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screwyoumarvelSooooo, how much time have you got? Because, heh, this could take a while. My initial plan was to say, "He's Captain Freaking America, I assume you have not been living under rocks, moving on," but then Alanna's player said, "I have no idea who Captain America is," and I went, "..." and started writing an epic info post.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Operation: Rebirth
Once upon a time...no, let's not start like that.
Steve Rogers (note: no middle name) was born on July 4, 1917, to Irish* immigrant parents on Manhattan's Lower East Side. His parents died when he was fairly young, and he grew up to be a tall, if scrawny and sickly, art student, specializing in illustration. He got through the Depression on WPA work, and after seeing some newsreel footage on the conflict in Europe, attempted to join the army (note: before Pearl Harbor). He was turned down due to his constitution, but happened to catch the eye of one of the higher-ups involved in Operation: Rebirth, AKA the supersoldier project. He decided that Steve was a perfect candidate for a number of reasons: no family, deeply patriotic, and nowhere to go but up. The 'no family' part was important, as every previous test subject had either died or gone insane, then died**.
However, Steve neither went insane nor died--in fact, it worked like a charm! They'd finally perfected it! Hallelujah! ...and then a Nazi spy shot and killed the head scientist, who had the secret of the formula's success in his head. So, instead of being the first of an army, Steve was the one and only, America's best and last hope. NO PRESSURE OR ANYTHING.
Because of this, Steve tends to think of himself as 'built' or 'made.' As in, "I was built to take these risks," "This is what they made me for." Is this a healthy mindset? Probably not, but it's gotten him this far, and why fix what ain't broken?
*Though I don't think it's ever been directly stated, I assume Anglo-Irish for two reasons, the first being when they would have emigrated, the second being the fact that Steve is some flavor of Protestant.
**It's never been an issue that I know of, but Steve is probably sterile due to the supersoldier serum, as the only other surviving subject, Josiah Bradley (grandfather of Eli Bradley of the Young Avengers) was made sterile by the process.
World War 2 and Bucky Barnes
So, you've got one supersoldier. Just one. You were planning for an army. What do you do with him? Well, first, since there's just one, you've gotta make him as visible as possible. Make him a symbol. You give him a shield, you give him a costume. The costume, by the way, is based on Steve's own design, so he's responsible for his own headwings. Go Steve! There have been several shields, but the current and most famous is an alloy of vibranium, a metal only found in Wakanda that absorbs vibrations, and an experimental steel/titanium alloy. It is theoretically indestructible. (The vibranium is important, as it absorbs practically all vibrations from any impact, preventing injury to its wielder.) It's also light enough to be thrown, which Steve does a lot, earning him his nickname 'shield-slinger.'
And then, since no man is an island, you give him a partner. Enter James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes, orphaned son of an Army officer who'd been living at Fort Lehane, West Virginia, as sort of a mascot, and being trained as an advance scout. He was about sixteen when he met Steve and went to war. It was his job to do the dirty work, the stuff pure and upright Steve Rogers couldn't, and he did it well. This is a retcon, but it's current canon, so just go with it.
So they fought a war together, and in 1945, just before the end of the war, Steve and Bucky were sent on a mission that it's going to be hard to explain. You see, Bucky suffered brain damage due to the events that followed, and Steve doesn't really remember it either, so telling you exactly what happened is going to be a mess. This is what we know for sure: there was a drone plane, and there was Red Skull, and there was the frigid waters of the Arctic Ocean. Bucky lost his arm--something got caught on the drone plane. And then they both fell into the water and froze. Thus died Captain America. Sort of.
Oh, yeah, and this one time? Cap punched Hitler IN THE FACE. He is JUST THAT BADASS.
Avengers Assemble
How long Steve stayed in the ice depends on what decade it is at Marvel. They keep bumping up the date. For modern time/FH purposes, I'm going to say it was somewhere between fifty and sixty years. But basically, he was frozen for a while, and for part of that time, his frozen corpse was being worshipped by a band of Eskimos (NO REALLY). This is where Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man, and the Avengers stumbled across him and decided to thaw him out. And hey! He was alive! Yay! He joined the Avengers and became Tony's best friend, and it was great. They had many awesome adventures together, and saved the world. A lot.
And then Wanda Maximoff went crazy and their lives went straight to hell, but that is another story.
Bucky!
Warning: Spoilers in this section. BIG HONKING ONES.
It used to be that you could count on two Marvel characters staying dead: Uncle Ben and Bucky Barnes. Uncle Ben? Still dead. Bucky? Not so much. But that's okay, because his return was handled AWESOMELY. And yes, I do have to discuss this, because Bucky is going to be playing a part in Steve's life at Fandom (sort of, more on that later) and, well, to a certain degree you can't understand Steve without understanding Bucky.
What happened to Bucky is, as I said above, unclear. We know he was tortured by Red Skull just prior to the drone plane incident. We know his arm got caught on the drone plane, which is how he lost it, but also that he was not on the drone plane when it blew up. He was in close proximity to the explosion, but not right by it. The implication here seems to be that he cut his own arm off. He then fell into the water, then froze shortly thereafter. Whether the explosion, the fall, or the time in the water killed him is unknown.
He was later fished out of the water by Soviet scientists*, who wondered if he might have been frozen while still alive and attempted to revive him. The answer was no, he was dead, but they were able to revive him thanks to the wonders of modern technology. However, due to oxygen deprivation, he had suffered severe brain damage, including total amnesia--though he did retain 'reflex memories': how to fight, how to speak four languages. But who he was and where he came from? No clue. So the Soviets got a bright idea and, since they weren't getting any supersoldier serum from him, decided to use him as an assassin. They kept him in stasis while he wasn't being deployed to prolong his usefulness and gave him a codename: Winter Soldier.
Bucky did some pretty horrible things while he was the Winter Soldier. One time, he killed Wolverine's** wife and unborn child. He also did something kind of amazing the one time he was deployed on American soil--he slipped chain and somehow, despite not remembering a damned thing about who he was or where he came from, found his way to a homeless shelter on Manhattan's Lower East Side. He was trying to go home, you see--home being 'to Steve.'
But eventually, the Soviet Union fell, and Bucky was put into cold storage until he was sold like a weapon to the highest bidder and sent out to kill Captain America. Steve figured out who the Winter Soldier was (largely thanks to a file on him someone left on his kitchen table, and I strongly believe this was Bucky slipping chain again) and refused to give up on him. Eventually, Steve managed to restore Bucky's memory with the help of the Cosmic Cube. Bucky, horrified by the things he'd done, told Steve he should have killed him and ran off to attempt to kill Lukin, the guy who'd been pulling his puppet strings.
To recap: Bucky Barnes isn't dead, but he feels like he isn't worthy to be around Steve any more. Steve just wants to bring his oldest friend in from the cold. It's all very sad and woobie.
*This was in the fifties, when the CCCP and the US weren't getting along, which is why they decided to keep and experiment on Bucky instead of sending him back to the US.
**EVERYTHING in the 616-verse ties back to Wolverine somehow.
A House Divided: Civil War
LOTS MORE SPOILERS HERE.
*starts pounding back alcohol*
So, you've got Red Skull (Steve's evil Nazi scientist archnemesis) activity on the rise, not to mention Bucky Barnes back from the dead with a whole lot of issues with Steve that need resolving. What do you do? Duh. SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, aka A Marvel Crossover Event, aka Steve and Tony's Terrible Divorce.
Following a tragic incident in Stamford, Connecticut, in which a supervillain blew himself up near a school, killing a whole lot of people including kids, the US government passed the Superhuman Registration Act (SHRA), requring all powered people to register with the government or be tossed into horrible soul-sucking Negative Zone prison immediately. SHIELD (which is, note, a UN agency) asked Captain America to help them round up those who did not register, assuming he'd be on board since everybody already knew who he was, anyway. He told them where to stick it and went on the lam to head up the Anti-Registration forces.
Hisboyfriend best friend, Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man, took over the Pro-Registration group, and, well, a lot of stuff happened. Here's what you need to know:
Steve still believes he was right. The reason he lost the war lost a lot in translation from Joss Whedon's mind to the page of the comic, but basically the only reason he stood down was that he realized this war was turning him into a person he didn't want to be. Still, he stood down, allowed himself to be arrested, and went to jail to await trial.
He never made it to trial. In a highly publicized comic books event, he was gunned down on the courthouse steps, first by a sniper (who Bucky promptly beat the holy shit out of), then by his brainwashed girlfriend, SHIELD Agent Sharon Carter. He died on the way to the hospital.
HE'S COMING BACK, PEOPLE. It's comics, no one stays dead--we have a stellar example of that in Bucky! And also, the title Captain America has not been cancelled. Who the hell else are they going to make Captain America? *clings to hope*
And this is running obscenely long, so I'm going to cut it up into two parts. This one is history, the second one will be everything else. Mwah.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Operation: Rebirth
Once upon a time...no, let's not start like that.
Steve Rogers (note: no middle name) was born on July 4, 1917, to Irish* immigrant parents on Manhattan's Lower East Side. His parents died when he was fairly young, and he grew up to be a tall, if scrawny and sickly, art student, specializing in illustration. He got through the Depression on WPA work, and after seeing some newsreel footage on the conflict in Europe, attempted to join the army (note: before Pearl Harbor). He was turned down due to his constitution, but happened to catch the eye of one of the higher-ups involved in Operation: Rebirth, AKA the supersoldier project. He decided that Steve was a perfect candidate for a number of reasons: no family, deeply patriotic, and nowhere to go but up. The 'no family' part was important, as every previous test subject had either died or gone insane, then died**.
However, Steve neither went insane nor died--in fact, it worked like a charm! They'd finally perfected it! Hallelujah! ...and then a Nazi spy shot and killed the head scientist, who had the secret of the formula's success in his head. So, instead of being the first of an army, Steve was the one and only, America's best and last hope. NO PRESSURE OR ANYTHING.
Because of this, Steve tends to think of himself as 'built' or 'made.' As in, "I was built to take these risks," "This is what they made me for." Is this a healthy mindset? Probably not, but it's gotten him this far, and why fix what ain't broken?
*Though I don't think it's ever been directly stated, I assume Anglo-Irish for two reasons, the first being when they would have emigrated, the second being the fact that Steve is some flavor of Protestant.
**It's never been an issue that I know of, but Steve is probably sterile due to the supersoldier serum, as the only other surviving subject, Josiah Bradley (grandfather of Eli Bradley of the Young Avengers) was made sterile by the process.
World War 2 and Bucky Barnes
So, you've got one supersoldier. Just one. You were planning for an army. What do you do with him? Well, first, since there's just one, you've gotta make him as visible as possible. Make him a symbol. You give him a shield, you give him a costume. The costume, by the way, is based on Steve's own design, so he's responsible for his own headwings. Go Steve! There have been several shields, but the current and most famous is an alloy of vibranium, a metal only found in Wakanda that absorbs vibrations, and an experimental steel/titanium alloy. It is theoretically indestructible. (The vibranium is important, as it absorbs practically all vibrations from any impact, preventing injury to its wielder.) It's also light enough to be thrown, which Steve does a lot, earning him his nickname 'shield-slinger.'
And then, since no man is an island, you give him a partner. Enter James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes, orphaned son of an Army officer who'd been living at Fort Lehane, West Virginia, as sort of a mascot, and being trained as an advance scout. He was about sixteen when he met Steve and went to war. It was his job to do the dirty work, the stuff pure and upright Steve Rogers couldn't, and he did it well. This is a retcon, but it's current canon, so just go with it.
So they fought a war together, and in 1945, just before the end of the war, Steve and Bucky were sent on a mission that it's going to be hard to explain. You see, Bucky suffered brain damage due to the events that followed, and Steve doesn't really remember it either, so telling you exactly what happened is going to be a mess. This is what we know for sure: there was a drone plane, and there was Red Skull, and there was the frigid waters of the Arctic Ocean. Bucky lost his arm--something got caught on the drone plane. And then they both fell into the water and froze. Thus died Captain America. Sort of.
Oh, yeah, and this one time? Cap punched Hitler IN THE FACE. He is JUST THAT BADASS.
Avengers Assemble
How long Steve stayed in the ice depends on what decade it is at Marvel. They keep bumping up the date. For modern time/FH purposes, I'm going to say it was somewhere between fifty and sixty years. But basically, he was frozen for a while, and for part of that time, his frozen corpse was being worshipped by a band of Eskimos (NO REALLY). This is where Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man, and the Avengers stumbled across him and decided to thaw him out. And hey! He was alive! Yay! He joined the Avengers and became Tony's best friend, and it was great. They had many awesome adventures together, and saved the world. A lot.
And then Wanda Maximoff went crazy and their lives went straight to hell, but that is another story.
Bucky!
Warning: Spoilers in this section. BIG HONKING ONES.
It used to be that you could count on two Marvel characters staying dead: Uncle Ben and Bucky Barnes. Uncle Ben? Still dead. Bucky? Not so much. But that's okay, because his return was handled AWESOMELY. And yes, I do have to discuss this, because Bucky is going to be playing a part in Steve's life at Fandom (sort of, more on that later) and, well, to a certain degree you can't understand Steve without understanding Bucky.
What happened to Bucky is, as I said above, unclear. We know he was tortured by Red Skull just prior to the drone plane incident. We know his arm got caught on the drone plane, which is how he lost it, but also that he was not on the drone plane when it blew up. He was in close proximity to the explosion, but not right by it. The implication here seems to be that he cut his own arm off. He then fell into the water, then froze shortly thereafter. Whether the explosion, the fall, or the time in the water killed him is unknown.
He was later fished out of the water by Soviet scientists*, who wondered if he might have been frozen while still alive and attempted to revive him. The answer was no, he was dead, but they were able to revive him thanks to the wonders of modern technology. However, due to oxygen deprivation, he had suffered severe brain damage, including total amnesia--though he did retain 'reflex memories': how to fight, how to speak four languages. But who he was and where he came from? No clue. So the Soviets got a bright idea and, since they weren't getting any supersoldier serum from him, decided to use him as an assassin. They kept him in stasis while he wasn't being deployed to prolong his usefulness and gave him a codename: Winter Soldier.
Bucky did some pretty horrible things while he was the Winter Soldier. One time, he killed Wolverine's** wife and unborn child. He also did something kind of amazing the one time he was deployed on American soil--he slipped chain and somehow, despite not remembering a damned thing about who he was or where he came from, found his way to a homeless shelter on Manhattan's Lower East Side. He was trying to go home, you see--home being 'to Steve.'
But eventually, the Soviet Union fell, and Bucky was put into cold storage until he was sold like a weapon to the highest bidder and sent out to kill Captain America. Steve figured out who the Winter Soldier was (largely thanks to a file on him someone left on his kitchen table, and I strongly believe this was Bucky slipping chain again) and refused to give up on him. Eventually, Steve managed to restore Bucky's memory with the help of the Cosmic Cube. Bucky, horrified by the things he'd done, told Steve he should have killed him and ran off to attempt to kill Lukin, the guy who'd been pulling his puppet strings.
To recap: Bucky Barnes isn't dead, but he feels like he isn't worthy to be around Steve any more. Steve just wants to bring his oldest friend in from the cold. It's all very sad and woobie.
*This was in the fifties, when the CCCP and the US weren't getting along, which is why they decided to keep and experiment on Bucky instead of sending him back to the US.
**EVERYTHING in the 616-verse ties back to Wolverine somehow.
A House Divided: Civil War
LOTS MORE SPOILERS HERE.
*starts pounding back alcohol*
So, you've got Red Skull (Steve's evil Nazi scientist archnemesis) activity on the rise, not to mention Bucky Barnes back from the dead with a whole lot of issues with Steve that need resolving. What do you do? Duh. SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, aka A Marvel Crossover Event, aka Steve and Tony's Terrible Divorce.
Following a tragic incident in Stamford, Connecticut, in which a supervillain blew himself up near a school, killing a whole lot of people including kids, the US government passed the Superhuman Registration Act (SHRA), requring all powered people to register with the government or be tossed into horrible soul-sucking Negative Zone prison immediately. SHIELD (which is, note, a UN agency) asked Captain America to help them round up those who did not register, assuming he'd be on board since everybody already knew who he was, anyway. He told them where to stick it and went on the lam to head up the Anti-Registration forces.
His
Steve still believes he was right. The reason he lost the war lost a lot in translation from Joss Whedon's mind to the page of the comic, but basically the only reason he stood down was that he realized this war was turning him into a person he didn't want to be. Still, he stood down, allowed himself to be arrested, and went to jail to await trial.
He never made it to trial. In a highly publicized comic books event, he was gunned down on the courthouse steps, first by a sniper (who Bucky promptly beat the holy shit out of), then by his brainwashed girlfriend, SHIELD Agent Sharon Carter. He died on the way to the hospital.
HE'S COMING BACK, PEOPLE. It's comics, no one stays dead--we have a stellar example of that in Bucky! And also, the title Captain America has not been cancelled. Who the hell else are they going to make Captain America? *clings to hope*
And this is running obscenely long, so I'm going to cut it up into two parts. This one is history, the second one will be everything else. Mwah.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 08:25 pm (UTC)Oh and the Punisher Captain America.
This can only mean that Steve'll come back from the dead with an awesome mullet.
Or split into three colors.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 08:38 pm (UTC)...except my C&D. Them I'll still buy.
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Date: 2007-05-09 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2007-05-09 09:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-10 12:34 pm (UTC)Wakanda has the most Vibranium, true, but it is not the only place on Earth with Vibranium. Vibranium can also be found in the Savage Land, although it does have some different properties than the Wakandan Vibranium and is often called "Anti-Metal" instead.
But officially speaking, still Vibranium.
And I still think you should go with the 90's energy shield instead.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-10 01:23 pm (UTC)Look, I just go from what the wiki tells me. And we all know the wiki is an imperfect beast. Take it up with them.