Steven Rogers was born in the 1920s in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, to poorIrish immigrants, Sarah and Joseph Rogers. Joseph died when Steve was a child, and Sarah died of pneumonia while Steve was a teen. By early 1940, before America's entry into World War II, Rogers is a tall, scrawny fine arts student specializing in illustration.
Disturbed by the rise of the Third Reich, Rogers attempts to enlist but is rejected due to his frail body. His resolution attracts the notice of U.S. Army General Chester Phillips and "Project: Rebirth." Rogers is used as a test subject for the Super-Soldier project, receiving a special serum made by "Dr. Josef Reinstein" later retroactively changed to a code name for the scientistAbraham Erskine. The name "Erskine"
The serum is a success and transforms Steve Rogers into a nearly perfect human being with peak strength, agility, stamina, and intelligence. The success of the program leaves Erskine wondering about replicating the experiment on other human beings. and thus the Super-Serum was retconned into an oral formula. Later accounts hint at a combination of oral and intravenous treatments with a strenuous training regimen, culminating in the Vita-Ray exposure.
Erskine refused to write down every crucial element of the treatment, leaving behind a flawed, imperfect knowledge of the steps. Thus, when the Nazi spy Heinz Kruger killed him, Erskine's method of creating new Super-Soldiers died. Captain America, in his first act after his transformation, avenges Erskine. dies when running into machinery but is not killed by Rogers causes the spy's death by punching him into machinery.
Unable to create new Super-Soldiers and willing to hide the Project Rebirth fiasco, the American government casts Rogers as a patriotic superhero, able to counter the menace of the Red Skull as a counter-intelligence agent. He is supplied with a patriotic uniform of his own design a bulletproof shield, a personal side arm, and the codename Captain America, while posing as a clumsy infantry private at Camp Lehigh in Virginia. He forms a friendship with the camp's teenage mascot, James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes.
Barnes learns of Rogers' dual identity and offers to keep the secret if he can become Captain America's sidekick. During their adventures, Franklin D. Roosevelt presents Captain America with a new shield, forged from an alloy of steel and vibranium, fused by an unknown catalyst, so effective that it replaces his own firearm. Throughout World War II, Captain America and Bucky fight the Nazi menace both on their own and as members of the superhero team the Invaders. Captain America battles a number of criminal menaces on American soil, including a wide variety of costumed villains: the Wax Man the Hangman the Fang the Black Talon and the White Death among others.
In addition to Bucky, Captain America was occasionally assisted by the Sentinels of Liberty. Sentinels of Liberty was the title given to members of the Captain America Comics fan club who Captain America sometimes addressed as an aside, or as characters in the Captain America.
the closing days of World War II, Captain America and Bucky try to stop the villainous Baron Zemofrom destroying an experimental drone plane. Zemo launches the plane with an armed explosive on it with Rogers and Barnes in hot pursuit. The pair reaches the plane just before take off. When Bucky tries to defuse the bomb, it explodes in mid-air. Rogers is hurled into the freezing waters of the North Atlantic. Both are presumed dead, though it is later revealed that neither one died.
The last of these other official Captains, William Burnside was a history graduate enamored with the Captain America mythos, having his appearance surgically altered to resemble Rogers and legally changing his name to "Steve Rogers", becoming the new. He self-administered to himself and his pupil James "Jack" Monroe a flawed, incomplete copy of the Super-Serum, which made no mention about the necessary Vita-Ray portion of the treatment. As a result, while Burnside and Monroe became the new Captain America and Bucky, they became violently paranoid, often raving about innocent people being communist sympathizers during the height of the Red Scare. Their insanity forced the U.S. government to place them in indefinite cryogenic storage until they could be cured of their mental illness. Monroe would later be cured and assume the Nomad identity.
Later, the superhero team the Avengers discovers Steve Rogers' body in the North Atlantic. After he revives, they piece together that Rogers has been preserved in a block of ice, surviving because of his enhancements from Project: Rebirth. The block began to melt after theSub-Mariner, enraged that an Inuit tribe is worshipping the frozen figure, throws it into the ocean. Rogers accepts membership in the Avengers, and his experience in individual combat service and his time with the Invaders makes him a valuable asset. He quickly assumes leadership and has typically returned to that position throughout the team's history.
Captain America is plagued by guilt for having been unable to prevent Bucky's death. Although he takes the young Rick Jones (who closely resembles Bucky) under his tutelage, he refuses for some time to allow Jones to take up the Bucky identity, not wishing to be responsible for another youth's death. Insisting that his hero move on from that loss, Jones convinces Rogers to let him don the Bucky costume but this partnership lasts only a short time; a disguised Red Skull, impersonating Rogers with the help of the Cosmic Cube, drives Jones away.
Rogers reunites with his old war comrade Nick Fury, who is similarly well-preserved due to the "Infinity Formula." As a result, Rogers regularly undertakes missions for the security agency S.H.I.E.L.D. for which Fury is public director. Through Fury, Rogers befriends Sharon Carter, a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent with whom he eventually begins a romantic relationship.
Rogers later meets and trains Sam Wilson, who becomes the superhero the Falcon the first African-American superhero.The characters established an enduring friendship and adventuring partnership, sharing as Captain America and the Falcon. The two later encounter the revived but still insane Captain America. Although Rogers and the Falcon defeat the faux Rogers and Jack Monroe, Rogers becomes deeply disturbed that he could have suffered his counterpart's fate. During this period, Rogers temporarily gains super strength.
The series dealt with the Marvel Universe's version of the Watergate scandal making Rogers so uncertain about his role that he abandons his Captain America identity in favor of one called Nomad emphasizing the word's meaning as "man without a country". During this time, several men unsuccessfully assume the Captain America identity. Rogers eventually re-assumes it after coming to consider that the identity could be a symbol of American ideals and not its government; it's a personal conviction epitomized when he later confronted a corrupt Army officer attempting to manipulate him by appealing to his loyalty, "I'm loyal to nothing, General ... except the [American] Dream." Jack Monroe, cured of his mental instability, later takes up the Nomad alias. Sharon Carter is believed to have been killed while under the mind control of Dr. Faustus.
Rogers receives a large back-pay reimbursement dating back to his disappearance at the end of World War II, and agovernment commission orders him to work directly for the U.S. government. Already troubled by the corruption he had encountered with the Nuke incident in New York CityRogers chooses instead to resign his identity and then takes the alias of "the Captain". A replacement Captain America, John Walker, struggles to emulate Rogers' ideals until pressure from hidden enemies helps to drive Walker insane. Rogers returns to the Captain America identity while a recovered Walker becomes the U.S. Agent.
Sometime afterward, Rogers avoids the explosion of a methamphetamine lab, but the drug triggers a chemical reaction in the Super-Soldier serum in his system. To combat the reaction, Rogers has the serum removed from his body and trains constantly to maintain his physical condition. A retcon later establishes that the serum was not a drug per se, which would have metabolized out of his system, but in fact a virus-like organism that effected a biochemical and genetic change. This additionally explained how nemesis the Red Skull, who at the time inhabited a body cloned from Rogers' cells, has the formula in his body.
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, Rogers reveals his identity to the world and establishes a residence in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, Following the disbandment of the Avengers in the "Avengers Disassembled" now employed by S.H.I.E.L.D., discovers Bucky is alive, having been saved and deployed by the Soviets as the Winter Soldier. Rogers resumes his on-again, off-again relationship with S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Sharon Carter.
"Civil War", and its anchoring, seven-issue miniseries, Civil War , Rogers opposes the new mandatory federal registration of super-powered beings, and leads the underground anti-registration movement. After significant rancor and danger to the public as the two sides clash, Captain America voluntarily surrenders and orders the Anti-Registration forces to stand down.
"The Death of Captain America", Rogers is indicted on criminal charges for his anti-registration efforts is shot outside a federal courthouse; taken to a hospital, he is pronounced dead. The assassination, orchestrated by the Red Skull, involves Crossbones as a sniper and Dr. Faustus, who poses as a S.H.I.E.L.D. psychiatrist and gives Carter a hypnotic suggestion to surreptitiously shoot Rogers at close range during the chaos surrounding the sniper shot.
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