Captain America #320

[iamrman]

After discovering the massacre at the Bar With No Name, Cap hatches a plan to catch the Scourge and put an end to his murderous rampage.

Comments

[blues32]

No, you went out with a "spak".

[scorntx]

So the real villain is... the western film industry!
Of course!

This Scourge goes from being one of the more effective, able to take out an entire bar of villains, to... kind of a bungler. Odd. But it does help prove there's more than one, because no way this goon's responsible for all those deaths.
(Did he know there was someone watching to make sure he wouldn't blab? And if there was, why did they let him monologue so much? Throw Cap off the scent, or did they just need time to get into position?)

"Every person I've killed has been convicted of a crime!"
And every kill so far has been a supervillain who was in the process of committing crime or planning to commit more.
But U.S. Agent shows they are perfectly willing to go after folk who've been tried, sentenced, served their time and tried to go straight.

"Your evil twin brother"
Why, yes, the idea of someone looking identical to Steve going around committing murder because he's an extremist nut would be difficult to believe, wouldn't it?
Besides, Burnside was dead when this was written.

Nice little bit where Scourgey mocks the idea of evil brothers happening in movies... then says his origin is that his brother turned evil because of movies.
Which, if he's lying about that, makes one wonder if he just made that up on the spot.
"(Quick, I need a plausibly convincing origin, think of something, think of something... ooh, why did I stay up watching that John Wayne marathon last night?)"

[lbd_nytetrayn]

This Scourge goes from being one of the more effective, able to take out an entire bar of villains, to... kind of a bungler. Odd.

I mean, the people he killed were second-string (at best) villains who weren't expecting it. Meanwhile, this was a trap set by none other than Captain America himself.

Not quite the same.

[beyondthefringe]

Surprise attacks are one thing, going up against someone expecting you is another, for sure.
And well, if we assume that not all Scourge kills were performed by the same operative, who knows how many missions this particular one actually carried out.

As for the "origin story," we'll later see that it's most likely bunk as well, something to throw off anyone who gets too close.

I wonder if the story we actually, ultimately got for the origin and purpose behind the Scourge program was what Gruenwald intended or if it changed along the way. I know he wrote the USAgent mini which explained it, but was that always his plan, or...? Shrug.

[cygnia]

Did Marvel (even in a What If...?) ever have any Scourges work with/cross-over with Punisher?

[alan2099]

I don't think they've ever worked together, Frank tends to heavily dislike other murderous anti-heroes, but Punisher did once steal his idea of going undercover and killing everyone in the Bar with No Name.

Only when Punisher did it he poisoned everyone and then blew the place up.

[cainofdreaming]

How would that work? Punisher is the Scourge. A credible source told me.

Hood is credible, right?

[tcampbell1000]

Man, I forgot that Cap was drawing the Captain America comic book around this point. How the heck did he do that job? I mean, the combat scenes would be blessed with a certain realism, I'd imagine, but an hour a night--does it take him only an hour to finish a page? Fictional Marvel's scripts were fact-based, I believe, so it'd be convenient for him to turn in scripts. but what happens when some editor tells him he's writing Cap wrong?

This just seems like such a tough assignment for Steve to take. He knows "Captain America" is a symbol, so he'd want the art to be inspirational, but he's so modest and has such high standards for himself. What would his version of this latest story be? "Cap ends the threat of the Scourge! Go America!" or "Cap fails to uncover the larger conspiracy! Do better, Cap!"