Gen X is getting its own Captain America. This is a big deal. Culturally, the Boomer majority gave way to the next large demographic, Millennials, while Gen X got slighted. Even though we had the best music since the 1940s.

On the plus side, being a minority means we don't get hate. Gen Z dislikes millennials for being cringe, millennials dislike Gen Z for being so Puritan, and everyone dislikes Boomers because they won't stop talking about Woodstock and Kennedy. Some argue that instead of being too small to matter we are the coolest but that's subjective.

What isn't subjective is that we don't get a lot of cultural cred, despite being the brain pans behind some of the best comic book stuff ever, like Deadpool and making Nick Fury cool by turning him into a black guy. We basically made comic books into a cultural juggernaut and Gen X filmmakers followed that into movies.

Marvel is now paying homage to that by retconning comic book history yet again and rolling out a Gen X Captain America, who existed 24 years ago.


Art: Ben Harvey. All rights belong to Disney.

Isn't Steve Rogers Captain America? He was helping people after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after all.

Well, yes, but comics were originally so short-lived in the thoughts of people there was no concern about time or consistency. Captain America was created in 1940 by two Jewish guys who wanted to stick it to an oppressive socialist government, much like Superman was, not to be high art, and early comics are so valuable because even if they sold millions, most were recycled in paper drives. They weren't literature. 

Jack Kirby drew Captain America punching Hitler in the face 18 months before Germany declared war on America and it made him wildly popular but when World War II ended people stopped reading so the publisher had to pivot. There was no concern about continuity, most kids grew out of comics never to read them again, so they changed things up and Captain America fought mobsters and then communists. Steve Rogers became a teacher. Captain America even became a horror comic and was finally canceled because culture moved on from superheroes.


Art: Gene Colan. If you want to see him really firing on all cylinders, check out his 1970s work on Dracula and Doctor Strange. All rights reserved by Disney, please don't sue me for fair use.

Nine years later, with superheroes popular again thanks primarily to Stan Lee, he decided to bring Cap back for "Avengers" #4 but with a hook; World War II Captain America had been frozen in ice around 18 years earlier. That had never happened in the comics. Instead, his later stuff never happened. A lot had changed in two decades but he hadn't, and thus the 'man out of time' concept began.

But the whole industry was outside time. Because comics remained popular fans kept reading into adulthood and they wanted continuing adventures of their heroes. So time moved on but characters basically didn't. Time instead shifted around them. Peter Parker remained young even though he was around during riots in the 1960s and the World Trade Center attacks in 2001.

Now Marvel avoids that by always wanting to be '10-15 years' old so during the 9/11 terror attacks the World War II Captain America, the one from the 1940s, was still frozen in ice.

But obviously government would have made repeated efforts to replicate his experiment. And they have, again. That is why Marvel now has a Captain America for a 9/11 culture of 24 years ago, a Gen X Cap, and he still has the shield after Steve Rogers emerges from the ice.

Given modern political proclivities and the need for drama, Gen X Cap will much different than World War II Steve Rogers Cap, which will lead to a clash.That will be need to be retconned also. In comics Steve Rogers had no problem mowing down the enemy with whatever he had handy, be they German socialists or Russian communists, whereas modern Captain America of the films is a lot more fuzzy-wuzzy than an actual World War II soldier would have been.

But the great news is that Boomers got their own Captain America - though he was a 1950s Democrat still fighting the Civil War and promoting Jim Crow laws with his fists, therefore only a role model for how not to behave - and black guys got one, and now Gen X does too.

And to try and keep it authentic, it is Gen X guys on the creative team.