What if? Featuring Captain America #1

Feb 2006
Tony Bedard, Carmine DiGiandomenico

Story Name:

What if…Captain America Fought in the Civil War?


Synopsis

What if? Featuring Captain America #1 synopsis by Peter Silvestro
Rating: 3 stars
Hacker Hector Espejo (online name: The Watcher) discovers he can read websites from an alternate Earth. He spies news articles about General America battling his enemies, a supremacist group called the White Skulls. Reading further he finds the Civil War diary of the original Captain America, Corporal Stephen Rogers, US Army. Rogers is mocked for his idealism and naiveté while serving in the Redlegs Regiment commanded by Colonel Buck Barnes. On the Kansas-Missouri border, the Redlegs’ mission is to stop the rebel army, but Rogers is shocked by his company’s slaughter of civilians and wholesale looting. When he is confronted by Barnes while attempting to rescue children from massacre, Rogers attempts to shoot his commander but Barnes gets the drop on him; Rogers’ life is saved by the sudden appearance of an eagle attacking Barnes, allowing the children to escape on horseback. Shot in the back by Barnes, Rogers is dragged behind a horse for several miles. After seeing the vision of an eagle spirit he is rescued by a Negro soldier, Private Wilson. The dying soldier is made comfortable by some of the blacks and Indians in this regiment, while they send for Colonel Barnes. Wilson, a tribal shaman, sees Rogers as the hero the Eagle Spirit We-Pi-Alk was indicating would be the one to unify all races of the nation, and so casts a spell that what he is on the inside, he shall become on the outside. Barnes, arriving, bursts into the room at this moment and the spell affects him too. His face burned into a skull, Barnes orders his men to slaughter the Blacks and Indians. Rogers appears, transformed into a Native American deliverer, and strikes down Barnes with his shield. Later dubbed Captain America, he inspires the troops to fight for the union and freedom, ending the war earlier than in our history and preventing Lincoln’s assassination. After the war, he stamps out the Ku Klux Klan and his embrace of Native American culture also ensures the Indian Wars never happened. Buck Barnes, the White Skull, would later escape from prison and reform the Klan as a deadlier white supremacist group and becomes Cap’s nemesis. The hero and the villain demonstrate the heights we can rise to, and the depths to which we can sink. In America, the choice is ours.

 

Review / Commentaries


What if? Featuring Captain America #1 Review by (April 4, 2011)
Review: Good issue, with Cap’s mission in that century being the fight against bigotry rather than fascism. Most audacious moment: making Bucky the villain, since this fell not long after the Winter Soldier storyline brought him back.

Comments: This issue was reprinted in the TPB WHAT IF? MIRROR MIRROR. Espejo means “mirror” in Spanish.


> What if? Featuring Captain America comic book info and issue index

Elektra

Excelsioring your collection:
DIAMOND SELECT TOYS Marvel Premier Collection: Avengers Endgame Captain America Statue, Multicolor
Holy smokes, Batman!
(The Boy Wonder)

Carmine DiGiandomenico
John Stanisci
Lovern Kindzierski
Tony Harris (Cover Penciler)
Tony Harris (Cover Inker)
Tony Harris (Cover Colorist)


Characters

Listed in Alphabetical Order.

Captain America
Captain America

(Steven Rogers)