8 Real-Life Events That Forced Comics To Change

During the 1970s, Captain America faced off against The Secret Empire - a cabal who overthrew the government after using mutants to channel their doomsday weapon. When Cap unmasked the organisation's leader, Number One, he learned The Secret Empire was run by a government agent. Steve Rogers was so disillusioned that a high-ranking figure would take over his own country, he quit being Captain America.

Even though it was astonishing to watch the star-spangled superhero hang up the tights, the story was supposed to be far more shocking. Originally, Number One was meant to be none other than President Richard Nixon. But since Nixon had resigned from the presidency one month prior, writer Steve Englehart thought this big reveal would be inappropriate. As a result, he rewrote the story's climax so the Secret Empire's leader was an anonymous agent, whose face is never shown.

Despite this change, many readers still speculated that this comic was an allegory to Watergate. To reassure fans that this wasn't the case, Englehart wrote in the letters section that this plotline began development one year earlier, meaning that any similarities in the story with real-life events were coincidental.