Throwing out the fifties Commie stories, Lee and Kirby reinvented the character as a superpowered Rip Van Winkle, the man out of time. Initially only gone for approximately twenty years (1943ish to 1964), the dates between his disappearance and re-emergence has lengthened until today, where he found in the late-80’s to early 90s, missing the Cold War, Vietnam, the Berlin Wall, parachute pants and the rise of Ronald McDonald. In the movies, he has missed the War on Terror, and that forms the plot of Joe and Anthony Russo’s The Winter Soldier, with Chris Evans as Cap and Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson, AKA Falcon.

Captain America’s status as a propaganda figure has been discussed many times, both in the real world and otherwise. He embodies the ideal of America, the land of the free and home of the brave, where anyone can get a second chance. Now he exists in a world that does not reflect that, that may not even want that idea. “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!” (What if? #44)

Iron Man embodies the future, and all that it entails. Captain America embodies the past, for better or worse.

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Donal O’connor