The revelation that Captain America appeared to have been indoctrinated from a young age to serve as a Hydra sleeper agent sent ripples through the world wide web when it was revealed last month.
Fans were angry. Fans were upset. "How could Marvel turn Captain America into a Nazi?" cried the internet.
Now, with the arrival of Captain America: Steve Rogers #2, fans get to learn the truth, and it's truth that the book seems to waste no time in explaining.
Spoilers for Captain America: Steve Rogers #2 below!
In news that shouldn't surprise anybody who regularly follows comic book news, Captain America has not, in fact, always been a Hydra sleeper agent. As it turns out, memories of Hydra indoctrination were implanted into Steve's mind via Kobik, the sentient cosmic cube who is also a young girl. Why would Kobik do such a thing? Well, that's because she's (of course) under the control of Captain America's archenemy, Red Skull.
The revelation is almost exactly what many longtime Captain America readers expected. Few readers who regularly keep up with Captain America's comic book storylines truly believed Steve Rogers was evil all along.
The news, however, doesn't change the fact that Captain America is currently evil, even if it's not actually his fault. His memories are not his own, and that's leading him to do some questionable things, as fans saw in the first issue.
Marvel editor-in-chief Alex Alonso tells Comicbook.com that he and Captain America: Steve Rogers writer Nick Spencer expected a big reaction from fans, but the reaction the issue received was far bigger than they expected.
"We're trained to anticipate a strong reaction to change or a big plot twist like this, whether it's a female Thor or the new Ms. Marvel or the Korean-American Hulk," Alonso says. "We didn't expect the reaction to be anywhere this big. It was comparable to the way that people reacted to the death of Captain America. I think a lot of the people reacting most violently aren't people that go to the comic book stores every Wednesday and are trained to understand the way the comics work and the rhythms and how we could do this kind of thing with our heroes."
Alonso also says that the decision to reveal the truth behind Captain America's current condition after only one issue was due to the story Spencer was trying to tell.
"... I think that the key thing was that in order to tell the story that Nick wants to tell, we needed readers to know that which our heroes don't know," Alonso says. "Captain America, one of the most trusted superheroes in the Marvel universe, is not exactly who you think he is. He is operating with a different and sinister intent now and every interaction that we see from here on in will be shaded by that. That's a story that Nick wanted to tell, and that's a story that's going to be fascinating for the next two months and a story that's going to build to big, big things within the Marvel universe as well."
It sounds like Red Skull's control over Captain America will play a large role in Marvel events to come, so perhaps fans shouldn't expect Steve to be cured of his cosmic cube indoctrination anytime soon. That being said, at least fans didn't have to wait long to learn the truth.
