I hear you’re a Nazi now Captain?
Well. Sort of. Captain America being a Nazi is both technically incorrect, and irrelevant to the wider concerns of the audience.
(Just to be clear, everything that follows in terms of “in universe events” that talks about Canon is dependent on Marvel and Nick Spencer deciding to be consistent on how logic is applied through the Marvel Universe. So you know. Throw salt at it.)
As there has been much discussion on the internet surrounding it, Marvel have finally launched their latest big event (following the worldwide Kaiju invasion and the second superhero civil war) where following a series of shenanigans, Captain America, the man who punched Hitler in the face, was revealed to have been an agent of Hydra all along.
The short version of the story is:
Captain America is aged up by a Villain, making him incapable of fighting directly. He hands the title of Captain America over to Sam Wilson, the then Falcon.
While investigating a Secret Shield Prison where Maria Hill kept super-powered prisoners using a sentient cosmic cube to keep their minds warped, Steve Rogers helped rescue the girl/cube, and was rewarded with his youth/superpowers back.
The Little Girl is a sentient magic cube. Just go with it.
Steve Rogers lets Sam keep the title and active role, but everyone defers to his advice and experience in other matters, like the aforementioned superhero civil war.
Except.
The cosmic cube did more than just restore Steve Rogers to peak condition, it instead rewrote his history.*
He was in fact, always a double agent for Hydra, fighting for their dominance over the world. From the moment he regained his powers, all of Steve Rogers actions were specifically pointed at restoring Hydra and establishing their rulership over the world.
The image that launched a thousand Memes.
The Secret Empire event began with Rogers single handedly taking most of the most powerful heroes out of the picture, and leaving the others (mostly the legacy and new heroes like The Champions) scrambling to respond to his plans.
So, it all seems a little awful. I won’t say that there are no conceptually interesting ideas going on.
Steve Rogers is functionally the moral lynchpin of the marvel canon. He’s defined by his dedication to his ideals and intransigence in following them.
Showing what happens when those ideals themselves, and not the man who follows them, are corrupted is a neat idea. There’s a lot of nuance and subtlety that could be explored there.
However, there’s still some problems with the execution.
Obviously, people haven’t responded fantastically to the concept.
Captain America being a Nazi now is a really good headline after all.
Yay Hypocrisy!
There’s two real arguments from Marvel here to justify the storyline.
One, Captain America wasn’t really always a Hydra Agent, it’s just comics being weird.
Two, Hydra aren’t the Nazis, and as such, there’s no connection to any real world politics.
Now, there’s an asterisk up there for a reason.
Going by that font of all knowledge, the Marvel Wiki, the cosmic cube cannot actually change reality for the most part. They create incredibly powerful illusions. Instead, what is likely has occurred is that Kobik has forcefully implanted memories in Roger’s (and others) head to make him believe that history has always been that he fought for Hydra. (This would follow considering that Memory Manipulation was literally what Kobik was doing for Maria Hill.)
As such, Captain America wasn’t ACTUALLY a Hydra Agent, not in “reality” as is understood by the audience. Even in the opening of Secret Empire #0 where we see him being shown that the Allies created the cosmic cube and used it to rewrite the war as being won by them instead of Hydra, the audience is seeing the events from the viewpoint of Captain America. Who has had his mind messed with. It’s unreliable. (Plus, it shows the allies making a manmade cosmic cube, which according to the wiki, would make it even weaker than a “real” one.)
As such, in the “canon reality” Captain America was probably not a Hydra agent the whole time, and that’s why no one else in the whole marvel universe can provide any evidence of this beyond the few people who were directly affected by Kobik messing with memories.
So, Argument One:
Steve Rogers Was always a Hydra agent.
Technically not true, he only thinks he was. To be honest, this is probably the part I can understand and mitigate the confusion most easily. Unless you’ve followed the entire run of the last year or so across several comics series, I can see how several pages showing Captain America literally swearing allegiance to Hydra could be disorienting.
Verdict: Marvel gets away with it on a technical level, but this is mostly nullified by the way they’ve presented the story to the press.
Mostly, this is a stupid argument between canon reality and perception, being poorly explained by the fact it’s spread inaccessibly across a year’s writing.
(Plus they’ll have to write their way out somehow, and I highly doubt Cap isn’t getting his mind back at some point)
As for the stirring defence that’s been presented that Captain America is a member of Hydra, who were not specifically Nazis… come on.
I would obviously hope that no-one at Marvel sympathises with the Third Reich, and I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt in that regard. Hanlon’s Razor argues to never attribute to malice what could be attributed to stupidity.
However, the problem is this:
This argument is like saying that Hydra tried to hitch a ride with the Nazis. They got in a car with the Third Reich driving, and then were shocked when Hydra didn’t get to go where they wanted.
It does not change the fact that they got in the car with the swastika on it.
The problem is, much as they’ve tried to get away from it in the last few months, Marvel has linked Hydra and the Nazis for the entirety of the former’s existence.
Things like that are built into the cultural landscape.
The minutiae of how the connection works recently may have shifted, but the connection is still there.
Hydra still gives a version of the Nazi Salute, if you’re looking for thematic and visual connections.
Okay, Hydra and the Nazis were different organisations. The final few issues of Captain America: Steve Rogers goes to great pains to show how upset Rogers and other WW2 era Hydra agents are that those pesky Nazis like Red Skull have corrupted their organisation. Indeed, in the current day, they even go so far as to show Rogers beat up an enfeebled Red Skull, actual Nazi party member, before killing him by throwing him out a window.
“We thought we could manipulate the Reich to suit our whims, and instead they devoured us whole.”
That’s a quote from WW2 Era Steve Rogers, Agent of Hydra.
This is what could be described in technical terms as a cop out.
As such, when people get angry at the fact that you’ve created the implication of Captain America being a Nazi, it’s not hard to understand.
The fact that Spencer has, (somewhat cack handedly) been dealing with issues of social justice, right wing nationalism and fascist police state issues in Captain America: Sam Wilson does raise tensions a bit too with people not entirely trusting him to thread this needle of political storytelling.
So, the cop out that Hydra aren’t technically Nazis comes off as insipid. This is where the problem lies. Had Marvel responded quickly to this, they may even have been able to spin this whole event into a lesson that everyone, even paragons of virtue, can fail or be led astray.
Had they got ahead of the press, instead of Captain America being a Nazi plastered across half the web, you’d maybe have something slightly more true to the actual event and slightly more nuanced takes. “Marvel explores creeping fascism in new event”
Instead, you get stuff like Marvel trying to mandate all Comic Book Store staff wear Gear with a Hydra Logo on it. Because everyone loves being told to dress in Nazi related emblems. Especially minority groups.
Instead, just as Marvel don’t seem to recognise how their expanded diversity in characters can inspire people, now we have stuff like this popping up in January, based solely on the news headlines and the memes.
Marvel’s poor press handling of this whole comic event, mostly designed to undersell the aforementioned canon for attention, results in utterly gross stuff like this.
This is a character created by Jewish Artists, famous for literally punching out Nazis before the Americans even joined the war, being used by Nationalist groups to promote Nazi ideology. you can empathise with people getting upset about the whole thing.
This is why trying to walk back their decisions in the story hasn’t worked, and why I can’t accept the poor argument here. Even on a story level, Marvel have tried to tiptoe around taking a stand with a character who is literally all about taking stands.
It’s disappointing. Obviously.
In the comic universe, Captain America being a Nazi isn’t technically true. He’s not even really a Hydra Agent.
But in the real world, that idea allows for the corruption of a character that was created to represent the hope and the ideals of many.
Representation matters, whether it’s showing good ideas or bad.
Hopefully the event ends with Captain America getting punched in the face. Just to balance things out.