Captain America/YMMV

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Bucky Barnes. Generally speaking, until Ed Brubaker came up with own Alternative Character Interpretation of Bucky as a wetworks-type operative who killed so Captain America wouldn't have to, Bucky was seen as a joke character by many. Most writers portrayed him as a joke character, a parody of 40s era teen sidekicks or as an overtly pure soul who's death served as a major source of angst for Captain America.
• Broken Base:
  • Better love interest: Diamondback or Sharon Carter?
  • Ultimate Captain America: Ruined FOREVER or legitimate take upon the Captain America character?
  • A more recent example cropped up when Bucky became Captain America and garnered a lot of popularity from fans, which led to the debate of whether Bucky was a better Cap than Steve Rogers himself, as well as whether he should've permanently kept the role.
• Complete Monster: The Red Skull is perhaps the worst in the Marvel Universe, if not all comicdom. Nothing too likable about a villain who started off as Adolf Hitler's right hand man; there's nowhere left to go but down after that.
  • During the Nazi era, Hitler was afraid of him. Hitler's own later super-villain career as Hate-Monger paled into insignificance besides the Red Skull's. Yes. The Red Skull is literally in the Marvel Universe canon as worse than Hitler. He's such a complete monster in fact, that Marvel's other big name villains hate his guts and in one of the Marvel-DC Comics crossovers, The Joker turned against the Red Skull when he realized that the Red Skull was indeed a Nazi and not just dressing like one for shock value.
    • "I may be a criminal lunatic, but I'm an American criminal lunatic!" ...*sniff* ...I love this country...
  • In Skull's defense however, he hasn't been a Nazi since the late 1980s, as Mark Gruenwald had him renounce the Nazi philosophy as being too outdated and irrelevant to today's Complete Monster. Nowadays, Skull's philosophy is a mixture of generic right-wing fascism combined with Skull exploiting racism mainly as a means to gain power.
    • Not that such a renunciation excuses his former actions. And he's crossed the Moral Event Horizon plenty of times since he renounced Nazism.
      • Excuses? He turned his back on Nazism because he thought it wasn't evil enough!
  • The Skull's creepy immortal Nazi cyborg doctor sidekick Arnim Zola certainly qualifies as well. Probably also true for Ax Crazy couple Sin and Crossbones. In fact, pretty much anyone who willingly works with/for the Red Skull should qualify for this trope just by virtue of accepting the job.
  • Baron Zemo II started out as one but slowly morphed into a Jerkass Woobie and later into Magnificent Bastard territory come the launch of Thunderbolts.
  • His Father was a straight example though.
• Dork Age: Immediately after 9/11, Marvel decided to show their deep concern about the War on Terror and deep issues of patriotism and national moral ambiguity by... relaunching Captain America and having Cap angst at great length in every issue about the War on Terror in extremely wordy captions. This went on for sixteen issues. At one point (Volume 4, issue 13) Steve quite literally sat in his darkened apartment, in full uniform, cuddling the American flag while angsting.
  • We can't forget the brief period time where Cap was forced to wear a suit of armor after the Super-Soldier Serum was breaking down inside Cap's body and leaving him paralyzed. It was the 90s, after all.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In Annual #8 (1986) his team-up with Wolverine ends with Logan refusing to Save the Villain of the issue and letting him fall to near death. Disgusted Cap tells him that he will never let Wolverine into The Avengers. Fast forward into 2005 - and guess who is his new teammate?
  • To be fair, Wolverine was brought on board by Iron Man, while Captain America openly opined, after Operation Galactic Storm, about how he could be so judgemental about Wolverine not being Avengers material, when half the Avengers team basically executed the living computer of the Kree Empire.
  • In issue 332, when deciding whether to give up his title and costume, one of his negative thoughts is charging into battle wielding a machine gun. And then look at how Bucky's incarnation of Cap charges into battle...
• Ho Yay: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark. In an alternate universe where Tony Stark was female, they even got married.
  • Steve and the Falcon also have a lot of moments together during the course of their long partnership (the book was retitled "Captain America and the Falcon" from 1971-1978, and there was another series by that name in 2004-2005).
  • Bucky and Steve, both in their original adventures and since Bucky's return from the dead.
  • Steve once sat in Deadpool's lap. Deadpool earns points for actually making Steve blush.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Killed Off for Real? Riiiight.
• Magnificent Bastard: The Red Skull.
• Memetic Mutation: Captain America punching Hitler on the cover of his first comic has become synonymous with Cap's badassery.
  • "Captain America! I command you to---WANK!"
• Memetic Badass: Even the Goddam Batman isn't Crazy Prepared enough to fight him.
• My Real Daddy: Steve Englehart, Mark Gruenwald and Ed Brubaker.
  • Gruenwald gets "My Daddy" points for realizing how bad Captain America's rogues gallery was and pretty much spending his first couple of years on the book introducing new villains to serve as bad guys for Captain America, essentially creating at last one for practically every ideology imaginable. In particular, he gave us the Serpent Society (a revamp of the old Serpent Squad) and Crossbones.
  • Brubaker, on the other hand, gets props for resurrecting Bucky Barnes, and turning him into a likeable character, as well as a worthy successor to the Mighty Shield after Steve's supposed death.
• Older Than They Think: His shield.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Ultimate Captain America gets a lot of this, causing a bad case of Broken Base and Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch.
  • Sometimes, this is due to how much Flanderization Ultimate Cap is going through at the time. Early on, Cap was pretty Fair for Its Day with just some old-school White Knighting and a bit of frustration with the more shallow aspects of modern culture thrown in. After Vol.2, most writers (and readers) just remember the "doesn't stand for France" line (something Cap says he isn't even sure why he said that in the next issue) and build their entire interpretation of the character around that one line. So, now Cap irrationally hates the French and is a Grumpy Old Man with a bit of Values Dissonance thrown in. Even original writer Mark Millar does it now.
• Unfortunate Implications
  • Steve Rogers is a blond, blue-eyed superman fighting against Nazis. Kind of sends mixed messages...
  • Also found in Steve Rogers relationship with Sharon Carter in Civil War. When they slept together, she was in the process of being mind controlled, and would later shoot him. She became pregnant and would later self-abort by stabbing herself in the stomach to keep the child from being used by Red Skull.
  • The Dark Future series Earth X used this as a major plot point.
  • Also present to some degree in the fact that the personification of America leads a world-based team and is generally regarded as the best human in the world.
  • Captain America has gone rogue several times throughout his history to prove he isn't loyal to the government but to "the dream." Whether intentional or not, this always seems to happen whenever a Republican is President, then again Cap grew up during the administration of President Franklin D Roosevelt, a Democrat.
  • During the "replacement Cap" story of the 80's, Lemar Hoskins, the new Bucky, was black. What Mark Gruenwald didn't realize was that in some parts of the country, "buck" was used towards blacks as a slur. When several fans wrote in to tell him this, he pulled an Author's Saving Throw by having a character inform Lemar of this in a story, and also for good measure telling him that the first Bucky was a sidekick toward the first Cap, but he and the new Cap were equal partners, and he deserved a more dignified name. So Lemar changed his name to Battle Star (or Battlestar, depending on the source).
• The Woobie / Iron Woobie: Bucky. Orphaned at a young age, lost his arm and his memory, used as an assassin by the KGB for sixty years, saw his best friend killed (he got better), tried for treason, and was acquitted only to be thrown into a Russian gulag.