Saluting Captain America: The New Deal

Every day Marvel.com celebrates Captain America's 75th anniversary by looking deep into the Marvel Unlimited archives to showcase some of his most thrilling and important adventures.

After the events of 9/11 rocked the world, many wondered how such a grave, real life situation would be reflected in the fiction of the day. The Marvel Knights incarnation of CAPTAIN AMERICA launched in 2002 from John Ney Rieber and John Cassaday and tackled the tragic event head-on by showing Steve Rogers trying to save lives digging through the rubble of Ground Zero. As he explains to a fellow volunteer, he was out for a run when the planes hit and you can see on his face that he regrets nothing more in the world.
Seven months later, Al-Tariq drops mines on a tiny town called Centerville and takes the entire city hostage. Their goal: bring Captain America to them so they can kill the national hero. To achieve this, Al-Tariq employs adult soldiers as well as children strapped with speakers and explosives.
With the clock ticking down and an entire town hanging in the balance, Cap leaps into battle with Al-Tariq, killing him in the process. To shift the focus to himself, Cap reveals his identity to the world.
Between the battle and the realization that technology with roots at S.H.I.E.L.D. had been used in the attacks, Cap questions his dedication to a country that seems to prove itself more and more corrupt each day. A trip to Dresden reminds Steve of past tragedies just in time for the real bad guy to attack.

In the face of the unnamed villain’s claims that American-made bullets and weapons destroyed his life as a boy, Cap continues to believe that, even though individuals and groups in the government might have made mistakes in the past, the country is trying to make up for those past errors. In the end, he wins the day, declaring that he will “defend the dream” as he carries his attacker out of the wreckage.
As profound now as it was then, “The New Deal” reminds readers that, just because Steve Rogers dresses up in the flag and calls himself Captain America doesn’t mean he always agrees with the administrations in charge, a theme revisited many times throughout his career. At the end of the day, though, Captain America stands for the ideal of what it means to be part of the United States and attempts to exemplify that for the world.
Cap Declassified
Originally, Rieber intended to write a limited series that would bridge the gap between the previous volume of CAPTAIN AMERICA and the Marvel Knights one, but that went out the window when 9/11 happened. His original arc got pushed back and another planned limited series called Ice became integrated as the third, but Chuck Austen came in to finish that particular tale.