Contains spoilers for Captain America #4!One extraordinary opportunity and a dose of super-soldier serum took Steve Rogers from a frail young man to Captain America, and a look at his various ailments and physical issues finally shows just how far he had to go to become one of Marvel’s best fighters. Now that he’s a far cry from his days of scarlet fever, it’s a shock to see what it took to get him there – and how powerful the serum truly was.
In Captain America #4 – by J. Michael Straczinsky, Lan Medina, and Espen Grudetjern – a pre-World War II Steve is returning home after a day of moving around bricks when he collapses, pushed to his limit by the (self-imposed) difficult day of work. When he wakes up in the care of a nurse named Emily, she compels him to tell her his medical history. He lays out the exhaustive list, which includes everything from astigmatism to bone deformity.
It’s no surprise that a pre-serum Steve Rogers appeared so frail. Yet, even before he became Captain America, he refused to be slowed down. He dragged himself to and beyond his maximum capacity regularly, taking on fights he couldn’t win or doing backbreaking labor by choice.
Steve Rogers Overcame Many Hardships Before Captain America
Although he’s an incredibly strong superhero as Captain America, Steve Rogers demonstrated incredible resilience long before he was chosen to receive the serum. The list of ailments he gives Emily is more than enough to leave a person down and out for good, yet Steve never shows one sign of letting it slow him down. Beyond whatever time recovery and treatments take from his life, he doesn’t waste a second. Between stepping in to argue with fascists and defending Jewish passersby against assault, he doesn’t take the time to acknowledge all the reasons he can’t do those things. He works twice as hard to accomplish whatever he thinks needs to be done.
Steve Rogers wouldn’t be the same Captain America without all the conditions he rattles off to Emily. While some aspects of his life would certainly have been easier without them, he may not have come out on the other side as the same man. Even when he doesn’t need to, he works unceasingly hard, and that trait follows him even when he’s left the anemia, scoliosis, and all the rest behind. No one endures a fight like Captain America, and those are lessons learned during his pre-serum days. When he was the last person anyone expected to keep standing, he stood.
Captain America’s Pre-Serum Days Made Him a Fighter
Steve Rogers was born with the odds stacked against him. His childhood and early life were an avalanche of different issues, but none of them prevented him from throwing a well-deserved punch or speaking up to defend the defenseless. Ultimately, those qualities earn the trust and faith of those around him, from the women in his building to the Avengers. From the beginning, he refused to be held back by anything when a job needed to be done, whether that was dragging around a sack of bricks or stopping fascism in its tracks. The super-soldier serum eased the way and helped overcome his physical limitations, but Captain America has always been a hero.
CAPTAIN AMERICA #4 (2023) | |
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Captain America #4 is available now from Marvel Comics
