The Extremists: Part 1

Steve Rogers is having a nightmare about the end of World War II. He is being forced to look unblinkingly at the people suffering in concentration camps. Years flash by and suddenly he witnesses the nuclear bombs going off in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Once again, he is forced to watch this atrocity happen. This is because he can’t do anything to stop it because he is frozen in ice. He should have been there but couldn’t because he was trapped. The dream ends with Steve forcing his way to freedom by chiseling through the ice to freedom.[1]

When Steve wakes up in his new apartment in Red Hook, Brooklyn, he still hears the cracking noise from his dream. However, this isn’t the sound of ice breaking, but gun shots outside. Grabbing his shield, Steve leaps out his bedroom window and into the alley below. He sees that this is a clash between two rival gangs and uses his shield to stop the shooters from escaping so they can all be turned over to police custody.

The following day, Steve goes about his daily routine in the time since revealing his true identity to the world.[2] On his way home, he stops to talk to a local boy. As they talk he notices two groups of the local rival gangs — the Bone Disciples and Hook Redz — arguing in an alley way. He tells the boy to go home while he goes and confronts them. Steve tells them that they don’t need to defend their hoods anymore now that he lives there, things will be safe. One of the gang members flashes his gun, and Steve doesn’t flinch, merely tells him that he won’t be needing those anymore either. For a moment, it seems like the Bone Disciples are going to pick a fight with him, but when Steve doesn’t back down they cower. Tossing their guns to the ground, but their leader warns Steve that if any of his people get hurt they’ll start strapping again. The rest of the Bone Disciples chide their leader for showing Captain America respect, but their leader relates to a story about a man who once taught his grandfather. He was an old man from Shang Hai who would never get hit in a fight. Bring a war to him and he’ll take it to you instead. Captain America is a similar man, so he knows better than to start something.

As the sun begins to set, Captain America spends his time practicing his shield throws. He can throw with such acuity now that he can use the weapon to put out the flame and re-spark a lighter. That’s when a black military helicopter into the view just out side of his apartment window. Seconds later, his phone starts to ring and Steve knows exactly who it is. He tells Nick Fury to get the helicopter out of his face because it is spoiling his view of the Statue of Liberty. After his last dealings with Fury, Steve is not interested in working with SHIELD again.[3] He is telling him exactly that when Fury. However, what Fury tells him changes his mind instantly, and he somberly says he’ll be there.

Two days later, Captain America arrives at an undisclosed location in Florida. There he meets with a SHIELD agent named Samantha Twotrees. She shows him what he has come out this way to see, the skeletal remains of another Native American SHIELD agent named Inali Redpath. Twotrees was able to recover Inali’s “black box”, a recording device that all SHIELD agents now wear and the data it recorded is unbelievable. Both Samantha and Steve know that Inali was a Cherokee shaman and not that the prayer stick he always carried is standing upright next to his corpse. According to the black box data, Inali was somehow able to summon a tornado and spoke with it for 12 hours straight before the wind picked up two wooden posts from the beach and used them to impale him to the ground.

Getting a closer look at the body, Steve determines that this is not the real Inali Redpath but a clone. He can tells this because his remains does not have a scar on its above its right eye like the real Inali did. Samantha comments that Inali once said that he’d have to fake his own death in order to leave the spy agency. He then asks Samantha if SHIELD has any cloning facility. She admits as much and when he asks where it is, she gestures towards the smoking remains of a building and stretch of forest that burned down. Sick of SHIELD and their shady secrets, Steve is about to call Nick Fury but ends up crushing his phone in his bare hands out of rage instead. Without another word, Cap starts up his motorcycle and rides away. Once he is out of earshot, Samantha calls her employer and confirms that Captain America no longer trust Nick Fury and cut communications with him and that he is heading his way.

As Captain America speeds down the highway he thinks about how Samatha was also lying. He wonders if they think their lies hold America together, but is certain whatever their vision of the country is, doesn’t match his own. Suddenly, the forests around Steve catch fire. As he makes a sudden stop, a wall suddenly pops up out of the road blocking his path. He is then confronted by the man responsible and a troop of heavily armed mercenaries. The man introduces himself as Baracade and he has come to end Cap’s life for interfering in his employer’s business and that makes the hero his to deal with. As the soldiers cock their weapons and point them at him, Steve Rogers smiles and says “in your dreams, kid.”

Recurring Characters

Captain America, Barricade, Inali Redpath, Samantha Twotrees

Continuity Notes

1. This of course is a reference to the decades that Captain America spent frozen in ice, per Avengers #4. This dream is also alluding to the events of Captain America (vol. 4) #12-16, where it is suggested that Steve Rogers was intentionally put in suspended animation by the US government as he protested the use of nuclear weapons use against Japan. See below for further details.

2. At the time of this story, Steve Rogers had just recently revealed his true identity to the world in Captain America (vol. 3) #3.

3. Captain America isn’t happy with SHIELD after learning that they were willing to buy high tech military equipment without considering the source. See Captain America (vol. 4) #1-6.

Topical References

• Steve states that this is three months since he revealed his identity to the world. Based on the Sliding Timescale, it would have been closer to two months.

• The SHIELD “black box” worn by agents is depicted as a device that is slightly larger than palm sized. It has an antenna and push buttons, kind of resembling cell phones technology that was common place at the time this story was published. Its depiction should be considered topical as devices more advanced than this that are much smaller exist in the real world making this device look dated.

• Captain America’s cell phone is also depicted with a visible antenna. This is another anachronistic piece of technology and its depiction is topical.

Captain America’s Dream

As stated above, Captain America (vol. 4) #12-16 posits a theory that Cap was intentionally put in suspended animation by the US government. That storyline was intended to be a limited series that took place in an alternate reality. However, due to delays and an sudden change in writers, the story was reworked and published in the regular monthly Captain America title. In issue #16 it is revealed that this was all a manipulation made by Dell Rusk, who was the Red Skull in disguise.

However, if the conspiracy was completely false, it does not explain why Captain America is having a dream about it here, nor how Cap later hallucinates moments from this issue #9. Marvel has not explained any of these inconsistencies either.

I have a few possible theories regarding this: The first is that Steve Rogers’ false memories are hold overs from the Heroes Reborn event. In Captain America (vol. 2) #7, we learn that in the Heroes Reborn timeline, Steve protested against the use of atomic weapons against Japan. As a result, he was made to forget his past life and given a phony life with fake memories until such a time they needed Captain America again.

In Heroes Reborn: The Return #1-4, the 1st issues of the third volumes of Avengers, Captain America, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, as well as Avengers Annual 2001 all state that the heroes who experienced Heroes Reborn only maintained vague memories of what happened in that pocket dimension. Perhaps Captain America is conflating his Heroes Reborn memories with those that really happened to him.

The other possibility here is presented by Captain America (vol. 5) #1-14. In that run of stories, the Red Skull/Aleksander Lukin had access to a Cosmic Cube and at times used it to implant memories in Captain America’s mind about the day Bucky seemingly died. Since the Red Skull is apparently involved in this deception, perhaps he implanted memories with a Cosmic Cube as he will later on in the 5th volume of Captain America.