sheboygan makes good sausages!

and if USAgent says so, you better believe it!!! Wisconsin represent!!!




let's go through it again:



* just in case you had to ask, legendary Marvel editor, Captain America writer, and USAgent co-creator Mark Gruenwald hails from Oshkosh, WI. all hail the Patron Saint of Marveldom!

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USAgent #1

flagging spirit

recently, we had this news bit where Facebook got caught in a bind trying to categorize accurately where specific users lived. disputed territories became diplomatic minefields in social networks. who da thunk?

one solution to this problem brings me back to my childhood.

what or who could make Captain America this angry?


why, this idiot, of course.

said idiot calls himself Flag-Smasher (try saying his name 50 times in one minute, and he might just appear behind your back). his beef is that he hates any kind of nationalistic identity, and wants the world to operate as one country. if he were a stand-up comic, he might say he wants to put the "o" back in "country".

anyhoo, lame-ass name aside, he did start doing literally what his codename was, smashing flags in the U.N. Plaza, and crashing Cap's press con to promote his 1-800-HELP-ME-NOW rescue number. being humiliated in public with one jaw-breaking punch, Flag-Smasher (not sure how he got out of jail) led his organization ULTIMATUM (understand that he's serious with this shit - he spent three weeks thinking about that name!) in hijacking a commercial jet, forcing Cap had to break his principles (only Bucky killed in WW2, remember?) and gunning down a hijacker to save the hostages. check out the original Mike Zeck badass cover - Captain America, Uzis, Cold War, '80s ... awesome!

of course, Steve Rogers being Steve Rogers, when thrust into a situation that their survival preceded philosophical differences, he chooses to save Flag-Smasher's life, despite knowing the latter won't reciprocate if the situation were reversed. plus, they even had a nice little ... tender moment.

according to Wikipedia, Flag-Smasher ended up a ruler of his own country Rumekistan (pop. 1) - oh, the irony - before being assassinated by his own shadow due to boredom. no, it was the X-Men who did it. the same X-Men who now have their own Utopia.

co-created by the late great Mark Gruenwald and Paul Neary, Flag-Smasher, Swiss-born, pink-visored, serious gay visionary, will always remain a source of infantile derision and humor among Captain America fans forever.

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Captain America vol. 1, #312, 321-22

steve rogers in the dating scene

how does a man out of time get some? well, in Steve Rogers' line of work, it really doesn't pay to have someone your rogues gallery can use against you (Exhibit A: Ralph Dibny, Identity Crisis). but to his credit, Steve never lacked for female attention, counting among his conquests, WW2 spy Peggy Carter; her li'l sis, the kickass S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Sharon Carter (that's two for one - when are we gonna see the Elseworlds edition where they all get it on? just asking), and the succulent shayna maideleh Bernadette Rosenthal.

but despite his goody-two-shoe image, Cap also isn't impervious to walking the wild side ... or getting a ride thataway.

if this is your first date, you'd better buy a taser

in his pursuit of Scourge, a self-styled vigilante who's actually more effective than the Punisher (more than 30 costumed supervillains six feet under), Cap runs afoul of the Serpent Society, another bunch of supervillains who were performing mercenary services for other underground criminal organizations. the Serpent Society were going after Modok, and Cap couldn't prevent his death. he also couldn't prevent one of their members, bad girl Diamondback, from hitting on him (if only we all had Cap's square jaw).


Diamondback's crush on Cap gets in the way of her work, and the former tomboy finally gets to be a gurl.


in the course of one issue, Cap faces his toughest problem yet - being dead aside, of course - sidestepping an aggressive female admirer.


more likely, she'd want to share fluids, but hey, let's not tell Cap that.



"unhappy childhood"? is that a valid excuse for bad behavior? i bet even Charles Manson used that line of reasoning.



Diamondback couldn't get the word "hunk" out of her mind, and her libidinous thought processes yield two other significant facts:

- she'd do anything for a 'heavy date' with him ... what does that mean? heavy petting?

- she'd "go straight" even ... wait, does this mean, she's a lesbian!? whoa! Cap, get her number!!

Mark Gruenwald, you dirty old man, you!
(just kidding, Sir. you know i love your Squadron Supreme).

and the girl can't help herself. i'm surprised she didn't start undressing once they got to her ship.



Cap, ever the boy scout, tries to calm himself even though his costume was getting a little ... constricting.


personally, i would have liked to see Cap try to get the key back.

getting shot mistakenly by a farmer gave Diamondback one last chance to seduce Cap (at least for today), but Steve's momma taught him better.


eventually, they'd be sharing fluids too, but this landmark issue, best known for Scourge taking out 18 bad guys all at once in the Bar with No Name, is also where Cap and Diamondback's romance first took root.

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Captain America vol.1 #319

steve rogers in the 20th century

yeah, yeah, i know, i said i'd stop with the Captain America postings, but hey, can't help it if i brushed up on the old issues looking for storylines that i read and didn't finish, and finding some gems (read: ha-ha-ha) in the process.

here's one from 1986, when ownership of PCs were exploding, although teh Internets (nyahahahaha) was still more than one billion brain synapses away in Al Gore's mind.

Cap, getting a million dollar check from the Reagan administration/military apparatchiks for back pay, starts a national hotline so people can contact him quicker. of course he bites off more than he can chew when the calls become a tsunami. not to mention, in the presscon for the hotline, a bad guy tries to steal his thunder by beating and showing him up (that obnoxious Flag Smasher and his idiotic organization, but that's another story).

at some point, Cap actually discovers that the hotline is being hacked ... by simply deducing that there was someone tapping in the line through an 'nnnnnnnnnnn' sound effect. he traces the call to a suburban home in New Jersey.



the suburban housewife singing 'We Are The World' almost creams in her underthings when she sees its Captain America paying them a visit. turns out her son Hiram, who got a PC for Christmas, is responsible for the tapping. of course, his nickname is RAM. his friends already took 'Floppy', 'CRT' and 'Mouse'.



back in those days, "hackers" meant "computer enthusiasts". of course, it didn't take long for the enthusiasm to spill over into the realm of the criminal. of course, they'd still say otherwise.

wait ... no self-respecting hacker would be traced by a relic from WWII. seriously.



to their credit, they figure out his codeword easily ... which was just 3 characters anyway: "USA". he also had the same password for his bank accounts until Y2k.

fed up with more than 10 years of identity theft and zero account balances, Cap finally changes his password to "USAUSA".

Ram wants to be a sidekick so he invents excuses that he wants to help out Cap. so he shows him how he can gather news items and display them in a helpful context. this becomes the forerunner of newsgroups, Google and Digg.



yeah, its called Information Overload, Cap. you couldn't handle it, that's why Tony Stark beat your ass.

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Captain America vol.1 #313