New Captain America Flying High

On The Colbert Report Joe Quesada, Marvel's Chief Creative Officer revealed Captain America's long-time friend Samuel Wilson (a.k.a. Falcon) will be stepping into the red, white and blue. This comes right on the heels of the announcement that Thor will be a woman.   Readers of Rick Remender's Captain America series are not surprised the original Captain Steve Rogers is being replaced. In the series (and SPOILERS for those of you who haven't read the series - and you should be!) Steve has become a 90 year old man. Since he can no longer be the super soldier he once was, he is handing his shield over to Falcon, who we will see become the new Captain America in the upcoming All-New Captain America series. Movie-goers may remember Falcon from the big screen. He was in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, played by Anthony Mackie.     According to writer Rick Remender, “This is it... This is the fireworks factory we’re arriving at, and now everything’s going to blow up and be very pretty and exciting to look at. It leads into an evolution of Steve Rogers’ character that I had very early when I was given the job. I think that it’s important with these stories to do things that are natural and make sense and have an inherent logic to the universe, but are also constantly shifting and exciting, keeping the drama high. In order to do that it really comes down to creating new dynamics. I’ve been having a lot of fun writing Sam. It’s a completely different attitude. The fact that he’s not a soldier shifts things up a bit. Sam’s not going to be Steve. Steve can be very rigid. That can be kind of joyless at times, whereas Sam is absolutely not that."   Marvel editor Tom Brevoort talked more about the difference between Steve Rogers and Samuel Wilson, saying that "While Sam shares many of Steve’s beliefs in a general sense, he’s also a very different person with a very different background... He didn’t grow up in the 1930s, he’s a modern day man in touch with the problems of the 21st Century. For most of his professional life, Sam has worked as a social worker, so he’s seen the worst of urban society up close, and how crime, poverty, lack of social structure and opportunity can affect the community. So he’s got perhaps a greater focus on the plight of the common man, and perhaps a greater empathy for the underprivileged than maybe even Steve himself.   He’s also not a military man, so he’s more apt to be instinctively skeptical of any situation that calls for just following orders. Sam, like Steve, will be led by his personal morality and beliefs as to what is right and what is wrong—and where his beliefs may differ in their shading from those of the previous Cap are where the interesting stories will be found.”   [caption id="attachment_55587" align="aligncenter" width="604"] All-New Captain America #1 featuring Sam in his new Captain America suit which combined his wings and Steve's stars and stripes.[/caption]   The new Captain America will be taking on Steve's longtime enemy organization Hydra. But he will not be alone. Not only will Steve be serving as a tactician from Avengers Manor but (another SPOILER if you haven't been reading Captain America) his ward from Dimension Z, Ian (also known as Nomad), will be joining the fight as well.