Captain America #332

[iamrman]

Cap no more?

It looks like these guys are on a mission from God. They had better shake a tail feather.

I bet Cap didn’t expect that.

Comments

[beyondthefringe]

Welcome to the era of Hero Replacements.

Fun fact: back in the days when Byron Preiss was doing Marvel anthologies (dear lord, 25+ years ago), I pitched a story involving a team of all replacements: USAgent, War Machine, Thunderstrike, and I think She-Hulk and/or Scott-Lang and/or Rita DeMara. The idea was to mirror the original Avengers with their various replacement/legacies for some reason...
Sadly, I never got that chance.

[starwolf_oakley]

An issue of THUNDERSTRIKE was like that, IIRC.

[alan2099]

There was an Avengers limited series that put Captain America, Ironman, and Thor up against U.S. Agent, Thunderstrike, and WarMachine.

[scorntx]

They got S.C.M.O.D.S...

Fortunately this all turns out to be a convoluted scheme of the not-actually dead Red Skull, working through one of these guys (who really hates Cap for reasons we never actually learn) to discredit Cap.
Because otherwise what reason would we have to think a group that has people such as Henry Gyrich (who tried to have the Avengers imprisoned forever without trial as recently as that fight with Freedom Force Cap's thinking about) and Val Cooper might ever be anything less than trustworthy?

[starwolf_oakley]

The problem with this, #350 and the follow-up is we aren’t sure if John Walker is supposed to be the villain of the story or not.
Either Walker is a bad man who never should have gotten the job, or the Red Skull deliberately manipulated events to drive Walker crazy.

Decades later, writers want to make John Walker “the cynical one” when that’s supposed to be Sam Wilson.

[scorntx]

Here, John is supposed to be a deeply flawed person who shouldn't have gotten the job, but he's trying to do the best he can (now whether that's a 180 from all his previous appearances having him decry Steve as an old has-been is another matter).
This was a situation that was always going to go bad, but the Red Skull just pours gasoline on the fire and speeds things up.
(And frankly, some of his claim of being responsible sounds super-dubious, like he's just trying to steal credit. Which would be a very Skull thing to do.)

So is John a terrible pick or the Red Skull responsible? Yes.


... Sam is the cynical one? Sam the social worker? Since when?

[iamrman]

"... Sam is the cynical one? Sam the social worker? Since when?"

Since Nick Spencer got through with him.

[scorntx]

Ah. That figures.

[tcampbell1000]

Yeah, I wouldn't say Walker was ever supposed to read as the villain here. But I *would* say that by the end of this storyline, he doesn't read as a very consistent character. People can contain multitudes, but either he's broken after the loss of his parents or he isn't, know what I mean?

[steverodgers5]

"You are not...Captain Solo!"

So much irony to read this now and think that in the new Captain America movie there's a scene where Harrison Ford AKA Captain Solo is telling Sam's Captain America that he's not Steve Rogers. :D

This issue strangely enough was when I started collecting Captain America. I'd read Steve as Cap in Secret Wars, various Avengers comics, team ups with Spider-man, and was outraged at the thought he could be 'fired' from the role. But it certainly got me curious.

Great cover too. I especially loved the touch of having ol' Abraham Lincoln shedding a tear in the top corner box!