It’s John Walker. At the end of last week’s Falcon and the Winter Soldier, all Marvel Comics readers of a certain age immediately knew he was the new Captain America, and this week’s episode confirms it.
Walker has a long history in Captain America comics. He took over the role from Steve Rogers in 1987. At the time, Steve was asked to report to the Federal Commission on Superhuman Activities and refused, wanting to be loyal only to his country and not to bureaucracy. He turned in his shield and the government offered the Captain America identity to Walker, who had just saved some hostages.
John Walker is basically the asshole version of Steve Rogers. In the TV show, he came off kind of annoying but he was more abrasive and extreme in the comics. The main difference between the two men is Walker is more loyal to the government while Rogers is more loyal to the country. Walker has low-level super strength, in contrast to Rogers, whose Super Soldier serum gave him the greatest strength possible for a human to achieve, but nothing superhuman. (I always thought the message of that was important: That Cap was not a god but a normal person who excelled to the highest of his natural ability, something that could inspire other people to live up to their potential.)
Walker was Captain America for a few years. His partner was Battlestar, the same as on the show. Battlestar was originally named Bucky, on the theory that a Captain America needs a Bucky, but they changed the name after readers commented on the racist origins of calling a Black man Bucky. During this time, Steve Rogers called himself The Captain and super-heroed in a variation of his original costume. (This wasn’t the first time Steve became disillusioned and quit. In the ‘70s, shortly after Watergate, he fought the Secret Empire, a nefarious group that had infiltrated the government. This culminated in the group’s leader, Number One, shooting himself. They never showed Number One’s face but it’s heavily implied that this was President Richard Nixon who killed himself in the White House, which is pretty messed up. Steve was understandably traumatized by this and he became the superhero Nomad for a short time.) Rogers soon took back the Captain America identity, while Walker became US Agent, dressing in a variation of his Cap costume. The government mandated that he join Avengers West Coast, which pissed off everybody on the team (because Walker was a pain in the ass without the leadership skills of Steve), especially Hawkeye, who stomped out in a huff and quit the team.
John Walker is one of seven people who has subbed for Captain America when Steve was unavailable or presumed dead. Both the Winter Soldier and the Falcon have wielded the shield in recent times—the former when Steve was presumed dead and the latter after Steve retired. But a few obscure names also took up the shield in the ‘40s and ‘50s, although they were retconned in.
The original Captain America comic ran from 1940–1950 before being cancelled, like many other superhero comics, due to a moral panic against comics. The Avengers discovered Cap frozen in the ice in Avengers #4 in 1964, and we find out that he had been there in suspended animation after being shot down at the end of World War II. How does this explain that the original comic ran until 1950? Marvel explained that two men, William Nasland and Jeff Mace, took up the shield and served as Captain America while Steve was on ice. Nasland was also known as the superhero Spirit of ’76, and Mace was the hero the Patriot, also appearing on TV in a different capacity in Agents of SHIELD. In the ‘50s, while the Captain America comic was on hiatus, Stan Lee tried to revive it, so a fake Cap, William Burnside, ran around briefly with the shield, fighting communists. Burnside had taken the Super Soldier serum without any precautions and ended up psychotic. He later became the fascist Grand Director, who seemingly killed Sharon Carter in the ‘70s. Burnside’s partner was James Monroe, known as the new Bucky in the ‘50s. Monroe later became the new Nomad and was Cap’s (Steve’s) partner in the ‘80s.
Then we have Isaiah Bradley, who Sam and Bucky met this week. In the comics, Bradley was retconned in 2003 as the Black Captain America. The government experimented on him (in a reference to the Tuskegee experiments) and Bradley took up the identity of Cap and destroyed the Nazi Super Soldier program. He’s unknown to most of the general public but Marvel’s Black citizens and superheroes revere him. On TV, he’s understandably bitter after serving 30 years in prison even after serving his country. Living with him is his grandson Elijah, who in the comics was the Patriot of the Young Avengers (along with Wanda’s kids).
It was painful seeing Bradley treated so badly by his country. This is the first hint of real-world racism in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Sam gets a taste of it when the police stop him for no reason and then let him go, delighted at having recognized him as the Falcon (but if he hadn’t been a celebrity, they would have been fine with arresting him). This scene was tonal whiplash so close to the later scene where Sam and Bucky have that goofy therapy session with knees in crotches.
More on Zemo, who also has quite a history, next week.
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