I just finished reading the 2017 Marvel event “Secret Empire,” the story of evil Steve Rogers (“Stevil Rogers” as Deadpool calls him) taking over the USA, told over 77 comic books along 22 different books within the Marvel universe.
The basic premise is that Hydra, Marvel’s pseudo-Nazi world-annihilating cabal, deceived Kobik, the omnipotent embodiment of something called a “cosmic cube,” into rewriting Steve Rogers’s history so that he has always been a Hydra sleeper agent.
When a combination of crises (a darkforce bubble enveloping NYC, trapping most of the best heroes within, and a Chitauri alien invasion) push the US government to temporarily cede all governing power to the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., Rogers, Hydra’s coup is completed for them.
What follows is fascist rule.
Stevil Rogers rounds up Inhumans in concentration camps. He razes Las Vegas to the ground. He exiles Mutants to New Tian, and then invades and takes over the fledgling country. He seizes the media and installs federal troops in cities across America. He threatens and provokes war across the world, incites revolution and terror in Europe, invades Atlantis and Wakanda, and browbeats the UN into obsequiousness.
As we’ve learned firsthand a decade later, it’s the predictable fascist playbook. It was very obviously modeled after the Nazi party in the 30s, but so is the current American regime. (Note: the Nazis in turn modeled much of their strategy off the American South’s treatment of Black people in the Jim Crow era, and the US at large’s treatment of its indigenous peoples.)
Throughout the 22 different books, there’s a predictable message from the writers at Marvel: violence can be justified in some circumstances. While I don’t love that message, it is how the Nazis were eventually stopped, so maybe there’s some merit? I don’t know.
Stevil Rogers gets stopped when Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson, Steve’s old friends, release Kobik from imprisonment. She then generates a new “revert-to-previous-draft” Steve Rogers who kicks Stevil Rogers’s ass.
Kobik then sets the world right, but doesn’t undo all the damage Hydra and Stevil have caused (what, specifically, she has undone and left alone is unclear; perhaps to be parsed out in future books).
And everyone feels pretty good about themselves at the end. Steve Rogers is back to normal! Except… no he isn’t. Original Steve Rogers was corrupted. He’s still alive, but in prison, we learn in the epilogue. He’s still the original Steve Rogers. This new one marching around in the red, white, and blue is the imposter, we just all like the imposter’s ethics!
This means that all previous Captain America stories have been corrupted. When Captain America originally punched Hitler in the face, he was a Hydra sleeper agent. This much more profoundly undermines the story and makes for a much more tense ending than the writers land on.
However, the ending they chose is fun. New Cap breaks in to prison to confront Stevil Rogers (who is the original Cap, damnit!). They argue. They moralize. They threaten each other. Then, new Captain America slips out the window before the prison guards can catch him. The guards roughly slam Stevil Rogers into the wall. As they secure the room, though, one guard whispers in Stevil’s ear, “Hail Hydra.”
Cut off one head, two more shall take its place. Couldn’t be a more apt connection to our era, could it?
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