Captain America #281
Before the Fall
Bernie Rosenthal has taken Steve Rogers out to see a documentary film about Captain America’s days during World War II. The crowd cheers as they watch old film reel footage from 1941 when Captain America and Bucky prevented a group called the Defenders from assassinating President Roosevelt. After the film is over, Bernie notices how silent Steve is and realizes that seeing his glory days wouldn’t have been the same experience for him as it was for her. Steve tells her its not her fault and tells her that he made a promise to put his past behind him.[1]
As everyone shuffles out of the theater, one young man remains behind and is asked by the theater staff that he has to go. Exiting the theater, the man sees Steve Rogers and Bernie Rosenthal heading for the subway and instantly recognizes who Steve is.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Spider-Woman is on the trail of the terrorist known as Viper. She wants to stop the villain and learn more about the claims that Viper has made about being her mother.[2] Entering the Viper’s warehouse hideout, Spider-Woman finds a trap waiting for her. The Viper unleashes two massive snakes to eat Spider-Woman and watches the struggle via a closed circuit television. The Viper reveals that she has since learned that she is not Spider-Woman’s mother and that those memories were put in her head and blames the hero for trying to manipulate her. Spider-Woman suspects that this mind game was the work of her eternal foe, Morgan le Fay. Luckily, she is able to kill the two snakes before they can kill her.
Back in Brooklyn, Steve and Bernie have returned home and Steve asks if she fucked Primus when the mutate posed as him. Rosenthal assures her boyfriend that nothing like that happened.[3] The two are about to get romantic when there is a knock at the door. Steve answers it and is greeted by the young man at the movie theater, who introduces himself as Bucky. Having been manipulated into thinking his old partner was still alive multiple times in the past, Steve becomes enraged and attacks the young man, demanding to know who he really is and who sent him.[4]
When this young man reveals that he’s not Cap’s old sidekick, but the Bucky from 1950, Steve stops pummeling him. He then tells Steve and Bernie his tragic story: He explains how as an orphan, his aunt and uncle shipped him off to the Lee School. There he became fast friends with one of his teachers over their mutual adoration of Captain America. So obsessed with the original Cap, the teacher legally changed his name to Steve Rogers and underwent surgery to sound and look like him as well. Having uncovered the long lost super-soldier formula, this Steve Rogers attempted to take on the mantle of the Captain America. However, this was shortly after the end of the Korean War and the government had no interest in supporting him. Still, when the threat of communism struck American shores, Steve and Bucky injected themselves with the super-soldier formula to fight these enemies of democracy. However, the formula was imperfect and soon their minds became unhinged and paranoid, assuming everyone who didn’t fit their worldview were communists. Eventually, they were taken down by the government and put into suspended animation.
Decades later, the 50’s Captain America and Bucky were revived by one of the soldiers who guarded their bodies and shared their unhinged views. By this time, Steve Rogers was back as Captain America and, thinking him an impostor, the 50’s Cap and Bucky tried to destroy him until they learned the truth and surrendered. Bucky and his Steve were then were transferred from SHIELD custody to a mental health facility that was secretly run by the villain known as Doctor Faustus. Faustus brainwashed the 50’s Captain America to become the Grand Director, the Neo-Nazi leader of the terrorist group called National Front. In order to test his loyalty, the Grand Director was ordered to shoot Bucky in the head, which he did without question.
However, while the Grand Director died and Faustus stopped, Bucky wasn’t dead.[5] As it turned out, the gun was full of blanks. When SHIELD later found Bucky, they were able to cure him of his insanity. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much of a budget to reintegrate him into society and soon Bucky was released into the world to fend for himself in a world that is many decades ahead of his time. After spotting Steve Rogers in public, Bucky hoped that he could help him climatize himself in the present day and since he was attacked decides to leave, telling Steve that he won’t both him anymore. However, Steve calls Bucky back and tells him not to leave. Knowing what it’s like to be a man out of time, Steve agrees to take Bucky under his wing and help him fit in.
Meanwhile, the Viper gets a report that Spider-Woman managed to escape her death trap. Angered at the bad news, Viper shoots the messenger and has him fed to one of her massive snakes. This horrifies Gail Runciter, who has infiltrated Viper’s nihilist organization for SHIELD. With this out of the way, the Viper retires to her room and disguises herself as an ordinary person and leaves her secret hideout. It just so happens, this hideout is hidden under a non-descript home in a suburban American town. Greeting the mailman, she secretly revels in the fact that her final plan will soon come to fruition.
Later that evening, Captain America takes the 50’s Bucky out on patrol with him and learns that his real name is actually Jack Munroe. Suddenly, they are dive bombed by a helicopter flown by the Viper’s minions. They drop off the Constrictor, who has been hired to deal with Captain America, the only man that Viper sees as a threat to her plans.[6] Bucky foolishly lunges at their foe and is quickly taken down by Constrictor’s electrified adamantium coils. However, Captain America is far more skilled in dealing with the Constrictor. However, Cap is shot in the back with a stun gun and taken away. Bucky recovers and is too late to stop them from taking Captain America away.
Recurring Characters
Captain America, Jack Monroe, Bernie Rosenthal, Viper, Constrictor, Gail Runciter, Spider-Woman
Continuity Notes
Steve Rogers mentions a couple things about his past here:
He states that he was frozen in suspended animation for decades in the same accident that killed his partner, Bucky Barnes. See Avengers #4.
What Steve doesn’t know is that Bucky survived and was transformed by the Russians into an assassin called the Winter Soldier. Cap won’t learn this truth until years later in Captain America (vol. 5) #14.
Steve states that he has decided to put the past behind him. He made this decision in Captain America #279, after his friend Arnie Roth chewed him out for making the death of Arnie’s boyfriend Michael about him.
Who Jessica Drew’s mother is and what happened to her is quite complicated. The facts:
Viper claimed to be Jessica’s mother in Spider-Woman #44. Here, Viper reveals that this was all a lie due to the machinations of Morgan le Fay. Although speculated here, this fact is confirmed in the Viper profiles in Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Deluxe Edition #14 and Might Avengers: Most Wanted Files #1.
Jessica Drew’s biological mother is actually Miriam Drew, as detailed in Spider-Woman #1.
In some accounts, she was the wife of Jonathan Drew and lived with him on Wundagore Mountain with Herbert Wyndham — the future High Evolutionary — and that she was an unwilling participant in the experiments that led to Jessica becoming Spider-Woman. In this account she was alleged to have been killed by a werewolf. See Silver Surfer Annual #1, Punisher Annual #1, and New Mutants Annual #4.
Spider-Woman: Origin #1-5 however, tells a radically different story stating that Miriam was an active participant of these experiments and a secret Hyrda agent with her father. In this series of events Miriam was murdered by the assassin known as Whiplash.
Although both of these backstories are contradictory, they are also mutually referenced in many places and Marvel has yet to explain or clarify how this can be. Most recently, in Spider-Woman (vol. 6) #3-7, reveals that there are a number of clones of Jessica’s mother that have been created. I have a theory about how both version of these events could be true, spoilers: clones.
Primus posed as Steve Rogers to try and ruin his life as part of a larger scheme of revenge hatched by the mutate and his ally, Baron Zemo. See Captain America #275-279.
Bucky’s survival is something that villains have used against him in the past. These have usually been android duplicates, as seen in Tales of Suspense #88-91 and Captain America #131-132.
There is a lot of history about the 1950’s Captain America and Bucky that are on display here:
The real name of the 50’s Steve Rogers is not revealed here. He is eventually identified as William Burnside in Captain America #602.
Burnside and Munroe’s transformation into the 50’s Captain America and Bucky, their descent into madness, revival in the present, and failed attempt to destroy the original Captain America were detailed in Captain America #153-156, with the origins behind which explained in issue #155.
Here, the 50’s Cap and Bucky are depicted fighting the Red Skull. This is from Young Men #24. However, this is not the Johann Schmidt, the original Red Skull but a Russian operative named Albert Malik who usurped the identity in the 1950s, as explained in Solo Avengers #6.
Doctor Faustus brainwashed “Rogers” and set him up as the Grand Director of National Force, leading to his alleged demise from self-immolation in Captain America #231-236. Bucky was seemingly killed in that final issue.
As it turned out, William Burnside didn’t die then either and survived his attempted suicide, albeit horribly burned, as we’ll see in Captain America (vol. 5) #37.
Here, the Constrictor states that he no longer works for the Corporation, who was his employer when he fought Captain America in Captain America #228. Captain America already knows this but, oddly, they don’t mention the time Constrictor fought Captain America after that in Captain America Annual #5.
Topical References
World War II is stated as having happened forty years prior to this story and the 1950s as happening thirty years prior. Both of these measurements of time should be considered topical. As the Sliding Timescale bumps the Modern Age of the Marvel Universe forward the number of years between the present day and these decades will increase.
Steve welcomes Jack to the year 1983. This should be considered a topical reference as well.