1940s - Operation: Rebirth
In current
Marvel Universe history, Steven Rogers was a scrawny
American fine arts student specializing in illustration in the early 1940s before America's entry into
World War II. He was disturbed by the rise of the
Third Reich enough to attempt to enlist only to be rejected due to his poor constitution. By chance, a US Army officer looking for test subjects for a top secret defense research project offered Rogers an alternate way to serve his country. This project, Operation: Rebirth, consisted of developing a means to create physically superior soldiers and Rogers was deemed ideal.
Rogers agreed to volunteer for the research and after a rigorous physical and combat training and selection process, was chosen as the first human test subject for a chemical formula that was termed the
Super-Soldier Serum, developed by the scientist Dr. Emil Erskine (who was code-named "Dr. Reinstein").
However, it was revealed years later that Rogers was not the first to be given the Super-Soldier formula. While Rogers was still being assessed, some military members of the project felt that a non-soldier was not the right candidate and secretly gave Erskine's incomplete formula to Clinton McIntyre. However, this made McIntyre violently insane, and he had to be subdued and placed in cold storage. The criminal organization
AIM would later revive McIntyre as the homicidal
Protocide. (
Captain America Annual, 2000).
A beta version of the formula was given to
Isaiah Bradley, who became the only survivor of a group of
African-American soldiers that "Reinstein" and the military experimented on in 1942. After the last two members of his group were killed, Bradley stole the costume meant for Rogers and wore it on a suicide mission to destroy the Nazi super-soldier effort at a German concentration camp. Bradley was captured, but eventually rescued and
court martialed. He was imprisoned for 17 years in
Leavenworth until he was pardoned by President
Eisenhower. By the time of his release, the long-term effects of the formula turned Bradley into a hulking, sterile giant with the mentality of a 7-year-old. Rogers would not find out about Bradley until decades later (
Truth: Red, White and Black, 2003). The current
Patriot, a member of the
Young Avengers, has been revealed to be the grandson of Isaiah Bradley.
