10 Comics Superheroes With The Best Motivations

1. Captain America

Captain America Alex Ross
Marvel Comics/Alex Ross

Steve Rogers might be synonymous with the good ol' US of A, but he's a hero to all as much as he is to Americans.

A scrawny artist from Brooklyn desperate to fight the tyrannical advances of Nazi Germany, Rogers is given an opportunity to serve with the advent of the super soldier serum. He becomes one of a kind, channeling his desire to do right into a body that has the potential to affect change on a major scale.

Rogers is the model superhero, but he can't be put into a box. He isn't overly moralistic, but he is beholden to the values of true justice. He opposes tyranny no matter its origin, and that's often put him at odds with the country he chose to serve back during the Second World War. That makes him a patriot in the truest sense, with various writers and artists having taken Rogers' New Dealer attitudes and applied them to a contemporary political zeitgeist, whether that be the Watergate era of the Nixon presidency in the original Secret Empire, or even the post-9/11 politics of the Bush administration in 2006's Civil War.

He's prone to the occasional mistake, but one thing that cannot be in doubt is that Steve Rogers is determined to do right. Easily misappropriated, but every bit as progressive and brave as his creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, Captain America never gives up. He's too good not to.

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Thor Captain America Hammer
Marvel Comics

1. Which Marvel Villain Did Steve Rogers Need To Wield Thor’s Mjolnir Against In Order To Win?

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.