New Captain America Is Black

Longtime Cap ally Sam Wilson takes over mantle
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 17, 2014 7:30 AM CDT
New Captain America Is Black
The new Sam Wilson Captain America is seen in this Stuart Immonen illustration.   (Marvel)

There's a new Captain America, and he looks more like a whole different swath of Americans. Marvel has announced that a black hero—longtime Cap ally Sam Wilson, aka the Falcon—will be taking over his star-spangled mantle in Captain America #25, the New York Daily News reports. Classic Cap Steve Rogers has been looking for a replacement since being aged into a 90-year-old man in the current storyline (though, as IGN points out, truly plugged-in fans will have known the outcome of that search for a while, thanks to the solicitation for Avengers #35). Wilson will be familiar to moviegoers thanks to his appearance in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

"It's about time," Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort said. "In 2014 this should be a thing that we shrug off, it shouldn't be seen as revolutionary, but it still feels exciting." The announcement comes just days after Marvel announced a new female Thor, and that's no accident, writes Andrew Wheeler at Comics Alliance. "These changes suggest an agenda," he writes. "I’d call it progressive agenda, but it’s not. Putting women and people of color in key positions isn’t progressive, it’s just evidence that superhero comics are slowly catching up to the present day." (More Marvel Comics stories.)

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