The Forgotten Super-Soldiers, Part 2

By: Arnold T. Blumberg
Date: Saturday, November 09, 2002

Last time, Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada and writer Bob Morales talked about the genesis of THE TRUTH, a new story that reveals the secret origin of the Super Soldier project that gave birth to Captain America. In the concluding part, the two discuss the weight of continuity and the lasting impact of THE TRUTH.


Quesada credits the choice of creators to editor Axel Alonso.

"We obviously wanted voices, people who had something to say," says Quesada. "Axel had a couple of people in mind and found the guys he wanted that would give this book the kind of vibe we needed so it would stand up alongside ORIGIN as a classy project."

Although THE TRUTH adds a controversial and more realistic chapter to the history of the Marvel Universe, Quesada thinks the series is perfectly in keeping with the reputation established by Marvel's original powerhouse creators all those years ago.

"We're not reinventing the wheel here," says Quesada. "When Stan [Lee] and Jack [Kirby] and Steve [Ditko] and [everyone else] created what we have here - and you have to put yourself in a '60s mind frame - those were very cutting-edge, realistic comics by the standard of what was going on across town, [which was] imaginary Superman stories. So you had this very real kid named Peter Parker, this real attorney named Matt Murdock - they were very edgy and realistic."


Now, with the weight of four decades of storytelling, Marvel writers and artists have to find inventive new ways to challenge themselves and their readership; THE TRUTH is part of that effort.

"Of course what Stan didn't have was 40 years of continuity," adds Quesada. "He was just making stuff up and wrote these great stories, and because they had no continuity, they had to really use their imaginations. Now, with 40 years of continuity, when you have writers working on two or three different titles, continuity becomes a crutch for the lazy writer. There are a lot of people who can create a story and make stuff up, and a lot of other people can sit back and say, 'I want to bring back this villain. They had a great battle two years ago, so let's bring back that battle.' It's done on an unconscious level, but when you're cranking stuff out, it's easy to write stuff that Stan already wrote. Bill says Stan Lee told a joke and we just keep retelling the same joke over and over again, and we don't even realize it."

Given that Marvel has also found success with all those old jokes on the silver screen, might we one day see a movie version of this "new" Cap?

"You could probably pull this story completely out of Marvel continuity and do it as its own film if you really wanted to," admit Quesada. "It's very self-contained in that sense, much like ORIGIN."

Quesada also returns to the core of the two stories as indicative of the real-world approach that today's creators are applying to venerable Marvel characters. Contrary to what people expected of ORIGIN, it wasn't about adamantium and Weapon X.

"[Fans] were thinking, 'This will be Weapon X and [about] where the adamantium comes from," says Quesada. "[But] ORIGIN was really a coming-of-age story of three kids who grew up together, and THE TRUTH is very much in the same vein. Yeah, it's about this guy who got these powers, but it's really about three young African Americans who find themselves fighting for the US in World War II, either through getting drafted or enlisting themselves, and how that life goes. It's told with a lot of historical research and tender loving care, and that's really the core of the story - these three guys, and of course something happens to one of them."

While Morales is doing his part to lend that air of verisimilitude to THE TRUTH, he certainly knows about the universe in which his characters dwell. Asked to pick his favorite African-American Marvel hero of the past, Morales has a somewhat surprising answer.

"The Silver Surfer," says Morales, choosing a character known to be Caucasian but of alien origin. "He made himself Galactus' slave to save his own planet and always longed for his freedom. How's that?"

Meanwhile, will the backstory of THE TRUTH seep into the CAPTAIN AMERICA series proper? Like ORIGIN before it, Quesada assures us that this ain't no imaginary story.

"We're saying it's always there," says Quesada. "Even ORIGIN was picked up in continuity. Grant Morrison had someone call Wolverine 'James,' so it's definitely in continuity. We're not back-pedaling on this."