Originally published What If? Vol. 1 #44 (1984) "What If Captain America Were Revived Today?" has been retold a few times, probably because of a felt need to keep it modernized given the inevitable dating of the story. The best one is still the original 1984 arc. Instead of being discovered by the Avengers in a block of ice (Avengers #4), Cap is never found and remains cryogenically frozen. A false Captain America arises in the absence of the true Steve Rogers, leading a kind of totalitarian sect with a police force called the Sentinels of Liberty. Most of New York is patrolled like a prison as Copy Cap continues to "protect" America, and a small resistance that includes Nick Fury and Spider-Man operates out of a Harlem ghetto. Things look grim until a naval submarine finds a certain someone encased in ice - the real Captain America, floating around unthawed all these years. The rest you can guess: navy brings Cap home, Cap fights Cap, and people everywhere suddenly just can't help but break into a chorus of America the Beautiful. What If? tales usually end in one of two ways - either characters are killed off and/or changed forever, or the status quo returns to "normal" with the timeline more or less course correcting back to the regular Marvel timeline. A few examples of the former have already been listed, but the latter - while sometimes seeming cheesy and forced - can be equally gratifying. "What If Captain America Were Revived Today?" definitely brings an optimistic ending nearer to a Marvel Universe we're familiar with, with the real Cap reinstated and heroes like Spider-Man still in action. The last page is painfully lame, I'll admit, but everything leading up to it offers that inviting mix of the familiar and the strange.
