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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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I haven't been following the comics but my impression was that Walker was kind of a proto-Homelander (starting out as Super-Patriot, a villain or at least anti-hero). So Bucky/Winter Soldier, who was there at the start with Original Cap, surely has a lot of opinions about pretenders to the title:

The character of John Walker was first introduced as the supervillain Super-Patriot in Captain America #323 (November 1986). Mark Gruenwald created Walker to counter the general message in Captain America of patriotism being invariably good, describing him as someone "who embodied patriotism in a way that Captain America didn't—a patriotic villain." He said, "Basically, I just wanted to do the opposite of Steve Rogers. Okay, Steve Rogers is a poor northern urban boy. So I'll make a guy from rural middle-class south. Cap is now old, so this guy'll be a real young up-and-comer. Cap has lofty ideals, so I'll make Super-Patriot be more realistic and more pragmatic. So, I put together his background and character traits by playing the opposite game."

I do like how the general aura of Cap means that even the grittier reboot version gradually becomes more heroic to fit the ideal 😀

But yeah, that would have been too deep for this kind of movie.