Earth-717 - What If: Captain America

What If: Captain America

This one-shot, titled "What If...Captain America Fought in the Civil War," is written by Tony Bedard and penciled by Carmine Di Giandomenico (with cover by Tony Harris). It focuses on the era of the American Civil War, when Union Army Private Stephen Rogers becomes the man who would be Captain America after being transformed by another soldier named Wilson (a counterpart of Sam Wilson, also known as The Falcon) using mystical Native American means. He is involved in the terrible border conflict between Kansas and Missouri, the same conflict that spawned the outlaw Josey Wales. He then fights enemies including "The White Skull" (Colonel Buck "Bucky" Barnes), an Earth-717 homage to the Red Skull, who is an antagonist of Captain America in normal continuity. This isn't the first time Captain America has been re-imagined in a different era: Jack Kirby, in his second run on Captain America, introduced the Earth-616 version's ancestor, Captain Steven Rogers, as an in-continuity Revolutionary War Captain America. This ancestor was later revisited in an early issue of the spin-off book Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty.

During the story, a computer hacker discovers research on the General, a modern-day descendant of Civil War-era Captain America who battles against a HYDRA-like group known as "The White Skulls". He also researches an alternate history of Captain America's family tree.