Captain America Corps

[Leoparis]

#1
Tath Ki (Mister Buddha, the Contemplator) sees some force abducting the body of Steve Rogers frozen in ice in the Arctic. He tells the Watcher who doesn't want to intervene.
He takes things in his own hands, he collects:
Steve Rogers from Camp Lehigh in April 1941 (triangular shield)
Bucky Barnes right after he has been exposed as the Winter Soldier
John Walker shortly after his stint as Captain America
Shannon Rogers
Kiyoshi Morales, Commander A

They're attacked by the Americommand (Broad Stripe, Bright Star, Ameridroid)

#2
In flashback American Dream is collected by Tath Ki
In the altered present, the Cap Corps fight Ameridroid and are made prisoners and tortured.
They free themselves as well as other prisoners: Luke Cage, Sam Wilson, Peter Parker.
Americop, Broad-Stripe, Bright Star, Ameridroid, Major America find the prison deserted.

#3
In flashback the USAgent is collected by Tath Ki while a roof falls over him in the San Fernando Valley (circa Captain America #360)
Tath Ki explains how the reality diverged due to the influence of Broad-Stripe (alias Superia).

#4
In flashback Commander A is collected by Tath Ki
The Captain America Corps raids the enemy's base.

#5
After correcting the timeline, each member of the Captain America Corps is returned to the point he left.
Steve Rogers also appears in the present alongside Captain America/Bucky just as he is about to be taken in custody

[Leoparis]

Series complete. Some new appearances by
Steve Rogers
Bucky Barnes
USAgent
Comtemplator

(and possibly Superia, I didn't understansd whether the flashback was for 616 reality or another)

otherwise the other characters are all alternate reality versions.

[Michael]

I think that Superia is intended to be the 616 Superia. This series explains how she survived her apparent death at the hands of the Red Skull, something that wasn't explained when she reappeared in New Avengers. The most likely course of events is this: after the end of Captain America Corps, Superia is sent back to 616 and some time later has her first encounter with the New Avengers.

[Leoparis]

I see. I thought that Stern must have been trying to fix some inconsistencies in his now classic tradition but I was wondering what it could be as I wasn't too familiar with Superia's history. I thought maybe he tried to make sense of Brubaker's absurd Reborn story where two Captain Americas coexist in the same mind (and maybe he did).

[DonCampbell]

The idea that Roger Stern was using this miniseries to (in part) explain how Superia turned up alive in a recent New Avengers storyline after being killed by the Red Skull years ago did not occur to me. Frankly, I had completely forgotten that she had supposedly died. Even if I had remembered I would have just assumed that she was yet another in the seemingly-endless list of villains who "die" on-panel but turn up alive later without explanation. Besides, since Bendis writes New Avengers, I would have just assumed that he used the character without bothering to check if she was alive/available or not.

However, there is one aspect of Captain America Corps which still puzzles me and that is how the events in this miniseries affect Earth-616. As I understand it, when Superia was killed by the Red Skull (on Earth-616), she *somehow* projected her mind back in time and into the brain of her younger self. Using her new knowledge of future events, the young Deidre lived her life differently than her previous self had. Instead of becoming Superia, she joined A.I.M., receated her time-probe, empowered herself and Ursula as Broad-Stripe and Bright Star, used her time-probe to steal the frozen body of Captain America (so as to prevent the Avengers from finding him), and then saved the Avengers from that alien attacker so that she could join the group and aid in its disbanding. She then set up the Americommand to manipulate/take control of the United States.

My question is, on what Earth did these events take place? Was the "altered 21st century America" where the Americommand ruled meant to be "the altered present" of Earth-616? Or was it the present of a divergent timeline, one in which young Deirdre's mind received knowledge from her future self from Earth-616? In other words, was Deidre's history on Earth-616 rewritten? Or, as Mark Gruenwald's rules for time travel would dictate, did the manifestation of Superia's mind in the past actually trigger the creation of a divergent timeline in which young Deidre gained Superia's memories?

Also, was the Uatu who disappeared in issue #1 meant to be Earth-616's Watcher? After he vanished, the Contemplator mentioned that "They never listen." This suggests that he had previously attempted to warn Uatu's counterparts from other Earths but that they had also behaved as this latest Uatu did and presumably suffered the same fate.

Don Campbell

[Michael]

Roger Stern recently confirmed on ComicBookResources that this was the 616 Superia:
http://forums.comicbookresources.com/sh ... 850&page=2

Superia was whisked back to the real present-day Marvel Universe. (How did you think she was able to show up in NEW AVENGERS #9 ... after having been disintegrated by the Red Skull, back in AVENGERS #388?)

[DonCampbell]

Roger Stern recently confirmed on ComicBookResources that this was the 616 Superia

Sorry, I guess I didn't explain my question clearly. I did understand that this was the Superia from Earth-616 but it is the world in which she created the Americommand that puzzles me. Specifically, was it an altered present of Earth-616 like when Morgan Le Fay conquered the Earth or House of M? In those cases, the change happened in an instant, with Morgan and/or Wanda warping the present-day reality to what they wanted it to be. These reality-warps did not affect the past but did rewrite everybody's memories of the past so as to be consistent with the new present. That did not seem to happen during Captain America Corps. Instead, the younger Deidre (her mind overwritten by her older 616 self) performed a series of actions as she progressed through her life, and those changes to the past were what caused the different present that we saw. The fact that the Americommand world seemed to revert back to the present-day 616 reality suggests that it was an altered 616, but it could also just have been a divergent timeline whose present would have been similar to 616's present without Superia's tampering.

To put it another way, if the Americommand's world was an altered present, then the alteration took place within the pages of the first issue, after page 10 (when Bucky-Cap followed Tath Ki into his pocket reality) and before page 16 (when the five Caps appeared in New York City in "the altered present"). If so, then it was during that period when Bucky-Cap and U.S.Agent were absent from the 616 timeline that history for the past decade or so was rewritten, and remained that way until 1941 Cap allowed Tath Ki to merge him with one of his frozen-in-ice divergent selves.

Don Campbell