AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES S1x005

"MEET CAPTAIN AMERICA"
Written by Paul Giacoppo | Directed by Sebastian Montes

The Plot: In the distant future, Kang the Conqueror watches the exploits of Captain America in World War II. In it, Cap and his partner, Bucky, along with the Howling Commandos, invade the Red Skull's castle. Inside, Cap and Bucky fight a monster, then are captured by the Red Skull, who reveals that he has discovered a gateway to Asgard.

As Cap and Bucky watch, the Skull has the gateway opened and a frost giant begins to emerge. Cap and Bucky break loose and attack Hydra, but a power surge causes several Asgardian beasts the Skull had imprisoned in stasis to break free. In the ensuing battle, Buckey defeats Strucker while Cap closes the gateway. The Skull attempts escape, but Cap and Bucky pursue and leap onto his jet. The Skull bails out, and Bucky gets stuck in a cable. He kicks Cap off the jet, and as the Star-Spangled hero sinks into the arctic sea, the jet explodes.

His viewing complete, Kang travels back in time to the battle, apparently waiting for Cap to emerge from the water, but it never happens. Kang is the called back to his spacecraft, where he learns that a temporal rupture is in process and his timeline is being wiped out, somehow due to Captain America. Kang sets course for the past to correct this problem, but just before he departs, his love, Ravonna is caught in the rupture. Kang vows to save her and the timeline.

Continuity Notes: First appearances of Captain America, Bucky, the Howling Commandos, the Red Skull, Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, Hydra, and Kang. Cap also mentions Arnim Zola as the likely creator of the creature he and Bucky fight in the castle, and name-drops Baron Zemo as well.

Unlike in the comics, Steve Rogers' identity as Captain America is publicly known from the start, with a vintage newsreel explaining his origin.

All of the Howling Commandos from the classic SGT. FURY comics are represented here, but due to this continuity following the Ultimate/MCU timeline, Nick Fury is not a contemporary of Captain America's from the 30s/40s, and the Howlers are led here by his Uncle Jack. Also serving among the Howlers is a troop named Howlett, who looks like Logan/Wolverine.

In this continuity, it appears that "Hydra" was the Allies' major enemy in World War II, rather than the Nazis. I get that depicting Nazis and Nazi imagery has always been a touchy subject in kids' cartoons, but this practice, of replacing the Nazis with a fictional organization (which was done to an extent in CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, as well as the JUSTICE LEAGUE episode "The Savage Time" -- though in both those cases it was clear Hitler was temporarily usurped) will never not seem bizarre to me. Like, it's ridiculous to me that the Allied troops are fighting guys in Hydra uniforms, and the Red Skull is acting as a Hitler stand-in.

(Though it's implied that the Skull isn't Hydra's supreme leader here... he gives orders to Baron Strucker, but Cap asks him at one point if he's "still doing Zemo's dirty work", suggesting the magenta-clad baron outranked the Skull at some point.)

Kang's sword-shaped ship is called Damoclese Base, a reference to the "Kang Dynasty" storyline from Kurt Busiek's AVENGERS run.

Do I Know That Voice? "Howlett" is played by Steve Blum, who was (and maybe still is?) Marvel's go-to "default" voice for Wolverine in most cartoons and videogames. I think when EMH originally aired, I knew him best as the voice of Spike Spiegel in the American dub of COWBOY BEBOP and Roger Smith in the BIG O dub. More important to this episode, Blum also voices the Red Skull.

Scott Menville, who provided the voice of Robin the TEEN TITANS animated series, portrays Bucky. (I kind of wonder if that was an intentional casting choice: Batman's sidekick also plays Cap's sidekick.)

My Thoughts: This is possibly the most continuity-dense of the microseries compilation episodes, though that's in part because it's had four episodes precede it. Thanks to ground laid in "Iron Man is Born", "Hulk vs. the World", "Thor the Mighty", and "The Man in the Ant-Hill", we already know about Hydra and we've seen the modern version of Baron Strucker, we know Nick Fury, we know about Asgard, and so forth. So now we've gone back in time to see aspects of those characters and places as they fit into the universe's history. It probably goes without saying, but I love stuff like this.

It's also a lot of fun to see a vintage adventure of Captain America. Cap's WWII exploits have been well-documented in the comics over the decades, and seeing an amalgamation of those adventures on the small screen is cool. I like these kinds of stories about Cap and Bucky behind enemy lines, smashing the Nazis -- err, Hydra -- in Europe. I also love the idea that the Red Skull is trying to open a portal to Asgard here, sort of applying Hitler's interest in supernatural mythology to his stand-in.

Then there's Kang. Honestly, the character has never done much for me in the comics. I find him boring and overly complicated. But at this point in the TV show, he's a very straightforward character with a simple motivation: he has determined that Captain America will somehow cause a rupture in time and he wants to stop that from happening -- and now, with his love lost to that rupture, he has a personal stake in doing so. I seem to recall that I actually liked EMH's version of Kang for the simple fact that he wasn't as ridiculously ret-conned and convoluted as his comic book counterpart. Hopefully my memories are correct.

And now, with all the microseries episodes out of the way, we're ready to move into the series proper. We've met Captain America, but he'll sit the next three installments out as the original (comic book) Avengers lineup assembles for the first time next week in "Breakout, Part 1".