Captain America #2

[superboyprime]

Comments

[starwolf_oakley]

"Bargain?" Uh-oh.

Putting a "bargain" in there explains why Steve would feel guilty about something an impostor did. Even stuff like CIVIL WAR: THE OATH made it clear Hydra!Cap was different, but knew everything about "our" Steve. It was a bit confusing and everything wasn't really explained.

Other characters should feel guilty. "Steve Rogers was replaced by an evil impostor and his BEST FRIENDS didn't notice!"

[zachbeacon]

Well in fairness the only time I can recall a non-telepath hero seeing through this kind of thing quickly is in the Mindswap arc in Defenders.

When Doc Ock's was running around in Spider-Man's body half the Avengers assumed he'd become a libertarian and I'm still annoyed that Sandman's so-called "friends" in the superhero community (especially the Thing) didn't realize his return to crime was the result of mind control tech that the Wizard has used before to turn the Thing.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

My favorite instance is in Transformers, when Bombshell had Prowl under his mind control, and Prowl was already known as such a d-- er, jerk that no one even noticed.

[q99]

And, in his defense, Bombshell put in enough 'soft' moments to sell it.

[tcampbell1000]

Well, the fact that he DID know everything about "our" Steve and often even thought like him made HydraCap a better impostor than most, but for Pete's sake, even Eric Masterson kept the scam going a lot longer than he should have been able to. A series of regular psi-screenings for superheroes-- nothing too invasive, just identity verification-- is an idea whose time has come.

[icon_uk]

Until the telepath doing the scanning is the one who is replaced.

As Tony Stark found out, watching the watchmen SEEMS like a good idea, until you're replaced by someone more corrupt.

[broblawsky]

It'd be interesting if Cap actually agreed to let Kobik de-age him at Pleasant Hill, after some kind of vaguely-worded promise on her part that he'd be "better". I realize that he bears no moral responsibility for anything Captain Hydra did, but the story rings hollow if he doesn't.

[kore]

In Standoff when Crossbones is about to kill old Steve and there's that really pretty two-page spread, he thinks "I can die proud. I can die happy. I can know peace." Then Kobik appears in this galactic-type vision and says, "You don't have to go. You can stay if you like. I can make you strong again. I can make you a hero again," and she holds out her hand. Next thing we know, young (really Hydra) Cap is pounding Crossbones into the floor. So maybe that's what he's thinking about.

[broblawsky]

That would make sense. I really hope Coates uses that.

[tcampbell1000]

"Who are you going to believe? The globalists or your lying eyes?" I... guess that means believe the globalists? Is the Fact/Fox Network of the Marvel Universe pro-globalist? Because if so, WOW is that a difference between our worlds. But usually radio hosts say "believe your eyes" sincerely, so I'm not sure what's going on there.

It is so weird watching Marvel try to metabolize Trump. Clearly HydraCap was a reaction to the Trump era, but we now see the limits of that allegory: he's a villain who was defeated and is now on the fringes, whereas the political shift he represents is now the mainstream (though one hopes not forever). The realistic thing in 2018 would be for the President to be attacking Captain America relentlessly on Twitter while instantly pardoning the Supreme Commander and letting him take over Puerto Rico, because he reminds him of his buddies Kim and Vlad and most of all of who he'd not-so-secretly like to be.

But ever since they killed Nixon, Marvel's portrayals of presidents have been fairly toothless when they've acknowledged the existence of a president at all. So we get a "Washington" who's suspicious that the Captain might be a secret authoritarian. Like, oh no, can't have one of THOSE representing our country! He might try to harm immigrant families!

[bestiasono]

I assumed the idea was that it was the globalists who were saying their eyes were lying, so "lying eyes" was an ironic reference and a figure of speech.

[thehood]

"instantly pardoning the Supreme Commander and letting him take over Puerto Rico, because he reminds him of his buddies Kim and Vlad and most of all of who he'd not-so-secretly like to be. "

That would imply he remembers we exist though.

[cyberghostface]

Remember when Marvel swore up and down that Hydra!Cap was the real Cap and it wouldn't be retconned as an imposter?

Good times, good times.

[shakalooloo]

I don't think they promised that exact thing, only that the events of Secret Empire wouldn't be magically undone a la House of M.

[cyberghostface]

http://www.comicsbeat.com/report-shocking-new-captain-america-is-not-a-clone-imposter-mind-control-or-someone-else-spoilers/

"This is not a clone, not an imposter, not mind control, not someone else acting through Steve. This really is Steve Rogers, Captain America himself."

[coldfury]

To be fair they didn't take that back. It was Steve, with his history magically re-written to be a fascist.

Clone - Nope
Imposter - Nope
Mind Control - Nope
Someone Else - Nope

This was a nature vs nurture thing, and nurture won.

The Steve that we have now is technically a clone, a cosmic copy composed of the discarded bits brought together by Kubick to defeat Hydra Steve.

[cyberghostface]

I don't know the specifics given how convoluted everything is but the Wiki entries makes it sound like he's an imposter who supplanted the original.

http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Steven_Rogers_(Earth-TRN641)
http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Earth-TRN641

[beyondthefringe]

They really did make it overly complicated, didn't they?

Here, I'll fix.

"Kobik found an alternate reality where Steve Rogers was an agent of Hydra who became Captain America. She then swapped Hydra!Cap for the real one, displacing the Captain America of 616 into a shadow realm for the duration, while adjusting certain events of 616's history to allow for a seamless insertion. This evil Cap, convinced that he was still in his reality, operated as a secret agent of Hydra until it was time to go full-batshit and take over the country blah blah blah.

Then Kobik fixed everything by bringing back the real Captain America, but Hydra!Cap remains in this reality, where he joins all the other unwanted crap of the multiverse, like the Original X-Men, Old Man Logan, and a bunch of random mutants from the Ultimate universe in being an unnecessary duplicate..."

The end.

Okay, so I might have gotten carried away at the end, but still. Even when streamlined this still sounds pretty awful.

[cyberghostface]

I guess the reason why they had to do that was because Spencer wanted to have his cake and eat it too. He wanted to do a story with a fascist Captain America and take it all the way but he also knew he had to undo it at the end. Hydra!Cap destroyed Las Vegas, that's not something you can have your Disney hero do.

I think a 'better' (as in still not that good) version of this trope was Daredevil and Shadowland. With that Daredevil 'crossed the line' by 'killing' Bullseye, who is probably one of the worst human beings in the entire Marvel universe after Red Skull. And after that he just imprisoned people in Shadowland after running the Hand. So at the end of the day they had their evil Daredevil story but didn't go past the moral horizon so DD could still have that in his history without being ruined. DD's "what have I done" moment comes from killing a guy who is completely irredeemable and once killed a kid with a popsicle stick because he was bored.

[deh_tommy]

I like that unwanted crap...

[kore]

Kobik found an alternate reality where Steve Rogers was an agent of Hydra

Wait, I thought she just kind of turned his brain around when she made him younger and made him think that he had been an agent of Hydra and Hydra actually won WWII and all that? So it wasn't an AR Steve, it was our Steve, just batshit. The Steve in the cube was like a remnant of the original pre-Kobik Steve, and when they got him out //handwave handwave he didn't remember anything Hydra Cap had done.

[laughing_tree]

Either the wiki's wrong or it's a semantics thing. coldfury has the right of it: The real Cap wasn't swapped with anyone but transformed, reality-warped, in the same way at DC the post-Crisis (or post-Zero Hour, post-New 52, etc. take your pick) version of a character is still the same person. That's why he still has all of good Cap's memories. The current Cap is a back up copy made from Kobik's memories.

[kore]

Yeah, in the Oath Hydra Cap says to Tony he can remember every time he and Steve fought. -- I seriously don't know why they didn't just kill him off, if he has Steve's memories and he's still cuckoo for Hydra he's a time bomb just waiting to go off.

[beyondthefringe]

At this point, how many heroes are no longer in their original bodies? o.0

Tony Stark: Replaced after the Crossing, cloned, rebooted...
James Rhodes: Cloned, died, brought back...
Spider-Man: Grew a new body after the Other, died, came back, mind is just a backup?
Professor X: Cloned body, died, now inhabiting Fantomex's body...
Sasquatch: Died, came back in Snowbird's body, died, came back...?
Jean Grey: Died, the Phoenix made her a new body?
Psylocke: Turned into an Asian ninja. Nuff said.
Steve Rogers: Just a Cosmic Cube construct/copy of the original...
Hulk: Er... who even knows?
Jamie Madrox: Who -seriously- even knows which is the original anymore.

If they really stopped to think about it, a lot of these heroes would be suffering from some pretty weird body horror/trauma given that they've been transformed, cloned, resurrected, brain-swapped, and otherwise altered.

And don't even get me started on villains.

[cyberghostface]

'Grew a new body after the Other, died, came back, mind is just a backup?'

Sort of. The majority of his memories are via backup but prior to that there was still the remnants of 'Ghost Peter' that was in Otto's mind.

Otto erased 99% of Peter's memories that he hadn't used in an attempt to get rid of him completely but 'Ghost Peter' still survived and was just buried under 'rubble'. And later when Peter was going through Otto's mind and lived out his life via his memories he got to the point where the mind swap happened and then regained everything that Otto had prior erased.

[zachbeacon]

I still don't fully understand the mechanics of the Otto swap. It was a fun ride through.

As for the Other.... that's actually the SECOND time Peter has turned into a monster and died giving birth to a version of himself with slightly different powers. The first was in an Avengers Disassembled tie-in called changes. Peter Parker is his own grandpa.

[q99]

Rachel had hers redone at the body shop.

[icon_uk]

Captain Britain had a new body regrown by Merlin and Roma from "A rag, a bone, a hank of hair" after he was killed.

Most of the New Mutants were killed and incinerated/erased by the Beyonder, then had new bodies grown for them, also by the beyonder.

[beyondthefringe]

At least the New Mutants were properly traumatized by death... that arc was heartbreaking for younger me.

[kore]

Hydra Cap killed Natasha and somehow she was resurrected as a Red Room clone in Tales of Suspense, too.

[thehood]

Hulk is the original, he's just immortal.

[kore]

Technically maybe it could have been mind control via Kobik, when she made him young again at the end of Standoff. But it wasn't mind control like when Faustus had control of Sharon and she was able to break through it. She just sort of remade him as the best possible Steve if Hydra really were the good guys, like the Skull had taught her to.

[thehood]

And yet they were. Vegas is back and most people that died have come back.