Camptown Rages

In order to search for Bernie Rosenthal’s missing sister, Captain Ameirca has been transformed into a teenager to investigate a string of teenage runaways. This has led him to being forcibly taken to a camp ground outside the city with a number of other young runaways by the Sisters of Sin — Sin, Raunch, Slash, Torso, and Hoodwink.[1] Taken down to a camp fire, the new inductees are welcomed by a woman calling herself Mother Night. She espouses an ideology of hate and when one of the kids speaks out of turn, she has Torso beat him. Steve finds Mother Night familiar but can’t quite place where he’s seen her before. Before he can figure this out, he and the other new kids are all forced to go into tiny cubicles for the night.

Steve, who is stuck in the form of a teenager for the next 30 hours, is forced to follow along since his frail body is bereft of the Super-Soldier Serum. However, when a young girl named Jennifer becomes afraid of being stuck in a cubicle due to her claustrophobia, Steve tries to defend her and is easily beaten by the Sisters of Sin and both of them are forced into their prisons for the night. The cubicles are uncomfortable and he can hear the other children screaming and crying. When the Sisters of Sin come back with some sedatives to shut everyone up, they decide to deal with Steve first. Hearing them coming, he wedges himself up into the ceiling. When they open his cell he ambushes them and manages to escape into the nearby forest.

Doubling back to the camp fire, Steve witnesses Mother Night giving another one of her sermons of hate. She works the children up into a violent frenzy until her assistant, Malachi, brings out one of the Watchdogs. Rogers finds him familiar as well but still has trouble placing then. He then watches in horror as the children are made to attack the Watchdog and rip him apart with their bare hands. Realizing that he is in over his head, Steve decides to call in the Avengers. However, before finding a phone he returns to the cubicles and frees Jennifer because she is not handling her situation very well.

They then go to the main lodge to look for clues and a way to call for help. They are caught by Sin who attacks Steve with a bo-staff. Rogers tries his best to defend himself, but his frail body is just not conditioned for a fight and he is quickly subdued. When Mother Night and the Sisters of Sin arrive they discover that Steve is wearing a Captain America costume under his clothing and force him to wear it as they tie him to a support post for questioning. Malachi roughs him up as Karen watches. It is during this beating that Steve finally remembers where he saw Mother Night and Malachi before, he had fought them as Captain America years earlier when they operated under the names Suprema and Scarbo.[2]

Unable to get straight answers out of him, Mother Night decides to inject Steve with sodium pentathol to learn his secrets. Fighting against the truth serum, Steve tells them that his name is Roger Grant, a member of Captain America’s Stars and Stripes network and that he had decided to independently investigate missing teens in the area. Convinced that “Roger” is no threat to them, the villains all argue about when to kill him — right now, or the following night as a sacrifice to the other children. Mother Night decides to let the Sisters of Sin have some fun because they haven’t gotten to beat anyone up recently.

Steve is horrified when Hoodwink appears to snap Jennifer’s neck. Cut loose, Steve tries his best to fight back but the Sisters of Sin out number him and quickly begin pummeling on his frail teenaged body.

Recurring Characters

Captain America, Mother Night, Malachi, Sisters of Sin (Sin, Raunch, Slash, Torso, Hoodwink), Watchdog

Continuity Notes

1. Steve regrets not keeping tabs on the Sisters of Sin after he last saw them. As explained in Captain America #298, the Sisters were loyal servants of the Red Skull who were artificially aged to adult hood. After the Skull was defeated in issue #300, they were restored to their proper ages in the following issue.

2. Captain America first fought Suprima and Scarbo back in Captain America #123.