SPOILER WARNING: The following interview contains major spoilers for Secret Empire and Secret Empire: Omega, on sale now.


Marvel Comics' Secret Empire, by writer Nick Spencer and a team of all-star artists, truly lived up to the idea of what events could and should be. Over the course of ten issues and a number of tie-ins, Spencer and his collaborators chronicled life in an America that had been conquered by Hydra and its leader, a Cosmic Cube-altered Captain America. Readers witnessed the exploits of a resistance army of heroes trying to end Hydra's rule and change Steve Rogers back to the hero they remembered, and how the high stakes superhero adventure impacted the life of a single American family. On top of that, the series was a culmination of a long form Captain America tale that Spencer began telling back in the 2016 Avengers family event, Avengers Standoff.

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Today, Spencer joins CBR for the first half of a two part chat about some of those events and their immediate aftermath. In part one of our in-depth look at Secret Empire, we examine the controversy surrounding the series, the changes the living Cosmic Cube fragment known as Kobik made to the Marvel Universe in Secret Empire #10, how the true Steve Rogers feels about what happened while his reality was rewritten, and some of HydraCap's interesting allies.


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CBR: So Nick, you've pretty much wrapped your first big Marvel event! Overall, it felt like Secret Empire -- and the larger Captain America tale you've been telling since 2016 -- was about Cap's true role in the Marvel Universe: to inspire. Is that what you were aiming for?

Nick Spencer: Absolutely. I think despite it being about putting Steve and all the other heroes of the Marvel Universe through something horrible, what we hoped was that through the inversion you could kind of see the importance and value of Steve Rogers both as a symbol and as a man; that you could see through this cracked mirror version just what it was that made Steve such a good and noble person. We hoped that you could see why he's the hero everyone looks to when danger is around.

A lot of the inspirational moments in Secret Empire came from finding hope in some pretty dark places, leading to Secret Empire being pretty controversial. What was it like watching the conversation around the series develop as the book progressed?

You know when you're doing a story like this, it's not going to be easy on folks. You certainly understand that people are going to be upset. There's no getting around it. What we did to Captain America here was a horrible thing. This was a huge ordeal and trial for him.

People are protective of these characters, and they're passionate about them. These characters mean a lot to them personally. So seeing people up in arms about something bad happening to Captain America was just part of the terrain of the job. That said, we all felt from the beginning, and now that we're at the end we still feel this way, that this was very much a story worth telling. We had a solid plan for how to bring the heroes through this, how to give them a big win, restore Steve, and hopefully give the Marvel Universe something of a fresh start going forward; a fresh outlook.

Now that the heroes have been through this and confronted a lot of their regrets and demons, they can come back stronger than ever.

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Why Kobik Left the Black Widow and Rick Jones Dead

The seeds of Secret Empire were planted back in Avengers: Standoff. As this story moved towards its final act, many of the major players from Standoff came back into play, from Bucky, to Maria Hill, to Kobik, to the new Quasar. Was that always your intention?

It was important to me that as we neared the endgame on Secret Empire that we were rewarding the folks who had been with us since Captain America: Sam Wilson and Standoff, and to make sure that those characters were actually part of the payoff. Plus, a lot of those characters are important characters in their relation to Steve Rogers. So it really made sense as we got to our endgame that we kind of shined a light back on them and made sure they were an important part of our resolution.

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In that final resolution Kobik helped undo some of the damage she wrought by altering history, but there's a panel on one of the final pages that talks about her leaving the scars and wreckage. On that panel we see the ruins of Las Vegas, Black Widow, and Rick Jones. We also see a funeral on that page for a redheaded female character. So can you clarify? Is Black Widow still dead?

That is Black Widow's funeral, and that panel is really meant to highlight the various things that have been lost. So you're seeing Las Vegas. You're seeing Black Widow and Rick Jones. Those are things that Kobik is not undoing.

We didn't want the event to have no longterm consequences or repercussions. We wanted to make sure that at the end of this somebody didn't just shake a Cosmic Cube and everything is better. The heroes have definitely had a big win here. It's definitely a turning point for them, but there are still challenges ahead and there are definitely still things that they've lost. So that's really where the heroes are, and that panel is really meant to convey what has been lost and what is still lost.

Kobik's thinking in this situation is that while the Cosmic Cube was used to turn Steve into a Hydra agent, it wasn't used to convince anyone to go along with any of the many things that became the heroes and the United States of the Marvel Universe's undoing. People made their own decisions. They decided to put too much power in one man's hands. A lot of the folks on the ground in the Marvel Universe decided to really embrace an ideology that Steve was suddenly introducing into the public conversation. And a lot of heroes, after being so divided and broken in Civil War II, decided that instead of fixing those problems and healing those wounds, they would simply delegate everything to Steve.

So there's a responsibility to be shared here. It wasn't as simple as, "A Cube made things bad." Steve did one thing, and then a lot of others did the rest. So, to me, it was important that there were still some lingering consequences. And how we deal with those in the stories that spring out of this is a big part of what's ahead in Marvel Legacy.

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What Does The Future Hold For The Real Steve Rogers?

How much responsibility does the newly restored Steve Rogers feel for what went down? He didn't do the many horrible things that his Hydra altered counterpart did, but I can still see him blaming himself for things like the death of Black Widow.

One of the most interesting things here will be exploring the level of responsibility or blame that Steve feels going forward. Steve had no conscious involvement in any of this and no culpability per se, but there's still going to be heavy regrets and big questions that he's going to be asking. We dig into that stuff in Secret Empire: Omega. We examine questions that will leave Steve pondering if what he does is worthwhile. If it can be twisted and perverted like this, that's a very dangerous down side to what he does. It's never really been exposed to this degree before.

Now that Steve has been restored, I'm curious about what becomes of some of the people that were in Hydra Steve's orbit like Baron Zemo. What can you tell us about his condition in the aftermath of the downfall of his “best friend,” the Hydra altered Cap?

You won't see a whole lot of Zemo in Secret Empire: Omega, but going forward his life has been fundamentally altered. He very much bought into the belief that he was Steve's best friend, and that he had a loving and healthy relationship with his father, and that he belonged to something bigger than himself. Those are the kinds of things that Zemo has been struggling to find in his life for as long as we've known him as a character. So for him to now have this belief that Steve is his best friend and they have this shared history is not something a guy as dogmatic as Zemo is going to give up on easily

Zemo's perception of history was always only based on what Steve told him. The Cube didn't do anything supernatural to make him believe those things. Steve sat on the other side of his cell for an extended amount of time telling these stories and Zemo decided to believe them. There's an important moment towards the end of Captain America: Steve Rogers where Zemo says, “I believe these things to be true. And if they're not true I'll make them true.”

Those aren't necessarily my stories to write, but I think there's an enormous amount of story potential in Zemo discovering the religion of this world that was. Because Hydra now has a belief system that's a lot more firm and carries a lot more sort of religious fervor than any they've had before. Now, if you're loyal to Hydra, you believe that this world was stolen from you. You believe that your side won World War II, that you were on the verge of taking over the world, and the allies used the Cosmic Cube to change history.

We know that's not true. We know that was a manifestation of Kobik, but if you're Hydra and you choose to believe this now you're not really fighting to take over the world. You're fighting to take back the world. That was one of the things we get out this that we really liked. We got more of a firmed up ideology for Hydra that's rooted in this belief in this alternate history that Kobik created.

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The Punisher's Role in Secret Empire, Explained

Another very interesting ally of Hydra Steve's was the Punisher. What inspired you to bring Frank Castle into Secret Empire and use him in the way you did?

I was looking for a hero that I thought would cross that line and made the best kind of story sense. There's obviously opinions on all sides of this. You have certain fans of the character saying, “He would never do this.” Then you have other fans saying, “Yeah, I think he would.” So there's a lot of differing opinions on Frank's motivations.

I saw Frank as getting hit by a few things. The first is that it's been long established that Frank holds Cap as a hero, and I always thought that was an intriguing part of his character because it's the idealism he still won't let go of. So this was all coming from the man Frank maybe looks up to the most in the world.

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The second was that Steve would come to him in the same way he approached Zemo; by telling him everything he wanted to hear. He would offer approval and say, “I think you've been right all these years in the way you've been fighting this war on crime. Not only do I accept that you do this, I'm going to help you do it. I'm going to give you whatever resources you need, and I'm going to give you unlimited power to conduct this war. All I care about is that the job gets done.” I imagine that's an enormously tempting offer for Frank. While he may have had any number of problems with previous iterations of Hydra, I think he would look at what Steve was doing in terms of the law enforcement aspect of it, and see a lot to like.

RELATED: Was Hydra Cap Worthy? Secret Empire’s Mjolnir Twist Explained

The final thing that moved Frank into Steve's camp is the fact that every time Steve did something of major consequences that lost lives or that we'd look at and go, “That's evil and horrible!” Steve would say, “All these things are short term solutions. Once I have the Cosmic Cube, I'm going to create a better world.” I think for Frank, that temptation would really be the last nail in his coffin per se. Once he heard that and could kind of see that world in the back of his head he would do anything for it.

The reasons for that are pretty obvious. He's got a lot of emotional scars himself, and he often insists that he would never take it all back, but I think a really strong case is made when somebody is holding all of that in front of you and says, “I can give it all back to you and you'd have the life you always wanted.”

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Ultimately, this was the decision that Frank made, and we all felt like the reasons and justification for it were pretty strong. Plus, I think one of the reasons the Punisher is one of the best characters in the Marvel Universe is that he can be viewed so many different ways. I think he gave us a really huge moment in the series. That scene revealing him at the end of the third issue is one of my favorites in the book

The question now really is, what does Frank do from here? How does he feel about how things have played out since then? He's not the happiest camper is what I can safely say.

The other ally of Hydra Steve that I found especially interesting was his mother figure, Elisa Sinclair, AKA Madame Hydra. I feel like the surface has just been scratched with that character, especially when you consider her connections to the Elder Gods. Have we truly seen the last of her?

Never say never with a character like that, who seems to have survived an awful lot. As one of the creators of that character, I will say it has been enormously rewarding to see people respond to her and watch her make a strong impression. That mantle of Madame Hydra has been passed around to a few characters, so I think to have somebody in that identity that will always be strongly associated with it and really fit it is going to be helpful in future Hydra stories. Dead or alive, her importance to Hydra is pretty clear.

That's true also for the new Kraken we introduced. We did not reveal his identity throughout the series, so that character is kind of a lingering mystery in the Marvel Universe that could be confronted one of these days.

Check back soon for part two of our Secret Empire chat with Spencer where will examine how a simple act of heroism won the day, how the series large art team put together a consistent and stunning narrative, and the final chapters of Spencer's long form Captain America story; Secret Empire Omega and the Generations: Sam Wilson Captain America and Steve Rogers Captain America one-shot.