9 Years Later, Marvel Still Doesn’t Understand Its Darkest Captain America Story

While comics are no stranger to stories that deliver shocking turns and garner intense fan reaction, in 2017 Marvel Comics threw fans entirely for a loop. In Secret Empire, it was revealed that Captain America, long one of the most patriotic heroes and a symbol of liberty and justice for decades, was actually a Hydra agent after sentient Cosmic Cube Kobik rewrote reality, creating a world where Steve Rogers was not only a sleeper agent for Hydra, but as Hydra Supreme facilitates Hydra’s takeover of the United States. To say that fan reaction was intense would be an understatement as there was huge backlash that Captain America had been revealed to part of something associated with Nazis. Nearly a decade on, fans still get very upset and invested in that reveal, but it seems that Marvel still doesn’t understand the story — and why fans reacted so badly to it.

During a recent appearance on the Word Balloon podcast, Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort talked about controversial storylines and addressed various backlash he has received from fans over the years. While he spoke about a variety of different storylines, one of the ones he brought up was Secret Empire, specifically the “Hail Hydra” twist with Captain America. The backlash came with actual death threats — threats that prompted him to have to cancel convention appearances. But while Brevoort recalls the strong reactions and says that he welcomes fans’ anger, it doesn’t seem like he fully understands the reason for it. In his comments, Brevoort specifically noted that while fans were upset that Captain America had been revealed to be a Nazi, that’s not actually what happened. But the truth is, it’s much more complicated than that.

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In his comments, Brevoort seems to somewhat dismiss fan outrage over the revelation that Captain America is affiliated with Hydra by claiming being Hydra doesn’t make him a Nazi. Here’s what he said:

“The people who were unhappy made the very quick leap from ‘oh he’s Hydra’ to, ‘oh, he’s a Nazi,’ which not really, in Marvel Comics anyway, exactly the same thing. And also, ‘oh this was going to be it,.’ Like, Steve Rogers was forever going to be this and this was going to be the end of Captain America as we know it, and it’s a travesty,” Brevoort said. “And, you know, Jack Kirby is rolling in his grave, they would tell me. And I’d be like, ‘you know, I think Jack’s fine, sir.’ “

He went on to say that the fact that fans were so upset meant that they were simply invested, but that marks a major misunderstanding of the fan outrage — as well as a misunderstanding of why Cap being Hydra was so jarring.

While Hydra as an organization is not the same as the Nazis in Marvel Comics, the two groups are intrinsically connected. The ties between Hydra and Nazi party run so deep that while Hydra may not be Nazis in name, you can’t have one group without the other. In the comics, Hydra had a major role in the establishment and support of the Nazi party in World War II. Depending on exactly who is writing the story and how, during World War II Hydra was a scientific arm of the Nazi party, sharing white supremacist and fascist ideologies. Red Skull, leader of Hydra, was also a high-ranking Nazi. To put it more directly, the Venn diagram showing where Hydra and the Nazi party overlaps is a circle.

Over the years (and in different media, namely movies), there has been a little bit of differentiation between the terrorist group and Nazis, but there is enough overlap that the two go hand in hand. It’s this understanding of Hydra that made the revelation that Captain America, a hero whose entire origin and history is deeply tied to fighting the Axis powers (which include the Nazis) in World War II and whose creation was explicitly anti-Nazi, was secretly Hydra a gut punch for fans. And, as the story continued, things got even more upsetting as that very directly political and anti-Nazi character was not only associated with in-universe Nazis, but he was also a fascist dictator putting America under fascist control. That’s a dark, dark turn. It’s not that people were invested that got them so upset. It’s that everything they knew, loved, and understood about the character had been dismantled with two small words.

This sort of thing goes deeper than just merely being invested or engaged with a shocking turn in comics. Those happen with some regularity. Fans got upset about Spider-Man “One More Day” and would be upset at other points in time about other stories and characters — including Captain America’s death in Civil War. Those moments fall under fans being invested because they were unexpected turns, but they didn’t upend the characters those turns impacted. Captain America being revealed to be a Nazi — because even if Hydra has a different group title, that’s exactly what they are, by ideology, by behavior, and by association — wasn’t merely a change in status quo. It was entirely out of character for the hero. The result was a feeling of betrayal for fans. It doesn’t make Secret Empire a bad story. It just shows that you can bend and twist a character for a major story only so far before you begin to betray who they fundamentally are and fans in the process.

A decade later, Brevoort looking back at the outrage (which, for the record, extended beyond Captain America to a controversial variant cover that suggested Jewish Holocaust survivor Magneto was a pro-Hydra villain even) and not only dismiss it as fan “investment” in the story but fail to acknowledge the close connections between Hydra and Nazis simply feels like Marvel still doesn’t understand the story. Secret Empire wasn’t just an interesting alternative reality in which a beloved hero turned dark. It was the shredding of a character that, for many, is the heart of what it means to be a hero and an upending of everything they knew to be true about good versus evil in Marvel Comics. It was disrespect to the character and his creators and while the story ultimately had plenty of twists and pivots that resulted in the real Captain America being restored, for many fans “Hail Hydra” was a bridge too far for very good reasons — and they seem to be reasons Marvel still doesn’t understand.

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