[Meeting…] The Captain

Welcome back to "Getting to know..." the comic section where the history of a comic character is discussed in a very basic way, with the intention that those who do not know him have the opportunity to see more or less what the character is like and assess whether they are interested in reading any work in which he appears or to prepare for what awaits them if they ever find him in the panels of their favorite comic as a guest character.

As you may have seen from the title, The character I will talk about today is The Captain, known in Spanish as El Capitan, just Captain? Captain of what? Well, I will expand on the reason for that name later.

What does it take to be a superhero?

The quick answer to this question is usually “Superpowers” ​​and if we take a moment to think about it we may remember some heroes who don't have any (Batman is usually the best example) but we will still agree that most of them do have powers (as much as Batman doesn't like it).

However, one can have powers and not be a hero, or trying to be a hero and not knowing how to do it, or having a vague idea of ​​what to do, but it doesn't turn out the way you planned and a disaster ends up happening.

This is the situation that The Captain faces daily because, despite having some extremely useful powers such as superhuman strength and resistance, things don't usually turn out the way he plans, who knows, maybe he wasn't destined to be a hero.

Perhaps the problem comes from how he obtained those powers, anyone who has read enough knows that most superheroes are created by accidents or random and unpredictable events and The Captain is no exception, however his origin differs greatly from what is seen in other heroes.

Brooklyn, one night, a drunk young man walking down the street singing Sex Pistols songs meets two little aliens who bless him with powers so he can help people and save his own world. That drunken boy mistakes the Martians for Leprechauns and beats them to death to see if they have gold coins on them. Ladies and gentlemen, a hero is born!

After getting drunk, this character decides to start a life dedicated to fighting crime (for the pleasure of being able to hit people) but he needs a name and Due to his attitude, he soon calls himself Captain Capullo., a name that will cause him problems when he meets Captain America. This fact leads him to change his name a dozen times, which always brings him legal or personal problems. Did Superman or Spider-man go through something like that? Tired of having to think of a new name every time, he decides to simply call himself The Captain.

Whose captain?

Actually captain of nobody, because This character is not the leader of his group, because yes, he is part of a group of superheroes who are as particular as he is, well, maybe not so much.

The group in question is called Nextwave, which is made up of some of Marvel's most famous characters, such as Aaron Stack (Machine Man), Monica Rambeau (the former Captain Marvel) or Tabitha Smith (Boom Boom). How? Don't their names sound familiar to you?

In that case I will have to comment that those characters, Despite having been part of such famous groups as The Avengers or X-Force, they ended their heroic days in an undignified manner., a situation that led them to work as anti-terrorist agents in a company of dubious morality, which leads them to rebel and create their own group to go it alone.

So, Captain He is a mediocre superhero who is part of a group full of old glories and marginalized characters who long for the good times, but hey, at least they have good times, which cannot be said of this character whose goal in life is to achieve something moderately heroic on his part, which is much more difficult than it seems.

Fortunately, The Captain never gives up, and if things go wrong, he always has time to get drunk with Machine Man to drown his sorrows.

Final comment and recommendations

The Captain is an unhappy and very funny character, he is a kind of representation of what most people in the world would be like, if they became heroes overnight. The situations that we have seen solved without problem by many classic heroes, turn out to be more complicated than they seem when the person who has to carry them out is a rookie without much luck and zero training.

If you found this character interesting, I highly recommend that you read the story that gave rise to him: Nextwave, which was published by Marvel in 2006 in 12 issues, but can also be found in 2 compilation volumes.