Avengers: Standoff
In true Marvel fashion, Secret Empire launches off the back of another event – Avengers: Standoff. The arc featured a secret S.H.I.E.L.D. plot to create a living Cosmic Cube, Kobik, which they’d used to create Pleasant Hill – a place where supervillains were held, their minds rewritten. Naturally, it all went pear-shape when Baron Zemo broke free, and soon the Avengers were in serious trouble. They were assisted by a new Quasar, who seems likely to play a major role in the arc.
The turning point of the arc was really when Kobik used her powers to restore Steve Rogers’s youth (and super-soldier-serum-derived abilities). Fans celebrated; but what they didn’t realize that there was a sting in the tail…
Captain America: Sam Wilson #9
This is the issue where all the setup begins to pay off. In the aftermath of Standoff, Maria Hill is in a vulnerable position – but, as ever, she plays smart politics and wriggles out of being held accountable for her actions. Or so she thinks; in reality, she’s united two Captain Americas against herself. Steve Rogers spots cracks in her backing at the World Security Council, and arranges a secret tribunal.
The issue ends with Rogers going public about his restored youth, but – in a delightful twist – he chooses not to take back the shield. From this moment on, there will be two Captain Americas.
Captain America: Steve Rogers #1
This was it: the issue that broke the Internet. Captain America: Steve Rogers #1 was released without pomp or ceremony, with Marvel carefully keeping the issue’s importance secret. Fans picked it up expecting a typical Captain America story, but Nick Spencer launched something very different; the end of the issue saw Steve Rogers tossing Jack Flag out of a jet, and then saying two words that shook fans worldwide: “Hail Hydra.”
The political side of the plot was there for all to see; in an election year, Nick Spencer was setting up an extreme divide with Sam Wilson on the one political extreme, and Steve Rogers on the other. The issue also featured a glimpse of a grassroots version of Hydra that was spurred on by the Red Skull, and his speeches would be pretty familiar to anyone who listened to Donald Trump.
Fan reaction was explosive, to say the least. The Internet was ablaze with fury, and key Marvel figures received some pretty chilling death threats. Still, sales were off the charts, and Marvel was clearly satisfied with the comic’s performance.
A few were complaining that Marvel were only doing it for the money WHILE LITERALLY HANDING US MONEY FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA STEVE ROGERS #1!
— Big Bang Comics (@TheBigBang_) May 30, 2016
Captain America: Steve Rogers #2
Nick Spencer had known the twist would be controversial, and he wasted no time explaining it. This issue presented Kobik’s backstory and revealed that she’d been manipulated by the Red Skull – brought up to believe in Hydra. Wanting to please the Red Skull and wanting to bring people to the wholeness she believed Hydra brought, Kobik had turned Doctor Eric Selvig into a committed Hydra agent. Inspired, the Red Skull began to manipulate events to give her the chance to restore Steve Rogers; as she saw the elderly Rogers battling Crossbones, she couldn’t help but intervene. She turned Steve into what she saw as the greatest, noblest man he could ever be.
Kobik didn’t just restore Rogers’s youth; she made him Hydra. But, in an ironic twist, she made him Hydra as she pictures it – the Hydra of fairytales. Even from this early a stage, it was clear that Steve Rogers would wind up going head-to-head with the Red Skull for control of Hydra.