Captain America redeemed – and another Marvel controversy (spoiler alert.)

Captain America: Civil War made waves at the box office in May. Soon after, Marvel Comics made waves within the comic book community, on account of the final frame of Captain America: Steve Rogers #1 - the frame where he says only two words, "Hail Hydra." When the new issue came out just last week, it created another controversy: had Marvel given into fan outrage?

Captain America – the Hydra controversy

In Captain America: Steve Rogers #1, the story shows through flashbacks that Steve Rogers had actually been a sleeper agent for Hydra, the Nazi spin-off organization, since he was a child. The move by Marvel Comics created a firestorm. As reported in The Telegraph, Nick Spencer, the writer responsible for Captain America's supposed fall from heroic status, received death threats through social media. It's not the first controversy to hit the comic book scene of late. A female Thor and Korean-American hulk brought misogynists and racists out of the woodwork and onto social media in droves.

In contrast, the Captain America issue is driven by the fact that the character was created by two Jewish men as an anti-Nazi icon during WWII, when the gesture was especially poignant.

'Captain America: Steve Rogers #2'

While the Hydra question was answered with the very next issue, another controversy was brewing. In an interview with Comicbook.com on June 28, Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso went on the record to talk about the plot in Captain America: Steve Rogers #2 , where it is shown that the memories Steve Rogers has of being brainwashed as a child were actually implants. The culprit? Kobik, the sentient Cosmic Cube who turned into a little girl, and who it turns out has been under the influence of the feared Red Skull for some time.

Paste Magazine jumped on the controversy, publishing a story with the headline, "Updated: Marvel Backtracks on Captain America Revelation After Just One Issue." The article went viral among comic fans, with many insisting that Marvel had caved into the bad publicity. But, it looks like the claims that Marvel was bowing to fan pressure and backtracking on plans to make Steve Rogers a Hydra agent were premature.

Just two days later, Paste published a retraction of that theory. As the second article points out, Marvel could hardly have rewritten and redrawn the entire 20 pages of the next issue and get it into stores a mere 30 days later. Clearly, the plot twist was already in the works, as Paste editors acknowledged.

Despite the fireworks and the death threats, as a piece is Gizmodo points out, the implanted memory plot twist is something that many fans actually anticipated. It seemed highly unlikely that the franchise would take the iconic American hero, who, in the Marvel story line, had just returned to his superhero role, and turn him into a villain.