Captain America, through the on-screen adaptation of Chris Evans as the character, has become more popular than ever.
With the constant back and forth about if Evans will return after Avengers 4 and in what capacity the title of Captain America will continue on, I started thinking about the version of Captain America that I think would be a great adaptation choice: Isaiah Bradley.
Bradley was created for the 2003 limited series Truth: Red, White & Blackby Robert Morales and drawn by Kyle Baker. His story used the real-life Tuskegee Experiments as a basis for deconstructing the concept of Captain America’s super-serum. In the comic, it shows the government performing the experiments to perfect the super-serum on black men in an attempt to re-create the abilities it gave to Steve Rodgers.
The results lead to many black men, around three hundred subjects, being left mutilated or dead, with their loved ones being told they died in battle, with the truth never being known to them. The lone survivor of these experiments was Isaiah Bradley.
On what it meant to be a suicide mission, Bradley takes a modified Captain America costume, a proto-type v-shaped shield and goes to destroy a concentration camp that is being used by the Nazis to do their own super-soldier experiments. Bradley is captured and going to be dissected, but thankfully is rescued and returned to the States. However, the government charges him with the theft of the Captain America uniform and he is sentenced to Leavenworth Prison until he is eventually pardoned by President Eisenhower.
The comic is very gruesome, not shying away from showcasing the side effects of the serum and the deaths it causes. With the story, Marvel uses its “real world” setting to its strongest advantage, leaning into the historical atrocities that have faced the black community. Using black soldiers without the public knowing, and having the legacy of those men become a well-known story within the black communities, but unknown outside is a common thing. As time goes on we have slowly had to come to terms with how the government has worked, even in modern history, to purposefully undermine communities of color.
Outside of Truth: Red, White & Black, the character made an appearance at the wedding between T’Challa and Storm, a match some of us are still trying to forget, and the black superheroes in attendance all instantly recognized the man, with Logan/Wolverine being confused as to what the deal was all about.
Marvel Comics
Isaiah Bradley is the perfect example of how to build a character based on the “legacy” of another while making him stand for something completely different.
(Excerpt) Read More at: TheMarySue.com