Editor’s Note: This entry contains plot spoilers to Captain America: Steve Rogers.
About
Captain Hydra is a nickname given to the Marvel Comics superhero Captain America in the light of the shocking plot twist that Steve Rogers, the original alter ego of Captain America, has long been a covert agent of HYDRA, the terrorist-paramilitary organization; as revealed in the first issue of Marvel’s comic book series Captain America: Steve Rogers released in May 2016. The final panel of the issue, where Captain America utters the phrase “Hail HYDRA”, soon became target to photoshops featuring similar scenarios.
Origin
On May 25th, 2016, Marvel Comics released the first issue of Captain America: Steve Rogers[1], a new comic book series in the Captain America franchise written by Nick Spencer and illustrated by artist Jesus Saiz. In the comic, Steve Rogers, the superhero’s original alter ego who was succeeded by Sam Wilson after his superpowers were neutralized as a result of removing the supersoldier serum from his body, reprises his role as Captain America, who makes a shocking confession that he has been a longtime secret operative for HYDRA ever since he and his mother were recruited by the evil organization during his childhood. In the final panel of the issue, Steve Rogers pushes one of his colleagues, Jack Flag, out of an airplane and utters the phrase “Hail HYDRA” (shown below).
Spread
Immediately upon the release of Captain America: Steve Rogers #1 on May 25th, the shocking reveal of Captain America’s true identity was met with overwhelmingly negative responses from the fans of the Marvel comic franchise on Twitter[6][18], Tumblr[20] and 4chan[7][8][9][10][11], not to mention a similar sense of skepticism from various comic book news sites and blogs[3][4][13][14][15] as well as entertainment news sites.[5][16][17][21] On March 26th, Chris Evans, the American actor best known for his role as the Marvel Comics superhero Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, tweeted his reaction to the plot twist using the hashtag #sayitaintso (shown below). In less than 24 hours, Evans’ tweet garnered more than 88,000 retweets and over 100,000 likes.
On May 27th, Internet artist @BossLogic shared a concept artwork visualizing how Chris Evans would look as the so-called “Captain Hydra” (shown below).
Meanwhile on 4chan’s /co/ (comics and cartoon) community, many disgruntled fans of Marvel Comics began churning out photoshopped parodies based on the exploitable image of Captain America saluting “Hail Hydra” in the final panel of the comic book; which quickly spread to other sites as well in the following days as their popularity increased.
Examples
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Search Interest
External References
[1]Marvel – CAPTAINAMERICA: STEVEROGERS (2016) #1
[2]TIME– A Marvel Editor Explains How Captain America Was a Hydra Agent All Along
[3]The Daily Dot – New ‘Captain America’ comic throws Steve Rogers’s life as we knew it out the window
[4]Nerdist – CAPTAINAMERICACOMICBOOKTWISTGETS A GLORIOUSMEME
[5]Complex – Captain America Reveals He’s a Hydra Agent, Instantly Becomes Meme
[6]Twitter – #SayNoToHydraCap
[7]4chan – So what’s the worst ‘jumping the shark’ moment to sell controversy in Marvel history.
[8]4chan – I’m going to post this every day until you like it.
[9]4chan – So cap works for Hydra? Damn, I think this is gonna be interesting
Thougts?
[10]4chan – Marvel Insider: Nick Spencer Fucked Up Good Edition
[11]4chan – I Love You, Nick
[12]Marvel – Captain America
[13]The Mary Sue – Comics Fans Respond to Captain America’s “Big Secret”
[14]Hypable – Captain America is a Hydra agent? Tumblr reacts to Marvel’s outrageous twist
[15]Comic Book – 10 Of The Best Captain America, Agent Of Hydra Memes
[16]Vox – Captain America’s evil Hydra reveal, explained
[17]Fusion – The new Captain America is evil--and he’s exactly what America deserves right now
[18]Twitter – Hashtag Results for #CaptainHydra
[19]GeekTyrant – Artist Creates Concept Design for Captain Hydra
[20]Tumblr – Tagged Results for #CaptainHydra
[21]MTV– 13 HILARIOUSLYDISGUSTEDFANREACTIONS TO HYDRACAPTAINAMERICA
[22]Twitter – Chris Evans’ Tweet
[23]Twitter – BossLogic’s Tweet