CAPTAIN AMERICA: TRUTH Paperback
by Robert Morales (Author), Kyle Baker (Illustrator), Joe Quesada (Cover Art)
This book is something people need to read.
When it first came out, Morales and Baker’s Captain America: Red White and Black was controversial for the very reason it existed. Before the cynical changes to flagship characters the past four or five years Marvel made itself known for, the idea of Captain America being black – let alone before Steve Rogers – made people uneasy.
And that is when people didn’t even read the book to realise that this isn’t about a black person being Captain America. Unfortunately, no. It’s darker. Much darker.
It’s about the experiments that brought about the Super Soldier Serum, and it was based on reality.
Many things, in fact; because the way we pass on history gives a very wrong image of heroes and villains.
Without ruining the whole thing, let me just illustrate one thing; when Steve Rogers was created by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, they turned the Aryan ideal onto those who idealised him, siccing him directly on Der Führer from day one.
What this story does it brings that moment full circle on a whole another level; because Hitler inspired his horrific ways from the American Manifest Destiny and for it’s eugenics on the black community.
Sadly, there is another horrific layer to this; the Tuskegee Airmen experiments, Operation Paperclip and Operation Air America, the numerous tests of biological weapons on the general public especially in the 60s…and the colorful consequences thereof.
I will not get into these because I have covered them elsewhere. But here, albeit within the confines of Marvel science fiction, it shows what the convergence of these resulted in very horrible, disproportionate consequences on the black community.
Look them up.
When you know all of that and return to the book, it will leave you with the same hollow, sobering feeling that I had.
Because as recent events have shown, nobody really learns from history. At all. We like to believe it to feel good about ourselves and adopt some sort of moral high ground again and again, but we don’t.
No matter the bittersweet endings Marvel sticks on things like these.
