![]() It was just unseen, much like Bradley himself had been hidden from history until now. Spencer's comic run lived in the conflicted, messy margins of not having a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white man wearing the stars and stripes, a story The Falcon and the Winter Soldier did an excellent job of exploring by finally introducing Isaiah Bradley, an early Black super soldier from the Marvel Comics canon, into the MCU to show that this story of race hasn't escaped the shiny, quip-filled world of the MCU. Not just anyone can be Captain America, and Sam knows that - and knows that challenge will only be compounded by the color of his skin. It's not quite as heavy-handed as Mjǫlnir's inscription, but the point is clear. It's about embodying the ideals of what the country, and this world, should be - even when not everyone agrees, and often because not everyone agrees. It's also not about super serum, which is something Sam makes clear. It's the measure of a man, not what's on the outside, that determines his worthiness to carry the shield. ![]() Of course, it takes more than looking the part to be Captain America, as the whole world learned on the bloody, psychologically broken end of the shield by the show's midpoint. We see that first hand in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier when the powers that be literally hand the shield over to the first Steve Rogers-looking knockoff they could find in John Walker (Wyatt Russell). The comic run also didn't shy away from exploring how the nation might react to a Black man taking up the role of Captain America, an idea that was at the heart of why Sam first decides to retire the shield in the first place in the live-action series. ![]() It seems clear The Falcon and the Winter Soldier drew a fair amount of inspiration from the spirit and themes of Spencer's run, though it was interpreted through the MCU lens of a post-Blip world dealing with its own power dynamics and immigration issues. In the comics, Joaquín Torres (reimagined as a handler and soldier played by Danny Ramirez in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) was actually an immigrant who takes up the wings as the new Falcon and becomes Sam's sidekick. Spencer's series often found itself focused on more community-level narratives, with Sam's Cap stepping into stories about police brutality and immigration in-between the more traditional superhero fare. However, it was the follow-up series Captain America: Sam Wilson from writer Nick Spencer that really started to peel back the layers of what could make Sam's version of this character different from Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, who had carried the shield himself a few years earlier. It established quickly that Sam could handle the big, comic book-y craziness just as well as Steve. That first arc from writer Rick Remender and artist Stuart Immonen let Sam put his own spin on a classic Captain America baddie HYDRA while stopping the evil organization's latest world domination plot. Sam first took up the role of Captain America as part of Marvel's big "All New" relaunch event, which saw several different characters take on classic roles across the company's line.
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