MCU Phase 4: 8 Major Comics That Could Inspire Its Story

7. The Death Of Captain America

Marvel Comics

Fans of Steve Rogers have been bracing themselves for the inevitable for some time now, but that won't make the character's departure from the franchise any easier.

Chris Evans looks set to conclude his partnership with Marvel come Avengers 4 (at least in a starring capacity), and that means that Steve will be going too. He could perish, retire, or head back to a certain time period, but the point is that he'll be gone for good, which means that Marvel will be consulting one very important Captain America story - his death.

Marvel Studios have already taken plenty of material from Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting's Captain America run, so it's not overly disingenuous to assume that they'll be consulting the run's most pivotal moment, where Steve Rogers was assassinated in the wake of his Civil War arrest.

It's not so much the events of this book that'll inspire Marvel going forward, but rather the aftermath of the Captain's departure. Talk of Sam Wilson or Bucky Barnes assuming the mantle has been rubbished by those two appearing in a Disney TV series of their own, but ignoring matters of legacy for just a minute, if the MCU can mirror the mourning period from this comic in live action, there won't be a dry eye in the theatre.

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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.