E-Book, Englisch, 512 Seiten
Browne-Marshall / Kurtz / Thomas Captain America: The Shield of Sam Wilson
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80336-771-2
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 512 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-80336-771-2
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Kyoko M Kyoko M is a USA Today bestselling author, a fangirl, and an avid book reader. She is the author of The Black Parade urban fantasy series and the Of Cinder and Bone science-fiction series. Her debut novel, The Black Parade, has been positively reviewed by Publishers Weekly and New York Times and USA Today-bestselling novelist, Ilona Andrews. She has been both a moderator and a panelist for comic book and science fiction/fantasy conventions like Dragon*Con, Geek Girl Con, Multiverse Con, Momocon, and The State of Black Science Fiction. She has a Bachelor of Arts in English Lit degree from the University of Georgia, which gave her every valid excuse to devour book after book with a concentration in Greek mythology and Christian mythology. When not working feverishly on a manuscript (or two), she can be found buried under her Dashboard on Tumblr, or chatting with fellow nerds on Twitter, or curled up with a good Harry Dresden novel on a warm Georgia night. Like any author, she wants nothing more than to contribute something great to the best profession in the world, no matter how small.
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WHEN I first heard that Sam Wilson was going to be the next Captain America, I was furious.
I wasn’t angry because Marvel Comics was sidelining a beloved character like Steve Rogers, the Star-Spangled Avenger, and giving his title to the African American man who was created to be his sidekick (though many other people were upset by this). I wasn’t even upset because Marvel was retiring one of the first African American heroic identities in the comic-book industry and turning Sam Wilson into just another replacement for a World War II-era white super hero.
I was mad because I thought this would be an ignoble end to a great character like Sam Wilson.
You see, I’m a longtime comic-book fan. I started reading comic books as a child, and five decades or so later I still have a pull list—digital, not paper—and I’m a longtime devotee of Marvel Unlimited, the electronic catalog of Marvel Comics, so I read backward into the past as well as forward as I keep up with the most recent adventures of my favorite heroes and teams. And there’s one thing I know for a fact, given all of my years of reading comic books:
The status quo always returns.
And that’s where I thought they were going with Sam Wilson. He would be Captain America for a while, his falcon, Redwing, on his arm, but Steve Rogers was going to be back, and he was going to be Captain America. Which meant Sam was probably going to have to die, break his back, lose a leg, or go insane, and probably at the hands of Steve’s greatest enemy, the Red Skull—all to inspire Steve Rogers to remember and prove to the world that he was the one and only Captain America.
And Sam Wilson deserved better.
I’ve always been a fan of Sam’s. He and the Black Panther were the first characters of color I encountered in my early days of reading the Avengers, and unlike T’Challa—who was very proudly Wakandan and not American—the Falcon was the only Black American super hero that I knew of for a very long time. I would eventually discover Luke Cage and Monica Rambeau, but Sam for the longest time was the only super hero who looked like me and was from a real place that I recognized—Harlem—instead of a made-up country from a continent that I had never visited. That gave him a special place in my heart, and I always paid attention when he showed up.
Gene Colan, the artist on that issue and co-creator of the Falcon, described what was going through his and Stan’s minds when they came up with the character in the introduction to Marvel Masterworks: Captain America Volume 4 (2008):
“In the late 1960s, [when news of the] Vietnam War and civil rights protests were regular occurrences, and Stan, always wanting to be at the forefront of things, started bringing these headlines into the comics … one of the biggest steps we took in this direction came in Captain America. I enjoyed drawing people of every kind. I drew as many different types of people as I could into the scenes I illustrated, and I loved drawing Black people. I always found their features interesting and so much of their strength, spirit and wisdom [was] written on their faces. I approached Stan, as I remember, with the idea of introducing an African American hero, and he took to it right away. … I looked at several African American magazines, and used them as the basis of inspiration for bringing The Falcon to life.”
It was only when I was older that I discovered how special Sam Wilson actually was. Not only is he a cool super hero and an awesome character, but he also holds a special place in the pantheon of characters of color in the comic-book industry’s history books.
Many comic-book and movie fans now know that the Black Panther, King T’Challa of Wakanda, was the first Black comic-book character in mainstream comic books, debuting in Fantastic Four #52 in July 1966. But T’Challa wasn’t the first African American comic-book super hero… because he wasn’t African American. That hero was Sam Wilson, the Falcon.
Sam Wilson was introduced by Stan Lee and Gene Colan in Captain America #117, which hit stands in September 1969. And from the beginning, Sam was a hero. He didn’t have to lose his parents to murder (that came later in the rewrites). He didn’t have to avenge the fridging of a girlfriend or wife. He didn’t even start out fighting racism or running from corrupt cops or Klansmen in the United States.
Sam started out his career as a hero fighting for freedom for natives in a foreign land in the tropics, for no other reason than it was the right thing to do. Steve Rogers came along and gave him a costume and some training, but Sam was already a falcon-wielding hero when he met Captain America. Steve Rogers—and later the Black Panther—only gave him the training and, eventually, the mechanical wings and flight suit to make him a better-equipped hero, not a hero. Sam did that all by himself.
That, for a teenaged and young adult me, was very refreshing. Sam Wilson didn’t need a tortured backstory of pain and sorrow to usher him into the world of heroics. He was a Black American who saw injustice and was fighting it not just for his own personal interest but for others, using whatever he had on hand. To quote him from his debut issue of Captain America, #117, “We’ll make weapons! Out of sticks ’n stones if we have to! Anything’s better than not fighting back!”
Here was a Black man who did good because he was good. That’s Sam Wilson, especially when compared to the streetwise, down-with-it, ghetto-dwelling, Afro-wearing, blaxploitation superstar that was Luke Cage.
Cage, aka Power Man, holds his place in history as being the first African American to have his own self-titled super-hero comic, Luke Cage: Hero for Hire, which debuted in June 1972. Luke was created to be a stereotypical man of his time, a jive-talking, disco-shirt-wearing, muscle-flexing convict who bemoaned the evils of the Man who set him up and kept him from being his true, authentic self. Luke didn’t want to be a selfless hero working for the betterment of mankind and his neighborhood; Luke did good because it paid better. Oh, he wanted to do the right thing—and eventually would—but he would also let you know that the right thing came at a cost as he flexed his biceps and complained about how hard life was.
Sam, meanwhile, did good because good needed doing. He had a selfless job (he was a social worker in Harlem), palled around with Captain America for years, and even became a member the mighty Avengers, although Falcon became an Avenger solely because they needed a minority member to satisfy U.S. government regulations—not because they needed his skill or power but because they had a “Black” hero slot, and Black Panther didn’t want to fill it. I was embarrassed to read that. The Avengers were reluctant to have Falcon forced on them, and indeed Sam Wilson had enough pride in himself to walk away from the Avengers a few issues later because of that situation.
But I digress. Since his inception, Sam has been beloved. Eventually, he became so recognizable that, while he didn’t get his own comic book like Cage, he gained a co-credit in one of Marvel’s most popular comic books, which was renamed Captain America and the Falcon, a title pairing that lasted so long that today people are just as likely to say “the Falcon” as they are to say “Bucky” or “the Avengers” if you ask them to complete the phrase “Captain America and…”
That’s why I was mad when I found out that Marvel Comics were going to make Sam Wilson Captain America. I figured it would be yanked away from him through his death, his maiming, his insanity, or some other stupid thing that wouldn’t honor all of the work done by his character and all of the writers who had crafted him into the righteous, courageous super hero that he was. I, in my position as a journalist back then, even put the question directly to Axel Alonso, then editor-in-chief at Marvel Comics.
Alonso, who was steering Marvel through a significant cultural shift, assured me that Sam Wilson’s tenure as Captain America was not a mere placeholder until Steve Rogers’ return. He emphasized Marvel’s commitment to reflecting the evolving world and diversifying its roster of super heroes. But while his words provided some comfort, my skepticism remained.
However, as time went on, my perspective began to change. Sam Wilson’s Captain America was not just a fleeting gimmick. The storylines explored the way he struggled with the mantle, not just due to his race but also through the weight of carrying such a significant legacy. It delved into what it meant for Sam, a Black man from Harlem, to wield the shield and represent American ideals that had often failed people like him.
One of the most poignant arcs appeared in All-New Captain America, where Sam faced enemies old and new, including a resurgent Hydra, while dealing with public perception, a key aspect being how different communities saw him. For some he was a symbol of progress while others viewed him as an impostor. This duality added depth to his character and the narrative.
Sam’s interactions with Steve Rogers were also telling. Steve supported Sam, acknowledging that his time had passed and that it was Sam’s turn to lead. This mentor–mentee relationship was heartening and demonstrated a passing of the torch that felt genuine and respectful.
In the broader Marvel Universe, Sam Wilson’s Captain America became a symbol of modern heroism. He wasn’t just fighting super villains; he was addressing social issues, standing up for the...
