Captain America’s Peggy Carter Redefines His Origin for Modern Fans

Warning: Contains a preview for Captain Carter #1

Peggy Carter is a woman out of time in Marvel Comics’ new Captain Carter miniseries by Jamie McKelvie, Marika Cresta, and Erick Arciniega. The limited series will see the titular hero face the same challenges that Steve Rogers did, but in a contemporary setting.

The debuting episode of Marvel Studios’ animated series What If…? showed an alternate reality in which Peggy Carter becomes the first Super-Soldier and fights the Nazis and Hydra in World War II, while Steve Rogers becomes a version of Iron Man. Fans’ positive reaction to that story prompted Marvel Comics to debut a new series that is not a direct continuation of the What If…? episode but borrows heavily from it. Captain Carter is unthawed from ice, just like what happened to Steve Rogers in the original Marvel Comics timeline, and she has to adapt to modern-day Britain while obviously fighting her own share of criminals and villains.

The preview shared by Marvel Comics shows the world’s great powers fighting over Peggy Carter like she is a military asset, but she makes her intention clear: she is a British citizen and she will move back to England, focusing on adapting to this strange new world she finds herself in. Her first instinct is to look for familiar places, but London has changed a lot in the 80 years she has been frozen in ice. Technology has evolved a lot, even for a woman whose entire body is proof of the advancements of science in her own time. The cultural gap might prove to be the hardest to cross, as Peggy is at the same time attracted and baffled by the changes in TV, music, food, and people’s behavior in general.

What is most interesting about the Captain Carter series is that it will tell a familiar story but, by adapting it to the current times, it will make it even more compelling. Captain America was originally awoken in Avengers #4, published in 1964. Less than twenty years had passed since the end of World War II, and while the world had changed considerably during that time, it is nothing compared to the difference between 1945 and 2022. A similar theme was explored in the MCU, as the Steve Rogers from the movies struggles more than his comics counterpart to adapt to modern times. In Marvel Comics, the closest equivalent would be Ultimate Captain America, as the Ultimate Universe stories “started” in the 2000s. The Captain Carter miniseries is then a great chance to tell again the story of the “man (in this case woman) out of time”, but with a greater focus on the sense of displacement suffered by the hero.

The trailer for the series shared by Marvel shows that Peggy will hardly have time to figure out her place in the world, as she will be back in action immediately, fighting enemies who do not wear a uniform but are just as deadly. How Peggy Carter reacts to her new mission in comparison to Steve Rogers will be revealed when Captain Carter #1 is released on March 9.

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