Biography of Captain America, 1964-1965

The following is a biography of Captain America for the years of 1964 and 1965, in which Captain America was thawed out after being frozen for nearly two decades and regained his status as a national hero by joining the Avengers.

Biography

Joining the Avengers

After being frozen in suspended animation for nearly 20 years, Captain America was recovered from the Gulf Stream by a submarine piloted by the Avengers in 1964. He awoke in terror, the images of Bucky's death still fresh in his mind, but found friends in the four heroes: Iron Man, Thor, Giant-Man, and the Wasp. The five returned to New York, where the Avengers stepped out to greet the press but were suddenly turned to stone by the flashbulb of a mystery assailant. As Cap exited the craft (after the press had departed), he assumed the stone figures before him were statues in the Avengers' honor. Cap found a hotel room and rested there, still traumatized over Bucky's death. He was approached by Rick Jones, a teenage associate of the Avengers and founder of the Teen Brigade, who asked for his help in finding the heroes. Cap saw in Rick an heir to Bucky's legacy, much to Rick's confusion. The two examined the photos from the Avengers' arrival and found a man holding a strange gun-like object, the likely culprit of the crime. Cap and members of the Teen Brigade spread out across the city looking for him, and Cap was the one to find him, seconded by a group of gangsters. Cap fought off the criminals with ease, pulling off the leader's mask and revealing him to be an alien, much to the others' shock. The alien was remorseful, claiming that he had lived on Earth for centuries ever since his ship had gotten deeply lodged in the sea. He said that Namor the Sub-Mariner—Cap's former colleague—had coerced him into trapping the Avengers in stone, promising to free the ship for him. Cap promised the alien to do it instead, and he freed the Avengers as agreed. The heroes followed the alien to a remote isle, pulling his ship from the sea floor with their combined might. Suddenly, Namor and a squad of loyal Atlanteans arrived and engaged the Avengers in battle. They fought for some time, but the eruption of the alien ship's thrusters caused the Atlanteans to assume a deadly earthquake was taking place and caused them to retreat. The alien indeed left the planet in peace, as the Avengers offered Captain America a spot in their team, and he enthusiastically accepted.

Early Avengers adventures

The Avengers went on to search for Hulk through the southwest, only to find that he had come to New York seeking revenge on them. The Avengers returned to New York and teamed with the Fantastic Four to bring Hulk under control. In the end, Rick Jones proved to be the deciding factor, feeding Hulk an anti-gamma pill that caused him to transform back into Bruce Banner as he fled. A few days later, the Avengers stopped an attempted attack by the Lava Men in the southwest (fighting the Hulk once more along the way). Returning to New York, they fought off a team of supervillains led by Baron Zemo called the Masters of Evil. Zemo had initiated the attack specifically to get at Captain America upon learning that he was still alive, though he neglected to tell Cap that he was responsible for Bucky's death. Zemo was able to escape imprisonment, and soon aligned with Asgardians known as the Enchantress and the Executioner to attempt to defeat the Avengers once more. Cap continued to seek revenge for Bucky's death, but Thor instead sent the three villains through a space warp, launching them to a random place in the multiverse. Some time later, Cap was suddenly attacked at Avengers headquarters by Iron Man, greatly confusing him and forcing him to defend himself in combat. It turned out that the Chameleon had tricked Iron Man into thinking that the real Captain America was an impostor, but Giant-Man was able to apprehend the real Chameleon and end the confusion. Throughout Cap's early adventures with the Avengers, he grew close to the young Rick Jones, treating him as a kind of protege. This relationship was complicated however by Cap's memory of his deceased ally Bucky, whom he believed himself to have failed. He kept Rick somewhat at arm's length as a result, hesitating to fully accept another "sidekick" in Bucky's place.

Solo run-ins

One night, Cap was left at the Avengers' mansion, keeping watch with butler Edwin Jarvis while the others were out. Suddenly, he was ambushed by a large group of small-time thugs, who were initially able to tie him up thanks to the element of surprise. But as they attempted to burn their way into the Avengers' vault, Cap broke free of his bonds and handily defeated them. Not long after, Cap agreed to give a hand-to-hand combat exhibition at a charity benefit event. At the show, the opponents who arrived were not his scheduled sparring partners, but agents sent by Baron Zemo. After a long fight against the group of masked foes, Cap laid them out and left them for the police to take in. Also around this time, the Avengers repeled an attempted invasion by the time-traveling Kang, and fought back the Masters of Evil once more with the help of the duplicitous Wonder Man, who died shortly thereafter. Soon after, the Avengers fended off the Masters of Evil and the mysterious Immortus, though the Enchantress used a spell to reverse time such that these events essentially never happened. The Avengers further followed what Thor called an evil presence in Europe, which turned out to be the alien Lucifer, though they eventually left his defeat in the hands of the X-Men. Later, while Iron Man was away from the Avengers investigating the apparent death of Tony Stark, the team were approached by a fake, robotic Spider-Man sent back in time by Kang. It led them into a trap in Mexico, but the robot was trailed and defeated by the real Spider-Man, foiling Kang's plans.

Cap traveled to North Vietnam to barter for the release of an American helicopter pilot taken prisoner by the Viet Cong. The man in question was Jim Baker, whose brother had assisted Cap in Europe during World War II. Cap approached Viet Cong soldiers and requested to speak to their general. After testing his mettle, they took him to see General Wo, a large sumo wrestler. Wo quickly ordered Cap and Baker to be put to death, but Cap fought back and teamed with Baker to fight his way out of the Viet Cong stronghold, commandeering a plane that Baker used to fly them home. Soon after, Cap was invited to a penitentiary to demonstrate his skills for the officials there. In truth, the officials were convicts who had revolted and taken over the facility themselves, but were unable to leave the prison due to a large magnetic gate. When they had Cap defenseless, they ambushed him and threw him in a cell with the superintendent. They intended to use Cap's own magnetic shield as a "key" to open the gate. In truth, though Iron Man had briefly modified the shield with magnetic capabilities, Cap had reversed them after finding them not to his liking in battle. Cap soon fought back the inmates and restored order to the prison.

Rise of the Sleepers

In mid-1965, a nightmare reminded Captain America of the warning Red Skull had given him near the end of the war, of the three Sleepers that were to awake in exactly 20 years. That day had arrived, and Cap reviewed a note Skull had left behind for clues. The note contained the names of three lieutenants and three German towns. Cap went to the first of these, Gortmund, and found a huge robot emblazoned with a Nazi swastika, the first Sleeper, rampaging through the humble Bavarian village. Though its technology was primitive, the sheer size and seeming indestructibility of the Sleeper made it impossible for Cap to stop. The robot stomped ceaselessly away, and Cap surmised that it was going to meet with its two counterparts.

He decided to take another approach, and inquire with a nearby NATO divisional base about heavy weaponry to potentially destroy the machine. He commandeered a motorcycle and, on his way there, felt a huge explosion coming from the town of Telbeck—the second town on Red Skull's list. He saw the second Sleeper, which this time resembled a huge, red sting ray. Cap found that the town was deserted, and speculated that Red Skull's second agent, Erica Wolfmann, must have warned them ahead of time. The beat of the Sleeper's enormous wings created huge gusts of wind, and Cap rode the wind up to those wings and climbed on top. The first Sleeper approached, and the second magnetically lifted it to its underbelly. The two now effectively formed a single giant mech, as the first Sleeper fired electric blasts as it was carried through the air. Cap also noticed that there was a clear space on the top of the second Sleeper where a third was likely meant to attach as well. Now near the NATO base, Cap tried to signal passing planes with his shield, but had the opposite of the intended effect, as they simply fired upon the Sleepers. Cap dodged out of the way, jumping far down into a body of water below.

Cap finally made his way to the NATO base and convinced the brass there that the two Sleepers were likely to meet and bond with the third at the final town on Red Skull's list, Molnitz. Cap accompanied a large assembly of NATO forces to Molnitz, where they witnessed a huge mechanical head attach to the back of the second Sleeper. Cap assessed that the head, which somewhat resembled Red Skull, was likely a bomb. Noticing that the completed contraption was flying north, Cap pieced together his knowledge of the Red Skull to deduce his plan. Rogers knew that Skull wished total destruction of the world in the event of Nazi failure, and Cap speculated that the Sleepers were going to the North Pole so that they could blast through the surface and drill their way to the planet core and detonate their bomb. Cap took a flamethrower from the NATO forces and had a plane drop him on top of the completed Sleepers. Fighting the force of the wind, he used the flamethrower on the mindless Sleepers, causing the mechanical monstrosity to crash and burn into the ocean, and allowing Cap to close the door on Red Skull's twenty-year threat.

Agent 13 and Inferno 42

Cap fell from the exploding Sleepers down to the ocean below, where he was luckily recovered by a passing American freighter. He spent some time recovering at home in New York, then went out on a walk through the city. He saw a woman whom he thought looked oddly similar to a love interest he'd had in his old life. The woman bumped into a man who was carrying a cylindrical package identical to hers, and he exchanged the two, apparently without her notice. Steve tried to tell her, but she assured him that she had the right package. The two parted, but as soon as she had turned a corner, Steve heard a gunshot. He ducked into an alley, suited up as Captain America, and followed the sound to find a large costumed man trying to take the woman's package from her—the gunshot had come from her gun, but she had missed. The two men fought, and Cap learned that he was called Batroc the Leaper, a French acrobat, kickboxer, and mercenary. The package dropped and was damaged in the fight, and the woman made off with it as Cap and Batroc continued to spar. Batroc suddenly grew nervous, and told Cap what all of this was about. The woman was Agent 13, an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., and he was hired to take the package from her. The package contained an element known as Inferno 42, and the amount held in the package was enough to level the city in 30 minutes, now that it had been exposed to the air. The two chased after Agent 13, but she continued to run, believing that they had somehow teamed up to take her down.

Before long, the energy leaking out of the package had a deleterious effect on Agent 13, who passed out. Cap and Batroc resumed fighting, and Batroc was able to get the upper hand and retrieve the package. Cap tailed him as he fled, following him straight to a group of shadowy men in an office building. Batroc demanded his payment for delivering the Inferno 42, but they insisted that he kill Captain America first. The men took the package, concealed it so that it was no longer an active danger, and fled into an elevator as Cap and Batroc resumed fighting. Batroc eventually fled once more, supposedly in fear of the danger that Inferno 42 still posed to the city. Cap returned to Agent 13, who was being loaded into an ambulance, poisoned by her exposure to Inferno 42. She told him that she had actually switched out the cylinder with yet another decoy at a critical moment, so Batroc's employers had gotten away with a fake, and the real one was now in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody. The EMTs on the scene were not optimistic about Agent 13's prognosis, as there was no known treatment for what she had suffered.

See also

• Captain America and Bucky in World War II
• History of the Avengers, 1963-1964