Resurrected Captain America will be toting a gun with his shield

**WhiteFeather** · October 26th, 2007, 01:58 PM

Read the P.C. history of Captain America vs orginal 1940 hero

http://www.kansascity.com/238/story/329240.html

Posted on Tue, Oct. 23, 2007
Resurrected Captain America will be toting a gun with his shield
By DAVID BETANCOURT
The Washington Post

When Captain America returns to the pages of his comic book in January, it won’t be his star-spangled new duds getting all the attention.

Instead it will be what he’s wielding in his right hand, the one once reserved for pummeling the jaws of evil. Come next year he’ll be gripping cold, hard steel.

That’s right. Captain America will be packing heat.

With a few mainstream comic book exceptions — the Punisher, for instance — it’s usually the bad guys who have the guns. Bullets bounce off Superman’s chest. Batman swears never to use a gun. The only thing Spider-Man keeps in his suit is a camera. And protecting himself from enemy fire is the whole reason Captain America has a shield, right?

“We definitely wanted a Captain America that still screamed, ‘This is Captain America,’ but this isn’t the same Cap you’ve been reading about,” says Ed Brubaker, the comic book’s writer. “This isn’t Steve Rogers.”

For the novices out there, Rogers was Captain America’s true identity. He was taken down in a hail of gunfire earlier this year, a casualty of the civil war raging within the Marvel universe.

Marvel’s superheroes were fighting over a law that required all those with superhuman abilities to register with the government, thus revealing their secret identities. Iron Man led the way in support of the government. Even Spider-Man unmasked himself.

Captain America, however, believed it was a violation of his civil liberties to be forced to reveal his civilian identity and led the rebellion against the law. Talk about a metaphor for the battles of our day. Can anyone out there say Patriot Act?

When he finally went to surrender — fearing the war was taking too great a toll on innocent bystanders — he was whacked.

A bit of irony there, eh, Brubaker?

“The kind of writer I am, all the writing grows out of the characters,” he says. “Everything about the Captain America redesign has to do with the characters in the story.”

Brubaker, who has been writing the comic book for nearly three years, says he has always tried to emphasize Captain America’s military background. And the truth is, he adds, this isn’t the first time that the Captain has been armed.

“I’ve leaned on the ‘soldier’ part of supersoldier,” Brubaker says. “If you look at Cap in the 1940s, they have him with a shield in one hand and a machine gun in the other, and Bucky (the Captain’s World War II teen sidekick) has a flamethrower.

“In the ’80s they started changing his history, saying he’d never killed anyone.”

Alex Ross, one of the industry’s most popular artists and the designer of the Captain’s new suit, was watching a 1944 movie serial in which he saw the superhero carrying a gun. He didn’t see a problem with giving the character a gun, as long as the person under the mask wouldn’t turn out to be a resurrected Rogers. (The new character’s identity will be revealed in January, Marvel says.)

“I think that’s one of those bold things meant to be symbolic of this new design,” Ross says

**Cheeseybacon** · October 26th, 2007, 02:35 PM

What's he packin'? It sorta looks like it could be a 1911, but I can't tell. Better not be a Glock!

**BUCKMARK** · October 26th, 2007, 02:46 PM

It's a COLT ALL AMERICAN 2000 in 9mm.

That little pouch on his hip is full of spare parts, tools and assembly instructions.

**GRoPA** · October 26th, 2007, 03:43 PM

Originally Posted by Cheeseybacon

What's he packin'? It sorta looks like it could be a 1911, but I can't tell. Better not be a Glock!

It can't be a Glock, it has to be a real gun cause it says: "gripping cold, hard steel."

Flame on........

**WhiteSS** · October 26th, 2007, 04:03 PM

thats gay. start the counter for how long before captain america get blamed for kids bringing guns to school.

**Wasz** · October 26th, 2007, 05:07 PM

I guess apparently its not Steve Rogers the REAL Cap. Its a new guy taking over as Cap because the real Cap got killed. Im more interested in who they have replacing him. It would be cool if it was Winter Soldier Cap's old sidekick gone bad.