealers were operating, which then blew up (so you know, a touch of reality there at least).
But the fumes from the drug got to him, giving him a mighty surge of adrenalin, and after that he was jonesin’ for another fix.
And readers of the comic knew that he was spiralling into addiction because he had stubble.
After passing out with a hallucination that he was getting the super-solider serum again, which is obviously GOOD DRUGS AND NOT BAD DRUGS IT’S COMPLETELY DIFFERENT DON’T EVEN SUGGEST THAT THERE’S A PARALLEL, he awoke in Hank “Ant Man” Pym’s lab having undergone a complete drug transfusion like he’s Keith Richards or something.
And while this cured his addiction (note: that doesn’t cure addiction) it also robbed him of his superpowers. For a couple of issues, at least, once Marvel realised that comic book fans didn’t hunger to read “Steve Rogers: Claims Adjuster”.
Anyway, the important bit here is that Captain America was on meth. Which is ridiculous: surely of all of the Avengers, he’d be the one most acutely aware of the dangers of ice?
