The '90s was the era of great Marvel cartoons such as X-Men: The Animated SeriesSpider-Man: The Animated Series, as well as underrated gems such as The Incredible Hulk: The Animated Series. Unfortunately, there were also several substandard ones and missed opportunities. One relatively unknown example of the latter, however, is the unproduced Captain America: The Animated Series. Obscure to many Marvel Animated Universe fans, the show fittingly would have centered around the Sentinel of Liberty. The character would have had his traditional costume and shield, but his name wouldn't quite have made it into translation. Before the plug was finally pulled on the planned cartoon, Captain America's real identity wasn't going to be Steve Rogers, but someone else entirely.

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chris evans as steve rogers

In the late '90s, Saban Entertainment (known for the Power Rangers franchise and its work on the X-Men and Silver Surfer cartoons) planned this Captain America animated series. The biggest proof of concept for the show is in the form of storyboards created by Will Meugniot, Dave Simons and Jo Meugniot, with Will's designs and art style influencing how the final product would supposedly look. Said look was both stylized yet also surprisingly dark and evocative, reminiscent of how X-Men: The Animated Series and Spider-Man Unlimited looked.

The demo reel for the series combined traditional animation with CGI to showcase what seemed to be a pretty faithful retelling of Captain America's World War II adventures, but there would have been one major change. Most shockingly, the hero's real name would have been Tommy Tompkins. This rather odd choice has no real basis in any source material and came completely out of nowhere. The name Steve Rogers would still have been used, however, though it would have simply been a pseudonym created by the United States military, a name given to the public so as to protect Tommy's real identity.

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bucky barnes

This rather strange idea actually makes some logical sense, and it's interesting that such a fun, action-packed looking series would think ahead in such a fashion. Unfortunately, there were several hurdles, many of which stemmed from the World War II setting. Red Skull's forces couldn't be explicitly referred to as Nazis due to censorship, and a storyline involving reconstructing Stonehenge into a giant Swastika was nixed for the same reason.

Captain America: The Animated Series would sadly never be seen, as Marvel faced financial woes in the late '90s, which had already cut Spider-Man Unlimited short. Thus, the only attempt at a full-on Captain America cartoon was kept at half-mast, meaning that fans would never have to figure out how they felt about a Cap named Tommy Tompkins. Though the show itself could have been good, it's bizarre idea to play the name game with its main character, and likely would have been controversial.

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