Since being thawed out from the icy prison that kept him preserved after World War II, Captain America has usually been one of the most noble heroes and respected leaders in the Marvel Universe. But one version of the Sentinel of Liberty is much more monstrous than anyone else who's wielded the shield.
"The Thing From Another Time" by Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska, Jonas Scharf, and Jordan Boyd from 2018's Avengers Halloween Special imagined a Marvel Universe where discovering Captain America in the ice also unleashed a terrifying monster, similar to the one from John Carpenter's 1982 sci-fi/horror classic, The Thing.
In many universes across the Marvel multiverse, Captain America ended up being lost and frozen solid towards the conclusion of World War II. But on Earth-44291, it was for the good of the world that he was lost. While seeking a biological weapon to counter Zeke Stane's hostile takeover of his company, a more mercenary version of Tony Stark decided to search for a "biological weapon" his father had constructed during the war. Eventually discovering Captain America in the ice, Tony is forced to visit himself after his retrieval team was wiped out by the revived Captain, leaving him with Colossus and Deadpool as his personal agents. It turns out there's a powerful and monstrous side of Steve Rogers in this universe, an element that can consume others and strengthens him more than most versions of him in existence.
With a single throw, the corrupted Captain America is able to imbed his shield directly into Colossus' skull, killing him. With his bare hands, Captain America rips Deadpool apart and consumes him within the massive monstrous maw that grows out of his chest. What remains of Deadpool turns into a terrifying spider-like creature. Tony Stark only survives thanks to his Iron Man armor -- which itself is heavily damaged by Captain America after he throws his shield into him. As a nearby storm comes to life and threatens to freeze both of them, both men decide to wait and see what happens -- if Tony's suit powers down before the storm can freeze Rogers, which would allow the monstrous Captain America to reach civilization and wipe out humanity.
The story is a love letter to The Thing, turning a key piece of the Captain America story into a Marvel rendition of the horror film. In The Thing, the crew of a research outpost in the Arctic end up confronting a shape-shifting creature that can turn into any being it consumes -- and is always seeking to spread and multiply. Two of the transformations from the film -- including the massive jaw erupting out of someone's chest and the remains of a person turning into a spider-like creature -- are recreated in the Marvel story. Deadpool references another famous horror director of the era, David Cronenberg while being consumed -- tying the story to the horrifying mutation of films like Cronenberg's The Fly or Carpenter's The Thing.
The most notable similarity is their endings. In The Thing, the monstrous creature has been seemingly defeated, blown up enough that the survivors are confident it'll freeze once more and the world will be safe. But the last two survivors, Mac and Childs, can't be sure that the other isn't actually the monster. Both men decide to wait as the cold continues and the nearby fires die, waiting to see what happens. It's a bleak but fitting ending for such a nerve-racking film. While there's still a chance Tony Stark could survive the events of "The Thing From Another Time" in a way that Mac and Childs likely couldn't, it still successfully mimics the defiant but defeated tone of the film's ending. It also means that on this world, the monstrous version of Captain America may still exist, even if just frozen -- waiting to one day awaken again.
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