Grand Director
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| The Grand Director | |
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| Publication information | |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | Historic: Young Men #24 (Dec 1953); in canon as Captain America of the 1950s Captain America #153 (September, 1972). |
| Created by | as "Captain America II" : Steve Englehart Sal Buscema as "The Grand Director": Roger McKenzie Jim Shooter |
| In story information | |
| Alter ego | Steve Rogers (legally changed name) |
| Team affiliations | United States Government National Force |
| Notable aliases | Captain America |
| Abilities | Peak human physical condition |
The Grand Director, also sometimes referred to as the "Captain America of the 1950s", is a fictional character in Marvel Comics' Universe. He was created by writer Steve Englehart and artist Sal Buscema in Captain America #153-156 (September-December, 1972) as having been a different Captain America, the Captain America introduced in 1953 in Young Men.
After the above storyline the character was given a new white costume and the title "The Grand Director" by Buscema and writers Roger McKenzie and Jim Shooter in Captain America #232 (April, 1979).
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[edit] Publication history
A character with a complicated history, The Grand Director's origin lies in discrepancies that crept up in the history of Captain America.
As a character, Captain America had been continuously published until 1949. He was then unsuccessfully revived in 1953 in Young Men #24–28 (Dec. 1953 – May 1954) by Stan Lee with Mort Lawrence and John Romita, Sr.. These stories starred the original Captain America and were clearly set in the 1950s, with the character prominently battling communism and a communist Red Skull.
However when Lee revived the Captain America concept a second time in 1964 he chose to ignore his own previous stories (in some interviews Lee claims to have simply forgotten the brief 1950s revival). When he has the character return in Avengers #4 (March, 1964) Lee reveals that the original Captain America has been in a state of suspended animation since a battle he fought near the close of World War II.
The 1950s stories were thus considered outside of official canon until Englehart's 1972 Captain America storyline which attempted to resolve the discrepancy by revealing how an unnamed man and his teenaged student had assumed both the public and private identities of the original Captain America and Bucky as part of a government-sponsored program which planned to replace the lost heroes to combat the "red threat". The government eventually places them in suspended animation in the mid-1950s only for them to be revived decades later in contemporary times to battle the original Captain America. This complicated origin is the reason that some sources list Young Men #24 as The Director's first appearance.
A 1977 story, What If Vol. 1 #4, (August, 1977), introduces two other Captain Americas (William Naslund, appointed by Truman in 1945 to succeed the original Captain America, and Jeff Mace, who succeeds Naslund as Cap in the spring of 1946 after Naslund gets killed in action). Originally part of a What If? story, these characters were later adapted as iterations of Captain America in formal canon. [1]
The 50s Captain America was thus known for a time as Captain America IV. But in later years, yet earlier, "Captain Americas" are introduced, obscuring the numerology of the various Captain Americas. "Grand Director" is thus the commonly-used term to refer to this character as his real name has never been revealed (he legally changed his name to "Steve Rogers").
[edit] Fictional character biography
Having idolized the original Cap to the point of obsession, the future 50s Captain America focuses his life in an intense analysis of American history with Captain America as its best representative. He attains a PhD in American History in the early 1950s (some text say 1952), with a thesis on the life of Captain America. Soon after graduating, he further researches the secret "Project: Rebirth" and finds private Nazi files revealing the true identity of the original Captain America as well as the lost Super Soldier serum formula.
The man who would later become the Grand Director returns to the United States with this information and legally changes his name. Then he approaches the FBI offering the Super Soldier serum as leverage to become the next Captain America as a symbol during the Korean War.
He undergoes surgery to get the physical appearance and voice of Rogers. But after all of this preparation, the situation in Korea changes and the FBI cancels the project.
The FBI sets up the new Rogers at the private preparatory Lee High School in Connecticut to take advantage of his extensive American history background as a teacher. He began wearing glasses and smoking a pipe and settled into his quiet life as a teacher. But he found an intense advocate in James "Jack" Monroe who shared his obsessive fascination on the wartime exploits of the original Cap. When the Red Skull resurfaces in the mid-1950s (This communist Red Skull was not the Nazi original but a successor) attacking the United Nations in an elaborate scheme now promoting Communism, "Rogers" takes matters into his own hands and injects himself and Monroe with a sample of the unproven "Super-Soldier Formula" and goes off with him to confront the Red Skull as the new Cap and Bucky. However, the formula achieved its effects without the vita-ray treatment Rogers received to activate and stabilize the serum, which meant his would-be successors underwent a dangerously flawed application.[2]
Although initially accepted in the roles of the new Captain America and Bucky, the untreated formula they ingested eventually gives them psychotic symptoms. The two become unreliable with a violent paranoia that leads them to attacking innocents simply for their race or for holding opinions that even remotely differ from their own. They are arrested and put into suspended animation by government agents.
The "Captain America of the 1950s" and his "Bucky" are kept in suspended animation until they are reawakened decades later[3]. They are sent out to kill the original Captain and his then-partner Falcon. They are defeated and returned to their suspended animation.
They are given over to the custody of the psychologist Doctor Faustus for treatment[4]. Faustus mind-controls the replacement Captain in an attempt to use him against Steve Rogers. The unnamed man returns as "The Grand Director"[5], the leader of a Neo-Nazi group called "The National Force". He was defeated by Captain America. In his last appearance Dr. Faustus proudly reveals that he brainwashed the 1950's Captain America into becoming the Grand Director. Then Faustus orders the Grand Director to kill Captain America and Daredevil. Instead, horrified with the revelation, the Grand Director curls up into the fetal position and presses a button on his utility belt engulfing his body in flames. It was never made clear whether or not this version of Captain America's transformation into the Nazi villain was entirely the result of brain washing.
[edit] Return
After Steve Rogers' death, Sharon Carter finds that Faustus and the Red Skull have been keeping this "Steve Rogers" in suspended animation so that he would heal from his fire wounds.[6] It is revealed that Faustus is preparing the oft-brainwashed man to take up the mantle of Captain America once again, with a sinister purpose. Faustus reveals that he intends to send the man against the current Captain America, James Barnes, who was the murderer of "his" Bucky, Jack Monroe.
[edit] Footnotes
[edit] External links
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