This week, readers found out the truth behind the shocking revelation that Captain America has always been a double agent for Hydra. Rather than a lie or brainwashing, "Captain America: Steve Rogers" #2 explained that the sentient Cosmic Cube shard known as Kobik is working with the Red Skull and altered history to make Captain America a traitor.
RELATED: "Captain America: Steve Rogers" #2 Reveals Why Cap Hailed Hydra
"Wait," you may be wondering. "A Cosmic Cube? What's that?" Well, we're glad you asked!
The Cosmic Cube (known as a Tesseract in the Marvel Cinematic Universe), an amazingly powerful Marvel Comics artifact, actually just celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. The Cube debuted in "Tales of Suspense" #79 (by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Frank Giacoia), where it was created by Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.). Even then, AIM's scientists were worried about what would happen if Red Skull were to get his hands on it. They were right to be concerned, because the very next issue (by Lee, Kirby and Don Heck) the Skull took control of the Cube. In the final part of the story (by Lee, Kirby and Giacoia), the Skull used the Cube to become the emperor of the world. Luckily, Captain America knew the Skull could not help but be responsive to Captain America's pleas to be his servant. When Captain America bowed down before his lifelong foe, the Avenger took the opportunity to successfully knock the Cube from the Skull's hands, which forced the Skull to dive into rocky waters, seemingly to his death, in search of the Cube.
The Cosmic Cube next played a role in the creation of the Super-Adaptoid in "Tales of Suspense" #82-84 (by Lee, Kirby, Dick Ayers and Frank Giaocia). This story introduced the idea that even a broken-up Cube is amazingly powerful, as piece of the Cube was used to make the powerful android who could adapt to the powers of the Avengers (much like Amazo with the Justice League of America). The Super-Adaptoid, or variations of the character, have since battled Marvel superheroes for decades.
The Cube next showed up in "Captain America" #115 (by Stan Lee, John Buscema and Sal Buscema). The Skull regained possession of the device and used it to switch bodies with Captain America! The Skull then banished Cap to an island where the Skull's allies, the Exiles, resided. Luckily, Captain America (using a disguise to hide his Skull appearance) befriended a young man named Sam Wilson, who Cap trained into becoming the Falcon. Finding himself bored, the Red Skull decided to switch bodies back to torture Captain America some more, allowing Cap and his new partner the opportunity to separate the Skull from the Cube in "Captain America" #119 (by Stan Lee, Gene Colan and Joe Sinnott). In the end, M.O.D.O.K., the leader of A.I.M., dissolved the Cube.
In "Captain America" #186 (by Steve Englehart, John Warner, Frank Robbins and Mike Esposito), the Skull revealed that he had used the Cosmic Cube to essentially create the Falcon, as he turned a former gangster known as Sam "Snap" Wilson into Captain America's ideal partner, just so that the Skull could uncover the subterfuge later on to mess with Cap's head. The Falcon was able to break from the Skull's control, but his new history as Snap Wilson haunted him for years. Recently, Sam Wilson (now Captain America) realized the Skull had used the Cube to alter his actual history to invent the Snap Wilson side of himself just to mess with Sam. Thus, the groundwork was explicitly laid for the current Hydra Cap storyline.
Eventually, M.O.D.O.K. decided to reassemble the Cube -- but the mad Titan Thanos had become aware of its existence, making it one of the very first objects of power Thanos sought after in an attempt to court the love of his life, Death herself. In a series of stories by Jim Starlin in the pages of "Captain Marvel," Mar-vell tried to keep Thanos from the Cube, to no avail. However, Thanos made a tactical mistake when he used the power of the Cube to make himself nigh omnipotent. Once powered up, he felt he did not need the Cube anymore, so he allowed its power to revert to the Cube. Captain Marvel then made a last ditch effort (there are lots of last ditch efforts involved in the plans of heroes to defeat the Cube) and was able to use the Cube to erase all that Thanos had done, using the power of Cube.
Apparently burnt-out, the now-dormant Cube was taken to a secret scientific base known as Project: P.E.G.A.S.U.S. in hopes of unlocking its secrets. Specifically, the Cube was used to test the powers of the mysterious man known as Wundarr, a Superman-esque character. In "Marvel Two-in-One" #57 (by Ralph Macchio, Mark Gruenwald, George Perez and Gene Day), Wundarr decided to embrace the power of the Cube and the next issue saw him transformed into the Aquarian.
Eventually, a second Cosmic Cube was created by the Red Skull and his underlings in "Super-Villain Team-Up" #16 (by Peter Gillis, Carmine Infantino and Bruce Patterson). This Cosmic Cube was not actually activated, and thus did not have the same cosmic abilities as its predecessor -- at least, not at the time.
The biggest revelation with regard to the Cosmic Cube came in "Captain America Annual" #7 (by Peter Gillis, Brian Postman and Kim DeMulder), where we learned that the Cosmic Cubes are, in a sense, the egg form of a powerful cosmic species. The Shaper of Worlds, who was revealed to be the Cosmic Cube of the Skrulls, delivered this information and the original Earth Cosmic Cube became a being known as Kubik. Later, it was revealed that the mighty being known as the Beyonder was also connected to the Cosmic Cubes; he was part of an unfinished Cosmic Cube, as was the Fantastic Four villain, the Molecule Man. The two eventually combined to become the being known as Kosmos, though the Molecule Man later split off and returned to his solo form.
Jim Starlin also made another revelation about the Cosmic Cubes during the "Infinity War" crossover, where he revealed that the Cosmic Cubes can come in all sorts of shapes. The evil Magus powered his army of doppelgangers using five Cosmic Cubes he brought to this universe from alternate realities.
A third Cosmic Cube was created during the "Taking A.I.M." crossover between "The Avengers" and "Captain America." The Super-Adaptoid ended up sacrificing itself to seal off this Cube in "Avengers" #388 (by Bob Harras, Terry Kavanagh, Mike Deodato and Tom Palmer).
Soon afterward, the second Cosmic Cube was activated by a group of Neo-Nazis who had the brilliant idea of placing Adolf Hitler's mind into the Cube. He soon took it over, of course, and the Red Skull did not like the idea of Hitler having ultimate power (mostly because the Skull wanted said power for himself). The Skull needed someone to take down Hitler, and he knew his best bet was his old foe, Captain America, who was near death at the time. The Skull cured Cap so he could enter the Cube where he could take down Hitler. In the end, Captain America succeeded in expelling Hitler from the Cube, but realized that in doing so, he would be giving the Cube to Skull. Cap managed to bring himself out of the Cube, where and was none too pleased with the manipulative means of the Skull, who used the Cube's power to make Cap think all his dead friends and family were alive again. When the Skull attempted to make a move for the Cube, Cap cut the Skull's arm off with his shield and destroyed the Cube, seemingly vaporizing the Skull.
Somehow, the "vaporized" Skull was infused with a portion of the Cube's power and eventually re-materialized both himself and the Cube. This led to a fascinating story arc written by Mark Waid where the evil being known as Michael Korvac (disguised as Uatu the Watcher) tried to manipulate Captain America into believing that the only way to stop Cosmic Cube-powered Red Skull was to kill him. Cap ultimately did so, but then the Cosmic Cube's energies flowed into Korvac, who wanted the energy to conquer the future. Captain America warred against Korvac for decades, as Korvac would re-set time whenever he defeated Captain America, to relive his victories again and again. Eventually, in "Captain America" #18 (by Waid and Lee Weeks), Korvac actually reset time to the moment where he got the Skull's power, giving Cap a chance to stop the Skull in a non-lethal way, thereby defeating both the Skull and Korvac. Because he's Captain freakin' America.
In the debut of Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting's run on "Captain America," a man named Aleksander Lukin tried to gain control of the Cosmic Cube (basically a special Cube made up of older Cubes, primarily the second one, presumably), seemingly killing the Skull in the process. However, Lukin did not realize that when the Red Skull died while holding the Cube, his consciousness transferred to the Cube. Thus, when Lukin used the Cube, the Skull was able to transfer his consciousness to Lukin's body, overwriting Lukin's mind in the process! Lukin used the Winter Soldier, the assassin who was once Captain America's partner Bucky Barnes, to fight against Captain America. In "Captain America" #14 (by Brubaker and Epting), Captain America used the Cube to restore Bucky's memories. Bucky then seemingly destroyed the Cube after using its power to teleport himself away in order to sort through his newly-restored memories.
Three other notable, if short-lived, uses of the Cosmic Cube happened soon after. In "Marvel Team-Up" #20 (by Robert Kirkman and Andy Kuhn), a hero known as Freedom Ring used a shard of Cosmic Cube to create a sort of power ring that he used to be a superhero for a brief period before he was killed. Meanwhile, in "Mighty Avengers" #33 (by Dan Slott, Khoi Pham and Craig Yeung), the Absorbing Man absorbed a piece of Cosmic Cube, therefore becoming a walking, talking Cosmic Cube. The Mighty Avengers, begrudgingly working with Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers, defeated him. Most recently, in "Guardians of the Galaxy" #20 (by Brian Michael Bendis, Ed McGuinness and Mark Farmer), we discovered how Thanos and Star-Lord made their way back from the Cancerverse at the end of "The Thanos Imperative". It turned out that Richard Rider (Nova) used a Cosmic Cube to create a door to allow Thanos, Star-Lord and Drax to escape the other dimension, though he was unable to return alongside them.
Most recently, S.H.I.E.L.D. created its own Cosmic Cube, which was used to create Pleasant Hill, a town which was actually a facility where prisoners brains and physical features were rewritten in order to allow them to lead idyllic, crime-free lives in the small town. During "Avengers: Standoff," both the good guys and the bad guys had a problem with this idea. During the event, the Cube was revealed to be the sentient being known as Kobik, who is basically just a little girl. The uber-powerful Kobik gave Steve Rogers his youth back in "Captain America: Sam Wilson" #7 (by Nick Spencer and Daniel Acuna). However, it was revealed in "Steve Rogers: Captain America" #2 (by Spencer and Jesus Saiz) that she is not a new Cosmic cube after all -- she's actually the Skull's old Cube, essentially refurbished and transformed. Not only that, she's loyal to the Skull and Hydra, and has rewritten history in order to ensure the Skull's victory over his old foe by making Steve Rogers a lifelong secret Hydra agent.
Of course, if history has taught us anything, it's that hubris always bites the Skull when he's at his highest point, so it's only a matter of when and how Kobik, the living Cosmic Cube, turns on her father figure and Cap is once again a legitimate American hero.