Every Saturday, we will be examining comic book stories and ideas that were not only abandoned, but also had the stories/plots specifically "overturned" by a later writer (as if they were a legal precedent). Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of The Abandoned An' Forsaked. Feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.

Today we look at the short-lived revelation that Captain America had a brother who died at the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Enjoy!

In Captain America #215, we are given another look at Captain America's origin...

However, writer Roy Thomas notes that we didn't really know about Cap's past BEFORE he became Captain America, except a few occasional references over the years that suggest that Cap was from New York City before the war. Thomas decided to follow this idea up by saying that Cap literally could not remember his life before he walked in the door as a scrawny teenager. Thomas left the book before Cap's origins were revealed. Steve Gerber was writing the book in issue #223 when he began to reveal Cap's origins, which conflicted with the "growing up in New York" origin...

And in #225, Gerber went all out with Cap's new origin...

The rest continued like the normal origin.

An interesting aspect of the story is that it has Rogers not becoming Cap until after Pearl Harbor. Obviously, originally Cap was Cap before the U.S. entered World War II, but by this time, the timing was a bit less clear.

This new origin only lasted only until #247, when Roger Stern and John Byrne addressed the revelations in #223 and #225...

And that's been Cap's origin ever since!