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| Image Courtesy www.screenrant.com |
If you remember from a
while back, there were reports that John Ridley was in the process of actively
developing a TV series for Marvel and Disney which would air on ABC. Evidently, this is still happening,
and according to Ridley himself all the rumors and speculation to-date has been
off. So here is my idea for a TV series
that John Ridley could bring to ABC. I
actually mentioned this as a possibility a while ago,
but I’m going to take a wild guess that I’m not quite mainstream enough for
John Ridley to notice! So in other
words, maybe I’m right! (Probably not,
but I can dream…)
John Ridley is known
for his portrayal of characters who need to overcome adversity and prejudice,
as seen in such movies as 12 Years a Slave and Red Tails; this
has fueled the speculation that he would be bringing characters like Kamala
Khan and Cloak and Dagger to life.
However, one character which I do not think anyone else has suggested is
the “original” African-American superhero.
I’m not talking about the first black superhero to appear in Marvel Comics;
Black Panther is already appearing in Captain America: Civil War before
receiving his own feature film in 2018.
Besides, Black Panther isn’t actually African-American; he’s
African-African (so… “African”)! I’m
also not talking about the first African-American hero to appear in Marvel
Comics; the Falcon first appeared in 1969, but his story starts in the
1960s. Instead, I’m talking about the
chronologically-first African-American superhero in Marvel Comics, whose story
begins during World War II, though it was not published until 2003. I’m talking, of course, about Isaiah Bradley,
the (first) Black Captain America.
While you may think
it’s racist to call this character the “Black Captain America,” once you
understand the character’s back story, the moniker will make a lot of sense.
The Background
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| Image Courtesy en.wikipedia.org |
In essence, Isaiah
Bradley is an amalgamation of the Steve Rogers/Captain America story and the
real-world Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
conducted during and after World War II.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment involved the U.S. Public Health Service
conducting experiments on poor African-American men to study the progression of
untreated syphilis. The tests were done
without the subjects’ permission or knowledge; they believed that they were
receiving free health care. Only 74 of
the 399 test subjects survived until the conclusion of the study in 1972; 28 of
the subjects had died of syphilis and 100 more had died of related
conditions. 40 of their wives contracted
syphilis, and 28 children were born to the subjects with congenital
syphilis. Once the experiment became
public knowledge, there was an outcry which led to the implementation of new
laws and regulations to protect the subjects of clinical studies.
In 2003, writer Robert
Morales created a Marvel Comics version of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
which began very shortly after the success of Project: Rebirth and Steve
Rogers’ successful transformation into Captain America. After Professor Erskine’s assassination by
Hydra, the secret to the Super-Soldier Serum seems to be lost forever if it
could not be recreated from Steve Rogers’ blood. Consequently, the U.S. military conscripts a
regiment of 300 African-American soldiers and forces them to endure tests
designed to rediscover the Super-Soldier Serum.
However, only five of the original subjects survive the initial
experiments, and all those involved with the project (or left at the base where
it took place, Camp Cathcart) are executed by the military in an effort to
cover up what had happened. Isaiah
Bradley is the sole survivor of the project and ensuing cover-up. He steals a spare uniform and shield intended
for Steve Rogers and takes on a suicide mission to infiltrate a Hydra attempt
at recreating the Super-Soldier Serum and destroy it. He succeeds in his mission but is captured by
the Nazis. Before he can be dissected,
reverse-engineered, and sent back in pieces, he is rescued by German dissenters
and escapes to America. Back home,
Bradley is court-martialed and imprisoned for nearly 20 years before receiving
a presidential pardon.
Though Bradley is
largely unknown to the Marvel universe as a whole, he is “depicted as an
underground legend among much of the African-American community in the Marvel
Universe” according to Wikipedia. Characters such as Storm, Luke Cage (another
result of Super-Soldier testing), (Black) Goliath (Bill Foster), and Falcon
consider him to be one of the greatest heroes in the world because he overcame
such great obstacles.
Does this sound like
the kind of TV series that the screenwriter of 12 Years a Slave (about a
free black man unjustly returned to slavery) and Red Tails (a dramatized
account of the Tuskegee Airmen, black aviators who fought in World War II)
would be interested in?
I think so.
The Back Story and
First Appearance
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| Image Courtesy www.twitter.com/AgentCarterTV |
So how would this
series go? Here’s my pitch.
Isaiah Bradley’s back
story will be adapted from the 2003 series virtually in its entirety. Like in the comics he will be an
African-America soldier forced to participate in a Project: Rebirth offshoot
following the success of the original and the subsequent assassination of Dr.
Erskine. Also like the comics, he will
be the sole survivor of that test and have engaged in a suicide mission against
the Nazis before being court-martialed for his actions and sent to prison.
However, this back
story will not be Bradley’s first appearance.
Instead, his first appearance will come about 4 years after the
experiments that gave him his superhuman abilities, in 1947 during the second
season of Agent Carter. When
season 2 begins Bradley will be sitting in Fort Leavenworth serving his
sentence. However, thanks to his
superhuman hearing he overhears a news report about an incident in
California. Believing the incident to be
related to the same Nazi cell which he had defeated previously, Bradley breaks
out of prison and makes his way halfway across the country to Los Angeles,
where he happens upon Peggy Carter in the middle of a mission. The two of them have an altercation, during
which Peggy realizes that Bradley’s physical abilities are beyond those of a
normal human—comparable only to Steve Rogers himself. She interrogates him to learn what had
happened to him, finds out that the S.S.R. was involved, and confronts her
S.S.R. superior, who was one of the agents overseeing the experiments. At the end of the day, Peggy and Bradley team
up to take down Madame Masque and Peggy invites Bradley to join her in the
recently-founded S.H.I.E.L.D.
The First Season
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| Image Courtesy www.johnbierly.com |
The first season of
the series will air during the summer of 2016.
It will be a straightforward adaptation of the 2003 limited series, but
with a few additions—primarily in the form of cameos—to build up the
connections with Captain America: The First Avenger.
The first episode
picks up midway through the movie with the Project: Rebirth experiment. Steve Rogers is reborn as Captain America,
Dr. Erskine is assassinated by Red Skull’s top assassin, Heinz Kruger, and
Steve and Peggy both leap into action to prevent the assassin from escaping
with the extra vial of Super-Soldier Serum.
However, while they are otherwise occupied, Col. Phillips immediately
shifts into military mode and locks down the facility. After everything is secure, he approaches
Howard Stark to find out if there is a way for them to continue Project:
Rebirth now that Erskine is dead. Stark
does not think it is possible, but agrees to consult with the other scientists
involved. Later, after Steve agreed to
go to work for the U.S.O., Phillips, Stark, and Senator Brandt sit down
together with a couple of the scientists, who confirm that they can try to
reverse-engineer the Super-Soldier Serum from Steve Rogers’ blood. Brandt offers for his committee to provide
the funding for the program and agrees to keep Steve nearby through his U.S.O.
connections so the scientists can take more blood samples as necessary.
The scene shifts to
Col. Phillips at Camp Cathcart, where a regiment of African-American soldiers
is standing at attention. Phillips is in
the process of putting the soldiers through training exercises before returning
to his S.S.R. troops on the Italian Front.
Following training, the soldiers receive injections with experimental
variants of the Super-Soldier Serum.
This is when we meet Pvt. Isaiah Bradley, one of the (unwilling)
participants in the experiment. Through
his perspective we learn more about the experiment and the other
participants. At the end of the first
episode, several of the test subjects begin to experience negative side
effects.
Note: This would require quite a few cameos. The ideal would be for Tommy Lee Jones,
Dominic Cooper, and Michael Brandon to reprise their roles as Col. Phillips,
Howard Stark, and Senator Brandt, respectively, for the first episode, as well
as for Jones and Brandon to return near the end of the season.
The second episode
begins with Isaiah Bradley as one of the final ten surviving test subjects, who
are all sent on a mission in Europe where they must confront and defeat a Nazi
compound. While on the mission, Bradley
discovers evidence of a Nazi (non-Hydra) attempt to create their own super
soldiers, which he brings to the attention of his commander. The commander initially dismisses his suspicions. Also on the mission, a couple of the other
test subjects are killed.
During the third
episode, the experiment is shut down by the S.S.R., with all the test subjects
executed along with most of the support staff.
Isaiah Bradley avoids execution and escapes from the Camp. Raiding an S.S.R. supply depot gets him a
mail suit and spare shield intended for Captain America, which he takes to go
on one final mission to stop the Nazi super-solder program to prevent anyone
else from going through the same torture as he has.
The remainder of the
season follows Bradley as he completes the mission, destroys the super-soldier
program, and kills the scientists involved.
The penultimate episode ends with Bradley captured by the Nazis and
taken to a concentration camp. In the
final episode, the German resistance movement frees Bradley and brings him to
the American lines, where he is arrested by the military police and taken back
to America for a court martial. The
season ends with Bradley locked up in Leavenworth.
The Remainder of
the Series
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| Image Courtesy marvel-war-of-heroes.wikia.com |
Following the first
season, this series would air alongside Agent Carter during the winter
break. While Agent Carter runs
with the espionage element, this series focuses on superpowers and takes a much
darker tone, similar to the division the DCTVU is creating between Arrow’s
focus on mysticism and The Flash’s focus on superpowers. The two series could cross over on occasion,
though it would not be necessary, as both series would be short, 8-10 episodes
in a season, and have much more compact storylines.
This series would be
an opportunity to fill in some of the blanks as far as military efforts to
create super soldiers go. We have
already seen a couple of government/military-endorsed superhero efforts: Captain America, the Hulk, and Iron Patriot
are all examples. In the near future we
will also meet Luke Cage, who is the product of a program very similar to the
one which created Isaiah Bradley. Seeing
the darker side of government efforts to create superheroes—and seeing the dark
side of Project: Rebirth—would be an interesting way to further the story of
S.H.I.E.L.D.’s history. It would also
open a door to a whole new realm of super-powered individuals active in the
years between Captain America and Ant-Man.
Conclusion
So this is my idea for
what John Ridley’s mysterious MCU TV series could be. I think that Isaiah Bradley would be an
interesting character to pair with Peggy Carter, both because he represents
something that she thought was gone forever with Captain America’s
disappearance and because he represents a dark side of the S.S.R. and America
which she may never have considered before.
Isaiah Bradley can help fill a key void in the MCU’s history, and he can
do it with a compelling and powerful message.
What do you think
about this idea? Do you like the idea of
a second period-set MCU TV series, or would you prefer for John Ridley’s series
to be set today? Which character do you
want to see brought to life on the small screen? Let me know in the comments!
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