What Happened To Everyone Who Became Captain America?

4. Roscoe Simons

Captain America Roscoe Simons
Marvel Comics

You've probably gathered by now that the seventies was a fairly pivotal decade for Steve Rogers. In many ways it was just as formative in the character's development as the forties, with the creative team of Steve Englehart and Sal Buscema providing the blueprint for modern Cap that all subsequent creators would work from, especially when it came to the trope of Rogers questioning his role and title as Captain America.

Englehart and Buscema's run was notable for multiple reasons, but arguably the most important is Secret Empire, a Watergate-era comic that saw Cap unearth a conspiracy that went all the way to the White House. Rogers abandons the mantle shortly afterwards, becoming Nomad (a name meant to signify his disillusionment with the US), and adopting a snazzy new look in the process.

Others attempted to fill the void Rogers left behind, but the two immediate replacements - Bob Russo and "Scar" Turpin - both failed, which is where Roscoe Simons came in.

Simons idolised Captain America and put the work in to become Rogers' official replacement. Falcon was skeptical, but Steve gave Roscoe his blessing in the form of the actual Cap shield.

Simons had fulfilled his dream, but that dream was cut tragically short when the Red Skull tortured and murdered him for being a "fake" Captain America. This would ultimately be what forced Rogers to reassume his title as Cap, although it wouldn't be the last time he walked away from the stars and stripes.

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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.