One of Captain America’s best villains was a former American president

in 2017 interview with Newsarama about the legacy of his Captain America run.Englehart spoke about the “Secret Empire”‘s response to the Watergate scandal. (If you didn’t know: During the 1972 election, Nixon’s Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., was robbed and bugged. This discovery and cover-up ultimately led to his resignation from the presidency on August 9, 1974.)

Englehart described watching Watergate as being like “a real-life political thriller, this kind of everyday revelation of the inner workings of this conspiracy.” With the news taking over America, he decided that “there was no way Captain America could keep fighting Yellow Claw with this going on.” So, he took the basic idea of ​​the President running a conspiracy and tweaked it in a Marvel way. (“A story about people breaking into a campaign office — that would make a very boring comic book.”)

Allusions to Watergate are in “Secret Empire” before the end. The arm of the secret empire trying to discredit Capp is called the Committee to Restore American Principles (CRAP), just like Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) bankrolled the Watergate scandal. CRAP is headed by an advertising man named Harderman, a Roman key for Nixon’s chief of staff H.R. Haldeman.

As for that ending, Englehart wanted a shocking ending that would really make Captain America reconsider himself, an ending that would do justice to the pressure cooker of the real scandal. “Nixon didn’t blow his brains out, but he ruined his career and that’s political suicide,” Englehart told Newsarama.

People of my generation, who have always lived under a government that does nothing but It aroused pessimism and mistrust, but you can’t quite understand how shocking the Watergate scandal was. But in Engelhart’s day, “there were statesmen on both sides of the aisle who were more interested in the republic than in any political party” and a media ecosystem that still valued journalistic objectivity.

Many artistic liberals of Englehart’s generation channeled their frustrations with Nixon into their art. (George Lucas founded his “Star Wars” empire on Nixon’s America.The disappointment of the Watergate scandal also left the country in a prime position for Ronald Reagan to absorb with his comedy “Morning in America” ​​six years later.

Nowadays, mocking Nixon as a national embarrassment has become an American pastime, including in other comics like “Watchmen” and “Watchmen.” Comedy films such as “Dick” in 1999. The “Secret Empire” itself looks like this today, but there are important details.

“Captain America” ​​#175 was published months later before Nixon resigned, in effect admitting his guilt to gain a pardon from then-President Gerald Ford — in much the same way that Captain America was first shown beating up Hitler a year before the United States entered World War II. From the beginning, Captain America represented the desire for the United States to do the right thing, not the reality that it rarely does. Englehart understood that this was how Captain America turned into a long-lasting and resonant character.