What Happened To Everyone Who Became Captain America?

7. William Naslund

William Naslund
Marvel Comics

Steve Rogers' demise in 1945 hasn't always been a part of the Marvel mythos. In fact, to begin with, Steve and Bucky never perished in that fateful rocket explosion in 1945, and continued to appear in strips of... varying quality, up until Stan Lee and Jack Kirby reintroduced the character in 1964's The Avengers #4, which included the aforementioned retcon.

To account for the fact there was an active Captain America and Bucky from 1945 onwards though, Marvel would introduce a number of different retcons, revealing that various other men stepped in to assume the Captain America identity during this period. William Naslund was the first.

Naslund was another patriotic superhero who went by the name of Spirit of '76, modelling his look on a late 18th century American revolutionary. He was part of a team called the Crusaders, another WW2-era supergroup that was active alongside Captain America's own Invaders.

After Steve and Bucky's presumed deaths, the US government turned to Naslund as their first choice to inherit the mantle of Captain America. (Because there's no sense in letting a good costume go to waste, right?)

Naslund, having obviously taken inspiration from Rogers in adopting his former mantle, willingly accepted the responsibility. However, his tenure as Cap was brief, meeting his end tragically only a year after he took up the shield in 1946 when he was killed by an Android attempting to assassinate a young John F. Kennedy.

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.