While a scientific marvel imbued the weakling Steve Rogers with the strength he needed to become Captain America, it seems a key part of the process is still a mystery. On several occasions, Rogers has found his Super Soldier serum negated, only to be met with drastically different results.
The origin of Captain America is one of the most well-known comic book stories of all time. The scrappy young patriot Steve Rogers wanted nothing more than to serve his country and enlist in the army. As a 4F reject, he was turned away until he got the chance to take part in an experiment that would turn him into the most powerful soldier the United States military had ever seen. The mysterious process that turned Steve into a superhuman was largely lost after its creator, Dr. Erskine, was shot and killed, leaving Steve the sole product of his work. Though there have been several super-soldiers after Captain America, many of them ended up corrupt. It appears that even the creatives at Marvel are mystified by how the Super Soldier serum works, particularly in regards to what will happen to Steve if he suddenly finds himself without it.
Captain America #21 by Rick Remender and Nic Klein sees a climactic battle between Captain America and a villain called the Iron Nail. The Iron Nail uses a tendril to physically remove the serum from Steve’s body, aging Captain America until he reached the age he would chronologically be if he had not been frozen. However, it wasn’t the first time Steve suddenly found his body altered due to a lack of serum. In Steve Rogers: Super Soldier #2 by Ed Brubaker, and Dale Eaglesham, a villain known as Machinesmith captured Rogers and used technology to deactivate the serum within him. Instead of aging Steve, he simply reverts back to his old, scrawny form.
As odd as it is for Steve to have completely different reactions, the issue only becomes more complicated thanks to the “Streets of Poison” storyline that, again, shows Captain America losing his Super Soldier serum. However, rather than becoming old or returning to his old body, he just becomes notably weaker. It would be understandable if Steve had two different reactions, but three separate events with three different outcomes is just odd. While writers seem to agree that the serum increases Steve’s strength, almost no one can agree on what the side effect for losing it is. Further complicating matters is the reappearance of ‘Tiny Steve’ in Avengers: Tech-on
At the end of the day, Steve is probably never going to lose his Super Soldier serum for good. But on the rare occasions he has, it’s led to a disparity in the consequences. Becoming old took Steve off the board for years while becoming weaker only mildly inconvenienced him. Maybe there’s a difference between losing the serum and deactivating it, but the end result always brings Steve back to being powerless. It’s just a matter of how powerless he is that seems to be the question that the minds at Marvel don’t have an answer for. Just because there isn’t a real-life Super Soldier serum to give fans answers, doesn’t mean there can’t be a consistent logic for when Captain America finds himself without it.
