Continuing a wild 48 hours of superhero turnover at Marvel, Joe Quesada stopped by The Colbert Report last night to announce that the new female Thor would soon be joined by a new Captain America. The job falls to Sam Wilson, better known as The Falcon, who will take over the role beginning this October—a succession necessitated, as Colbert explains in great detail, by Steve Rogers recently being drained of his super serum powers and rapidly aging. And so, Steve Rogers did what any 90-year-old white man would, and immediately gave a black guy his job.
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Of course, Colbert more or less quashes that sort of kidding by acknowledging the obvious “Captain African-America” up front—and since we fortunately do not have some sort of “social media” infrastructure that allows people to blast their ugly, unfiltered opinions around the world, we can safely say that this news has been greeted with unanimous positivity, as befitting our more modern, progressive era. And besides, that “Black Captain America” barrier was already broken back in 2003 with Isaiah Bradley, while Bradley’s grandson served as the Cap analogue “Patriot” in the Young Avengers. As Marvel executive editor Tom Brevoort says, “In 2014, this should be a thing that we shrug off, it shouldn’t be seen as revolutionary”—particularly as Marvel more or less already did this several times before.
For those who find themselves worried about the future career prospects of Steve Rogers, Marvel assures in a press release that he’ll still be a “vital part” of the title, serving as the new Cap’s “remote strategic advisor” by mentoring him and relaying mission information from Avengers Mansion, in what we presume will be a very comfy chair. In the meantime, as Colbert and Quesada note, this leaves a vacancy in The Falcon’s former job, and Marvel has already mocked up a test run for the most obvious candidate.