What Happened To Everyone Who Became Captain America?

8. Isaiah Bradley

The Truth Isaiah Bradley Captain America
Marvel Comics

Currently making waves on television thanks to a barnstorming performance by the ever wonderful Carl Lumbly, Isaiah Bradley was history's forgotten Captain America.

Introduced in 2003's Truth: Red, White & Black by writer Robert Morales, artist Kyle Baker and editor Axel Alonso, Isaiah Bradley was inducted into a twisted version of Project Rebirth during the Second World War. The story drew inspiration primarily from the US government's racist Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which deliberately infected thousands of unknowing Black Americans with the virus, and serves as a commentary on how Black soldiers in particular suffered both during and after their service in the conflict.

In an attempt to recreate Erskine's super soldier formula, another scientist, Dr. Josef Reinstein, experimented on numerous Black soldiers, with only a few surviving - one of them being Bradley.

Bradley and his comrades are sent into dangerous missions during WW2, which eventually leaves him the sole survivor. He's responsible for shutting down the Nazis' own super soldier program, but such a feat doesn't alleviate his situation one bit. He's imprisoned shortly after the war, until he receives a pardon from US President Eisenhower just before the end of his term.

Bradley's story was wiped from the history books, but he remained a legend among Marvel's Black heroes, and eventually met Steve Rogers years later. Bradley also saved the life of grandson Elijah, the Young Avenger known as Patriot, during a blood transfusion, which gifted him too with the powers of the super soldier serum.

Content Producer/Presenter

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.