If you haven’t been reading Marvel’s Ultimate line of books, over the past few issues they have been embroiled in a cross-over event called “United We Stand.” Basically what is happening in the storyline is that the nation is a complete mess. Sentinels have come in and taken over, Texas has seceded from the Union and basically has a finger on a button primed to fire a nuke, and to make matters even worse the president has lost the faith of the American people. All in all, the Ultimate Universe has seen better days.
Fear not though, with America in pieces and clearly in need of a new president, it is clearly time for someone to step in and begin picking back up the pieces. That’s right, who else but Captain America himself would have the ability and popularity to win back the American people. Tomorrow “Ultimate Comics: Ultimates” issue 15 hits the stands and in it Cap will win the presidency through a special election held by the American people. It is in issue 16 where you will see Cap begin to work through his presidential duties.
“Cap is a soldier, not a politician. He’s been called by the people to unite America,” Ultimates scribe Sam Humphries explained a bit about how Cap will be as president. “He’s going to reinterpret the job of president to fit the crisis at hand, and to align with what he feels is the right thing to do. From his point of view, sitting in a giant mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue is not going to be the way to get the job done. There are very compelling fictions about the presidency through the lens of realism, but this is not one of them. This is a story told through the lens of super heroic fantasy, and it won’t resemble any presidency we’ve seen before, fact or fiction. If you see him behind a desk, you know something is wrong.”
The writer continued, “Cap is answering a call, the people’s call. They’re scared, their country is splitting apart, and they’re having a leadership crisis. They want a leader who will focus on doing what needs to be done. Cap steps up and accepts the mandate — not for the glory, or for power, but because he believes it is the right thing to do. In that sense, he is the right man for the job.”
