This fucking pap...
What If...? Captain America #1 has Captain America revived in the year 2099 with familiar 2099 characters surrounding him somehow. It’s a future ruled by corporations, including one actually occupying the presidency. Captain America is recruited to help overthrow this broken system and does so, revealing in the process that the CEO in charge is actually the Red Skull. The issue ends with a trademark Cap speech about freedom and democracy. It’s basically a bad remake of What If...? vol. 1 #44 in it’s clear attempt to ‘meet the moment’ and make some point about the current state of America. It’s pure middle-of-the-road wish fulfilment where an armed revolution is justified because the enemy they’re facing is literally the Red Skull, perhaps the most boring option available.
What if the corrupt president was just some rich piece of shit that half the country cheers on actively instead of a comically over-the-top cartoon Nazi?
The big reveal of the Red Skull would have been more apropos if it was just some clueless rich executive who liked to see the number go up. Because that’s the true face of the path that America is on. Or, hell, the Red Skull openly as the CEO president! That would at least acknowledge the reality that awful people run things, don’t shy away from their awfulness, and the system along with a large amount of people just go along with it. I would have even settled for the reveal that they arranged for Captain America to be revived to lead the rebellion in an effort to squash it once and for all. Have some fun with this shit! There’s no fun to be had in this comic, unless you’re the type to cackle uncontrollably at the Red Skull reveal.
I kind of laughed at the idea of Thor taking the place of Captain America in Civil War; mostly, I side-eyed how the absence of Captain America mostly meant everything happened the same. Talk about arguing for how unimportant the character actually is! You can remove Captain America and nothing changes, basically! Even the 2099 presented here is... just the premise of the 2099 line of books, except the heroes have somehow formed a rebellion? Set the childish politics of the issue aside and it’s fairly inane from a continuity standpoint. That’s been a bad recurring pattern of this year’s What If...? issues where the premise of the books has given way to the laziest approaches to these alternate worlds.
At least this issue gives Ron Lim a chance to draw Thanos. Or do a couple of cool homage pics sans Captain America for Secret Wars #1, the Heroes Return Avengers #1, and the Civil War shot of the two main heroes colliding. Lim’s ability to draw anything and make it work is the sole positive of this issue. Okay, maybe not the 2099 costume that Captain America wears (complete with Spider-Man literally calling him Captain America 2099!), except that it genuinely looks like something that would have been designed for the 2099 titles if that character had shown up sooner. I’m always happy to buy a book that Lim draws, I only wish he was given more to work with here.
This is a bad comic that doesn’t just lack ambition, it leans into how ambitionless it can be.