The Peggy Carter introduced in the What if…? cartoon is one that I am fond of, and not just because I have the Lego set.
Peggy getting the serum and becoming Captain Carter is a fun twist on the best MCU origin story: unfortunately, the episode sticks so closely to The First Avenger that it doesn’t really get to say anything for itself. Captain Carter: Woman out of Time fumbles in the same way – just insert Winter Soldier into the equation. Which could have worked out well, given how good Winter Soldier is, but this volume is missing some of the thematic cohesion of the film, largely due to the lack of character given to Captain Carter herself.
Peggy Carter is a character that exists in tandem with Steve Rogers. Where Steve Rogers exists, Peggy is pointed in nearby, just off-center. She develops as a response to him, and exists to support his story. So when you take him out, or you make him into the support, you have to fundamentally shift the narrative, and characters. Which, to some degree, did happen. But in a more tangible way, we just got Diet Winter Soldier but in London. Sure, we don’t literally get an elevator scene, but we do get an approximation, and Captain fights MMA Batroc.
The effect that this has is that, despite being the main character, Peggy still feels like a supporting character in her own book. Where the book isn’t drawing comparisons to The First Avenger or Winter Soldier, it’s reminding you of other, better Captain America comics where Steve questions what it means to be an American. What happens is we end up with a Peggy defined by the negative space around Steve Rogers, and the characterization feels empty, which itself feeds off of the story, as the only reason the films work is because the character work with Steve is so good.
Marvel Comics
While the book mostly does just play the hits, there are a couple of ideas that really work, and show that maybe there’s enough meat on the bones to really dig into the character, and that this is a setting worth spending time in.
First, HYDRA—more specifically politicians—being vampires is just lovely. There are a lot of tasty metaphors at play there that work well for me, particularly the immediate comparison between vampirism and the super soldier serum, but also the way the politicians suck the life out of common people. Just good stuff all around.
I was also impressed by the way the book starts with a bunch of guys standing around debating the autonomy of a superheroine that just woke up from a 70 year slumber. It’s a fairly real look at conversations that literally happen daily, and although the result in the comic is far more optimistic than reality, it doesn’t feel fabricated the way a lot of the other discussions in the book do.
I wish Captain Carter: Woman out of Time was better. It’s a fun design (though I wish she was beefier), but I’m not sure anyone has an actual great idea for her. Unfortunately, I guess this is still a job for the USA.
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