Character Concept
For the world the end of the Great War was some 23 years ago. The ways of that world are already becoming things of occasional nostalgia and occasional disdain. They were quaint times, story book times, to many now who never lived through them. The past is viewed through the prism of the present. To Steve Rogers, sputtering and shivering to life in a land he was at war with, seemingly, yesterday the world has gone through this extensive change in no time at all. Yesterday was April 27th 1945 and then suddenly today was December 2nd 1967. Today today is December 31st, 1967 and Steve Rogers is due to meet with a group of men who may better understand what he is going through.My concept is a slightly different spin of the 1960s Captain America, that is the Captain America still grieving Bucky's loss and trying to find his way in the world. Potentially working for S.H.I.E.L.D. and encountering Nick Fury again. Rather than Nixon bringing on the "Nomad" character later on I intend to have Steve Roger's in roughly that spot now, having woken to a very different America in a very different time.
I want to explore what Captain America means in so much as what America means to Steve Roger's Captain America and to Frank Simpson's Captain America who is in a very different position. What this means in Vietnam, what Captain America's role in a war should be, what America's role in the world should be, and what Captain America's role should be in peace time.
A man who grew up in a time when the entirety of Western Civilization seemed to be in danger of being destroyed and being replaced with an ugly war machine pushed ever forward by an ugly ideology now finds himself in a world where things do not seem so clear. There is not so obvious an other that must be beaten. America is not so clearly a force for great good, she is not so surrounded by Allies, it is not so easy to say she is in the right. So where does that leave Captain America.
Arc 1 : Steve Rogers in San Francisco, trying to figure out who and what he is now. Talking with Dum Dum Duggan and other veterans. Learning about America in the 60s. Frank Simpson in Vietnam, enjoying what he's doing and forming his own opinions about war.
Depending on what happens with events and connected characters I might change future Arcs but I'm thinking...
Arc 2 : Steve Rogers is getting involved in S.H.I.E.L.D. matters and past evils, learning about Frank Simpson, Vietnam, Civil Rights issues, Veterans in general and Communism. Frank Simpson is more fully involved in Vietnam, becoming an independent actor in addition to his more traditional role.
Arc 3 : Steve Rogers is putting things together involving corruption and the legacy of WW2. Frank Simpson is heading toward a clash with Steve Rogers. Trying to find out why.
Key Notes
Name : Steve Rogers
Alias : Captain America
Birth : 1920, New York
Mother : Deceased, in Rogers' early child
Father : Deceased, in Rogers' teenage years
Enlistment : 1940
M.I.A. : 1945
Resurfaced : Classified
Sample Post
San Francisco, California
9:48 PM, December 31st 1967
Timely.
I always tried to be timely. The military drilled that in to me, but even before all of that it was something that mattered to me. I learned early on you couldn't control it, there were too many variables, all you could do was try to be prepared when things shifted. I wasn't ready when pneumonia took my mother. I disappeared into comics, decided I would be an artist. I wasn't ready when the war came to America. God I was so skinny then. I had no idea what I was getting in to. None of us did. We couldn't have. I was timely though.
Couldn't have known how timely.
"So," the grizzled old man across the bar locked eyes with me and interrupted from my reverie, "Tell me about your day?"
I was distracted, lost in more ways than one, looking back into a once familiar face. Jesus Christ.
"It helps you know," Duggan said as he poured some good whiskey in an old glass and slid it over to me, "We don't talk."
"Irishmen?" I replied over my cup.
"Any of us. You know how long it took me to get some of these fuckers to talk? The shit don't come natural, after what we've seen, what we've done. You don't want to remember, you don't want to put that on your brothers. Don't want their sympathy, don't want their pity. None of us do, but you said you'd talk Rogers. It's New Years, it's what we do."
"I was never much for talking about the past. About memories. You know, all those years, it was action. All movement, all action, just one thing after another. Go, go, go."
"Yeah," my suddenly old buddy Dum Dum Duggan replied, with a loud unhealthy sounding exhale, "I remember that, shit I remember it better than most. Maybe more than anyone left, but for some of us memories is all we got left. Memories, this shit little bar, and now you Steve. A long lost friend come back. You owe it to us. Your day."
"It's a hell of a thing."
Old Dum Dum looked back at me, 23 years older than when I had last seen him. He had been a tank of a man, where had it all gone. Years on years, and it had all been just a few weeks ago. For me. It was a hell of a thing. How one day can change your world.
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