Warning: Contains spoilers for Captain Carter #1
A new character in Marvel Comics, Captain Carter, just debuted in her own series with an origin story that is very similar to the original Captain America, Steve Rogers. However, at the same time, Captain Carter’s story is way more tragic, giving her an edge over Captain America.
Marvel’s Captain Carter is based on an episode of Marvel Studios’ What If…? series, which presented an alternate universe where Peggy Carter became the first Super Soldier, rather than Steve Rogers. Using a special shield built by Howard Stark, Peggy fought in World War II as a British officer detached to a U.S. unit. She helped foil Hydra’s plans for world domination and defeated the Red Skull while inspiring thousands of people with her courage and ideals – just like Captain America in the main Marvel Universe. In the What If…? episode, Captain Carter ends up trapped in another dimension, from where she is pulled out by modern-day S.H.I.E.L.D.. In contrast, the Marvel Comics series takes a different direction and gives Peggy the same story as Steve Rogers: she is frozen in ice after stopping Baron Von Strucker’s plane, and is rescued and unthawed many decades later. This is, however, where the similarities end.
Steve Rogers was originally unfrozen by the Avengers in a story published in 1964, less than twenty years after the end of the war. Marvel’s “sliding timescale” means that correlation to real-world events is always shifting, but Captain Carter is rescued from the ice in 2022, which allows for an updated, more contemporary take on the Captain America story. The difference between 1945 and 2022 is much more significant than that between 1945 and 1964, meaning that Peggy is a “woman out of time” more than Steve was, and she will struggle a lot more to adapt to her “new” world. The larger time gap, however, also makes Captain Carter’s story way more tragic than Captain America’s.
In Captain Carter #1 – by Jamie McKelvie, Marika Cresta, and Erick Arciniega – Peggy returns to her native London and tries to make sense of her new life. After a briefing with the British Prime Minister, she stops by a cemetery to visit her family’s grave. Readers learn that her mother, father, and brother are all obviously dead, considering that 80 years have passed since Peggy’s disappearance. This is very different from Steve Rogers’ experience as Captain America: he lost both his parents before the War, had no siblings, and after being unfrozen he could even reconnect with some of his war buddies, such as Nick Fury and “Dum Dum” Dugan. On the other hand, Captain Carter’s grief is perfectly depicted in the scene showing her breaking down and crying on her family’s grave. She doesn’t just suffer for having missed her family’s lives, but she also feels bad for them because they grieved for her loss when she wasn’t actually dead.
Captain America is the epitome of a hero, and Steve Rogers had his own share of loss and suffering, but his experience as a “man out of time” is nothing compared to what Peggy Carter is going through. Hopefully, the Captain Carter series will explore these aspects of the character and give readers a modern, and more tragic, rendition of Captain America‘s story.
