CAPTAIN AMERICA IS STILL DEAD I: TALKING TO ED BRUBAKER

[MattBrady]

It’s been nearly three months, and as far as all indicators are pointing, Marvel’s Captain America is still dead.

That’s not to say nothing has been going on in the series that carries his name, however. Since his death, Cap’s supporting cast is far from just sitting around and moping, and as the first of a series of regular check-ins on the Captain America series, we spoke with writer Ed Brubaker.

Newsarama: First off Ed, you went to pains to show, in Captain America #26, that he's still dead, dead. Why was this important for you to do? Were you looking to cut off the "we never saw a body!" crowd off at the knees?

Ed Brubaker: Actually, I wrote that issue long before issue #25 came out, so I was
really just thinking of the story. I knew by then that the post-Civil War schedules were being moved back a few months, so reader reactions weren't on my mind at all. But I really wanted that scene between Sharon and Tony, for one, and when that image of Steve's body reverting to it's 98-pound-weakling version occurred to me, I knew I had to include it. There's an old Cap issue, from the second Sal Buscema run, where Cap undergoes some memory experimentation, and at the end of the issue, when he wakes up, he's skinny again, and the suit is hanging off him, and although that story itself is a bit ridiculous (and was retconned immediately by Stern and Byrne in their first issue) that image was so jarring. I knew we needed a moment like that, with Steve's body.

NRAMA: Of course, by showing the body looking pretty nastified...that does make it harder for using it again later, right?

EB: Ummm... Well, he's dead, so yeah.

NRAMA: Speaking of the body though – where is it circa #27?

EB: I would assume, buried, but that's covered in the last Fallen Son issue, I think, so I don't want to spoil it. I never wanted to show the funeral or the burial, personally, which is one of the reasons the time-jump between Captain America #25 and #26 goes from his death right to the wakes after his public memorial. To me, the reactions are more interesting. That's why you never see what the Falcon says. It's like the subtext of issue #26, all the things that are left unsaid after someone dies - Sharon can't say anything, we don't see Sam's speech, Rick Jones says the wrong thing because he doesn't know what to say, and Bucky has no one to talk to, he thinks. That whole issue was about that emptiness, to me.

NRAMA: Got it. Moving to is assassin, and just so we're all on the same page - Dr. Faustus is preventing Sharon from talking to anyone about the control she's under?

EB: Oh yeah. She's being mentally tortured. She knows what she did, and that she's under control, but she can't tell anyone. When she got close, suddenly she slaps Tony Stark and quits SHIELD. She's really going through the wringer in this storyline. And just so you know, she's one of my favorite characters in the book, so putting her through this is rough, but this is her story, in a lot of ways.

NRAMA: At the “secret” wake, Peter Parker mentioned going over the film and seeing what Cap did, and the first shot - but clearly, there were more shots - the body shows this. What's the official SHIELD report on the death, then? Multiple shots? There were only a few people around him at that point - gunshot residue, telling when a gun's been fired...we live in a CSI world. It seems like it would be fairly easy, of the small suspect pool, to pull Sharon out as the individual who fired the weapon...why hasn't she been?

Or - is it possible she has been fingered and identified, and has been left to run free to lead to the masterminds? Se is/was a SHIELD agent - it's probably safe to assume she has tracking devices on her that even she doesn't know about...

EB: Well, this is tricky. In my mind, when Sharon shoots Cap, there's a panicked crowd from the sniper gunshot. They're rushing around Cap, bumping into him, terrified, and the Marshall who's with him is looking up trying to spot the sniper and yelling. And as this panicked crowd is rushing past them, the fatal shots are fired. And then Steve falls to the steps, and the crowd is gone, running for their lives. That's how I was picturing it. I think it didn't come across completely like that in the issue. But I'm hoping to fix that in some of the upcoming issues, where we'll see people studying the footage and we can show it from different angles. But it's there, if you look back, there's a ton of panicked people running around as this is happening, probably obscuring most of the footage of the killing.

Also, on the CSI angle, Sharon was wearing gloves, and in the last scene in issue #25, she's washing her face while wearing them. So, by the time anyone stopped panicking and thought about forensics, she was clean, and the gun vanished with the crowd, which is something we'll get to down the line.

NRAMA: Moving to the villain side of things. You've got the triumvirate of Zola, Red Skull and Faustus, and we've seen them all from time to time as over-the-top, nearly comical villains...and given their respective appearances, it's seems that it would be easy to go down that road...so what's the key in making the three threatening, and taken seriously by the readers?

EB: Taking them seriously as characters when I write them, I think. And with three crazy Kirby creations, that's not really that hard to do. They're very cool and simple characters to grasp, and even Zola, who's the craziest looking of them has always been well-defined. He's a science-based ex-Nazi wacko with an enormous ego. When you see him talking condescendingly about Dr. Doom's intelligence, you kind of know who he is right away. As for making them threatening, I suppose it's just that they're a threat to each other, that helps us grasp that. They hate each other, yet are bound together for their ultimate goals and by fear of the Skull, who is so powerful now that he's the head of Kronas International, which has purchased Roxxon, and has all sorts of corporate influence in global politics.

NRAMA: Let’s talk Skull for a moment - is that still a mask that Lukin is wearing? And Sin, and the others accept him fully as the Red Skull? None of those folks seem to be very trusting...

EB: Yeah, when he's the Skull, he's wearing a mask. We'll get into this in an upcoming issue, actually, to explain the situation and the pact that Lukin and the Skull have made. But yeah, Lukin is trapped with the Skull in his mind, and to the Skull, this is almost perfect now that he's realized the reach of Lukin's corporation.

As for the others accepting him, they know his history, and they know him, so I don't think he'd have any trouble convincing them. His voice likely changes when the Skull takes over, even, like people with multiple-personality-disorder are usually shown to do.

NRAMA: Okay – obviously, along with Sam and Sharon, Bucky has been a large focus of the series since Cap’s death. Take us inside Winter Soldier's head a little - his rationale for wanting to kill Tony is that Tony put Steve in front of the bullets. The logic of that seems...well, it seems that Bucky is letting his emotions make some leaps here - is that an accurate way of looking at it?

EB: That's pretty accurate, but remember, Bucky didn't take a side in Civil
War. He sat outside and wondered what the hell they were even fighting about, so to see Steve give up, and then get assassinated, he's blaming a lot of people, probably. He certainly hasn't forgotten that Crossbones works for the Red Skull. But when he saw Tony at Steve's memorial on TV, trying to speak and faltering, it just struck him that the guy is majorly to blame, one of the two or three people responsible, and he was angry just to see him cry about it national TV. So, Tony went on the list, basically, that he was making in his head. Maybe he doesn't fully deserve to be, but at that moment, Bucky isn't thinking that way.

NRAMA: Bucky and Natasha...so they were an item? Has that always been in your Winter Soldier time-line since you brought him back?

EB: It's something I've been planning to include for a long time, yeah. In the Winter Soldier origin issue, which is in my second Cap trade, we show the history and the time-line, and in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s he was deep in Department X. That was an actual Soviet special section during the Cold War, where they did their experimental stuff, like brainwashing and the like. So, when I was researching it, it occurred to me that the Red Room program would have been attached to Department X, and that if the Black Widow was being trained in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, they probably met. I sat on it for a long time, though, because I was waiting for a moment when they'd meet in the modern world.

They knew each other briefly, when no one knew who he was, just that he was this important agent for Dept. X who had no name other than Winter Soldier, and she was around one of the first times he was put back into stasis, and that time was partly because his feelings for her made him rebel a bit.

NRAMA: Okay, but more importantly - Natasha knew all these years that Bucky was alive, and she never told Steve? No offense to your story - but she's kind of a dick...

EB: Well, there are a lot of things about what she actually knew and when that have yet to be covered in this story, but I can get into it a bit. There are several ways to look at the situation that answer that question, really. But it's a retcon, so obviously not everyone is going to be happy with any answer.

First, she met him as a "Soviet Agent" for a few weeks or a month or so, when she was in training and around 17 or 18 years old, which is the late 50s. As she says in the issue, there was a rumor that he was Bucky that she heard, but she probably also heard that he was like her, just a kid trained from childhood to be a spy and an assassin. The KGB during the cold war told a lot of lies amongst their ranks, so that only a very few people at the top knew the truth about anything in the espionage world and she would know that. So, her hearing a whisper about him back then is hardly going to be proof to her, knowing the world she lived in, and the amount of lies told, about her, or any of their agents. That he looked like a grown up Bucky also wouldn't mean much to her, since changing someone's face wouldn't have been uncommon in the espionage world of the Marvel U.

Also, and this has been previously established about Natasha, but she had certain memories implanted and others erased, and she's just getting a lot of this back. Like the idea she was a ballerina wasn't real. So, when she says it was a rumor, she's only really believing it at that moment, only really remembering those days that she knew him right then when she sees him. That scene with her and Tony at the end, to me, that's meant to her sort of reliving it, and feeling some guilt about it. Remembering that pain when she was so young. That's why she can't even admit it to Tony, really.

And, if you go by the sliding Marvel time-line, she didn't defect from Russia for almost 40 years after she briefly met the Winter Soldier, so even if she remembered him, that's a long time, and a ton of other stuff had happened to her in-between. But once she was in the Avengers, she would have heard of the multiple times it was believed that Bucky had come back that turned out not to be him - to be a guy who looked like him, or a robot, or whatever, and saw how much those things had hurt Cap. So, even if she had full memory of her years in training in the ‘50s and ‘60s, even if she remembered the Winter Soldier and the whispers about who he might be, I don't think she'd have said anything, based on the possibility it was a false rumor that would just cause more pain.

But that's all beside the point, because if you go back to the early issues of our run, when Nick Fury first talks about the Winter Soldier, very few people ever knew for sure he existed. He was a rumor, and it's not until Fury puts all the evidence together and looks at it with the thought it might be Bucky, really, that even he believes it. We're talking about an agent (Winter Soldier, that is) who hadn't even been covertly active since the 1980s. But the one constant through the Winter Soldier's active career was that the KGB didn't want anyone knowing he even existed for sure, so more than likely, the first time they altered Black Widows memories, they erased her memories of him. And she probably only heard the words "Winter Soldier" a few times over the years after that, and not since the early 1980s at all.

So, no, she's not a dick, she's just got a complicated past as a spy, and implanted and erased memories, and probably also because she was a spy, she would have tight lips about almost anything from her past, especially from so long ago, unless it was coming back to haunt them
all now.

Gotcha. So - where are things going from here? Are we following Bucky exclusively coming up?

EB: No. The ensemble cast of the book will be carrying it for a while, jumping back and forth between the good guys and the villains, moving toward some big confrontations coming up. Sharon's secret obviously can't stay a secret forever, but who will find it out, or will she finally be able to tell someone? That's the question. And what about SHIELD? Dr. Faustus has infiltrated them and is working in their New York administrative office in disguise. Do we really think that Sharon is the only agent he's messed with?

NRAMA: Just to play a little thought game - what would happen if Bucky did kill Tony? I'm thinking the result would make the Super-Hero Registration Act look like a walk in the park, that is, an uber-restrictive SHRA without Tony in charge, which is what he was trying to prevent from happening...

EB: Yeah, that would be a nightmare, probably. But if anyone out there could kill Tony, don't you think it's the Winter Soldier? He's smart, he's got the training and patience, and he's got a grudge. I'd be worried if I were Tony, even though he's mostly in the safest place on the planet.

Of course, Tony's part in this is about to get even more complicated next issue... so....

[Jporch]

Brubaker is amazing on this book.
First he brings back a character no one thought could be pulled off - and now he continues to write the book and keep it interesting WITHOUT the main character! not easy feats!

. . . I just can't wait until Cap comes back and he and Fury clean some house in the Marvel U.

[CeeDiddy4h]

Although we all know that sooner or later Steve Rogers will be back as Captain America, I'm really enjoying the ride that Ed Brubaker is taking us on. My only concern is that Brubaker gets to stay on the title long enough to tell his entire story.

[elias_A]

Skull is a Skrull!

[coldwarmyth]

Funny, I didn't know much about the Widow but after reading this issue, I believed there was a lot of memory implantation done a) because Ed revealed she was a pawn of Karpov and, b) Christopher Golden did a fine job in showing how the KGB messed with her mind in the Codename: Wolverine novel several years ago.

This book is my favorite monthly for many reasons (particularly the Winter Soldier), but just the little details that Ed throws in tying up Marvel history and the like. Waiting for every issue is tough, but well worth it.

[Mundungus]

This. Is. Awesome!

[joem26]

Originally Posted by Jporch

Brubaker is amazing on this book.
First he brings back a character no one thought could be pulled off - and now he continues to write the book and keep it interesting WITHOUT the main character! not easy feats!

. . . I just can't wait until Cap comes back and he and Fury clean some house in the Marvel U.

Agreed on all three points. I still can't figure out how he will bring back Steve though. Sharon is also one of my fav characters in the book. She seems so human to me, flawed.

[Comiccub]

Originally Posted by CeeDiddy4h

Although we all know that sooner or later Steve Rogers will be back as Captain America, I'm really enjoying the ride that Ed Brubaker is taking us on. My only concern is that Brubaker gets to stay on the title long enough to tell his entire story.

I really don't think Brubaker will walk away until this story is completed. Plus something tells me that Joe Q has him chained in his basement to assure that only Brubaker finishes the story.

[Jon Snow]

Originally Posted by elias_A

Skull is a Skrull!

Red Skrull?

[c0ld]

Well. That alays my only complaint about the issue (i.e. how come Widow never told Steve about Bucky).

[Aged Hipster]

I'm enjoying the book right now, but I think Brubaker is trying to hard to make Bucky seem "cool." The romance retcon with Natasha adds nothing to the story except continuity complications, and the very idea that Tony, who's spent his career matching wits with guys like the Mandarin and Dr. Doom, should be afraid of an ex-sidekick with a robot arm is stretching things.

[JackHarkness]

Originally Posted by joem26

Agreed on all three points. I still can't figure out how he will bring back Steve though.

At some point, someone or other will zap Cap's body with the same vita-rays that were used to activate the super-soldier serum the first time Cap went through the process. This will reactivate the serum and bring Cap out of his death-like state.

I'm surprised I have to explain this.

[Kerouac]

Originally Posted by joem26

Agreed on all three points. I still can't figure out how he will bring back Steve though.

Here, I'll write it for you:

Iron Man and company don't want the bad press that will come from putting Steve Rogers on the stand for a public trial. Hence, they clone him and arrange to have him killed in a very public manner. The autopsy would naturally reveal that, yes, it was Captain America that everyone saw die that day.

Meanwhile, the real Captain America languishes in 42, waiting for the day that the Marvel Universe will need him, most likely the end of a giant crossover event where it appears that the day is lost (like, World War Hulk or something) and his sudden reappearance can turn the tide.

Just imagine: Iron Man: "Steve, I was wrong...and your country needs you." Captain America: "Avengers Assemble!"

Done.

And it's not even the dumbest resurrection Marvel's ever done.

[hunterr]

Cap was a skrull!! His body shrunk and wrinkled up like Electra's did after she was killed in Avengers. He just didn't turn green so the Skrulls transformation was better than Electra's. I can just imagine him sitting in some Skrull prison along with all the others they've taken. They will eventually break free when the world needs them the most and that will be that. C'mon we know they replaced Electra and if they replaced Cap you have two of the best trained people in the world right there waiting to lay a beating on some green butt!

[Gladiator X]

Originally Posted by Ed Brubaker

It's something I've been planning to include for a long time, yeah. In the Winter Soldier origin issue, which is in my second Cap trade, we show the history and the time-line, and in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s he was deep in Department X. That was an actual Soviet special section during the Cold War, where they did their experimental stuff, like brainwashing and the like. So, when I was researching it, it occurred to me that the Red Room program would have been attached to Department X, and that if the Black Widow was being trained in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, they probably met. I sat on it for a long time, though, because I was waiting for a moment when they'd meet in the modern world.




First, she met him as a "Soviet Agent" for a few weeks or a month or so, when she was in training and around 17 or 18 years old, which is the late 50s. As she says in the issue, there was a rumor that he was Bucky that she heard, but she probably also heard that he was like her, just a kid trained from childhood to be a spy and an assassin. The KGB during the cold war told a lot of lies amongst their ranks, so that only a very few people at the top knew the truth about anything in the espionage world and she would know that. So, her hearing a whisper about him back then is hardly going to be proof to her, knowing the world she lived in, and the amount of lies told, about her, or any of their agents. That he looked like a grown up Bucky also wouldn't mean much to her, since changing someone's face wouldn't have been uncommon in the espionage world of the Marvel U.

First of all, I'm really diggin' Bru's Cap run and I'm cool with the whole sliding timeline and how continuity works in the MU BUT, is this right that Natasha is supposed to be almost 70?!?!
That's not a big deal as that would just make her the most MILFilicious babe in the MU but that is stretching things a bit.

I may have missed something somewhere but I don't recall her having an infinity formula or being suspended in time or anything.
Shouldn't the time period she was trained by the Soviets be in the late 70's/early 80's?

[PhoenixFacto]

This book is amazing. i can't wait to have the omnibus on my shelf. Brubaker has done something i thought impossible several times. He bvrought back Bucky and made himinto a viable character that has quickly become one of my favorites. He has also made a book without its title character one of the best and most compelling on the market. I've loved every issue. Its the strongest book Marvel is puttin out.

On a side note. In issue 26, i think, tony is giving a press conference in front of a picture of the mighty avengers. The image in the background is stunning I wish we could get a fullsize version.

[JohnLynch]

Originally Posted by Kerouac

Here, I'll write it for you:

Iron Man and company don't want the bad press that will come from putting Steve Rogers on the stand for a public trial. Hence, they clone him and arrange to have him killed in a very public manner. The autopsy would naturally reveal that, yes, it was Captain America that everyone saw die that day.

Meanwhile, the real Captain America languishes in 42, waiting for the day that the Marvel Universe will need him, most likely the end of a giant crossover event where it appears that the day is lost (like, World War Hulk or something) and his sudden reappearance can turn the tide.

Just imagine: Iron Man: "Steve, I was wrong...and your country needs you." Captain America: "Avengers Assemble!"

Done.

No company would be dumb enough to so quickly resurrect someone whose death gained this much coverage

[RDFozz]

Years ago, we had a story where it was established that Nick Fury used some sort of miraculous medicinal compound to stay young. I don't recall any such explanation for the likes of Dum-Dum Dugan or Gabriel Jones, but maybe they're the kids or grandkids of Fury WWII compatriots.

However, in CAPTAIN AMERICA #27 we're told again that Natasha is far older than she looks. Do we have an in-continuity explanation for her still being able to be an active secret agent and super-hero when she ought to be about 70 years old? Did I miss a point in the two most recent BLACK WIDOW mini-series?

[Gladiator X]

Originally Posted by RDFozz

Years ago, we had a story where it was established that Nick Fury used some sort of miraculous medicinal compound to stay young. I don't recall any such explanation for the likes of Dum-Dum Dugan or Gabriel Jones, but maybe they're the kids or grandkids of Fury WWII compatriots.

However, in CAPTAIN AMERICA #27 we're told again that Natasha is far older than she looks. Do we have an in-continuity explanation for her still being able to be an active secret agent and super-hero when she ought to be about 70 years old? Did I miss a point in the two most recent BLACK WIDOW mini-series?

That's what I'm wondering.

I've read pretty much every appearance of the Black Widow and I don't remember ever seeing anything about this.

[sam6]

Ed BruBaker is Amazing on this book
It got me thinking about DC the death of Superman

[Alaric]

Originally Posted by joem26

Agreed on all three points. I still can't figure out how he will bring back Steve though. Sharon is also one of my fav characters in the book. She seems so human to me, flawed.

The time machine's already been discussed between the villains. That's how it's going to be done.

[Doctor_Chronos]

Love the book and the direction. The only thing that strains my suspension of disbelief is that no one can figure out that Sharon killed Cap. Surrounded by cameras, Shield has the body and all the evidence from the scene, etc. It's pretty easy to figure out it was her.

It's one of those plot points that require everyone involved to be stupid for it to move forward. From the press to Shield to the local cops.

[lukeleal]

Brubaker (& Epting & Perkins) are doing such an awesome legendary run on Cap. I mean, it's the most intriguing book on the stands and the title character ain't even in it! Brilliant supporting cast - Sharon is so tragic yet fascinating, Sam Wilson is noble and pro-active, but Bucky is the star of the book in my eyes, Brubaker's ret-con of him is close to the best ret-con I've ever read.

I kinda wish Marvel would launch a Captain America & Bucky series/mini set during the war that expanded all the stuff Brubaker set up in the flash back issues regarding Bucky's public image vs the realality of his special ops training.

[Kerouac]

Originally Posted by JohnLynch

No company would be dumb enough to so quickly resurrect someone whose death gained this much coverage

Dude, agreed. I know you think you're making a counterpoint here (turning it into a DC vs. Marvel thing, or whatever), but you're really making MY point: we all know Marvel's bringing Cap back...just like Superman.

For God's sake, does this whole thing not feel exactly like the Death of Superman? I mean, we're currently in the "Funeral for a Friend" portion of the event.

[tbumpkins]

That whole bit on the Black Widow there is one of the reason I can't help but love the Bru.