These stories starred the original Captain America and Bucky in both their civilian and superhero guises, and were clearly set in the 1950s, with the character prominently battling communism and a communist Red Skull.

When the character reappears in The Avengers #4 (March, 1964) Lee reveals that the original Captain America had fallen into a state of suspended animation after a battle he fought near the end of World War II in 1945.

This attempted to resolve the discrepancy by revealing how an unnamed man, and his teenaged student, had assumed both the public and private identities of the original Captain America and Bucky.

However, as Englehart's 1972 story reveals, the treatment, which these individuals underwent to replicate the original Captain America and Bucky's abilities, was flawed (as the vital Vita-Ray radiological component was left out) and, as a side-effect, they developed psychotic symptoms.

Consequently, the government placed them in suspended animation in the mid-1950s (only for an undisclosed jingoistic individual to revive them, decades later in contemporary times, to battle the original Captain America).

Having idolized the original Captain America to the point of obsession, William Burnside[1] focused his life in an intense analysis of American history.

Soon after graduating, Burnside further researches the secret "Project: Rebirth" and discovers private Nazi files revealing the true identity of the original Captain America as well as the lost Super Soldier serum.

Returning to the United States with this information, Burnside legally changes his name to Steve Rogers, then approaches the FBI offering the Super Soldier serum as leverage to become the next Captain America, in hope of being used as a symbol during the Korean War.

[8] After the true Steve Rogers' death, Sharon Carter discovers that Faustus and the Red Skull have been keeping Burnside in suspended animation while he healed from his wounds,[10] programming him to kill the current Captain America, James Barnes.

[11] After escaping Faustus, and helping to rescue Sharon Carter from Arnim Zola, Burnside travels the country and considers his place in modern society.

Rogers also explains that Burnside's death has been faked, that he has been given a military funeral with full honors, and that he is formally relieved of his duty and will be taken to a facility to repair his damaged mind, and give him a new identity.

His agility, dexterity, speed, reflexes, coordination, balance, and endurance are superior to those of any Olympic athlete, and his physiological functions operate at the peak of human efficiency.

#44 (April 1984),[16] in an alternative world where the Avengers did not find the frozen Steve Rogers,[17] Burnside and Monroe (still as Captain America and Bucky) are revived in the 1970s by an over-zealous, anti-communist janitor at the government facility where they were put into suspended animation.

Following their public re-appearance, they are conned by powerful subversive organizations—the Committee, the Secret Empire, and the Sons of the Serpent—into helping them to subjugate the United States to a brutal white supremacist and fascist tyranny.

He also praises his story arc and its eventual resolution in canon (related to some retconning) as not just "a brilliant way to explain the gap in Captain America's story" but one about dangerous aspects of American national identity, tackling issues such as discrimination, "zealotry, violence, prejudice, and racist myths of belonging", and situates this in the critique of Nixon's presidential campaign, which he argues relied on these motives.