Captain America (1998 Fox Kids)

CAPTAIN AMERICA

Real Name: Tommy Tompkins

Identity/Class: Extradimensional/alternate reality human mutate (WWII)

Occupation: Soldier

Group Membership: Unidentified commando team (Bucky Barnes, Campbell, Carla, Maurice, Sarge, others)

Affiliations: None

Enemies: Baron Strucker, Red Skull, Nazis, Nazi-affiliated druids

Known Relatives: None

Aliases: Steve Rogers

Base of Operations: Mobile

First Appearance: Captain America promo reel (1998)

Powers/Abilities: Captain America possesses peak physical human strength, agility and endurance. He is an exceptional hand-to-hand fighter, and carries a bulletproof shield that he can throw with incredible accuracy, bouncing it off objects to hit a target and then return to him.

Height: 6'2" (see comments)
Weight: 240 lbs. (see comments)
Eyes: Blue (see comments)
Hair: Blond

History:
(Captain America promo film/storyboards) - Around the start of World War II the physically frail Tommy Tompkins volunteered for a U.S. Army experiment to create super soldiers. Assigned the codename Steve Rogers, he underwent a process where he was given a serum and bombarded by mysterious green rays, transforming the skinny Tommy into a hulking muscleman, his expanding wrists bursting the restraints holding him down. Suddenly the serum and glass table Tommy had been on were shattered by a lightning bolt, and the lab exploded as the Red Skull repeatedly blasted it with a lightning gun, but Rogers emerged unharmed from the rubble.

Donning a star-spangled costume, Rogers received a second codename: Captain America. Armed with a throwing shield and partnered with Bucky Barnes and a team of commandos, he went on missions against the Nazis, including Baron Strucker, the squad traveling via an X2 Stealth Plane.

(Episode 7: Skullhenge) - Winter in England. With Allied intelligence suspecting an attack would be made against Britain's King Edward VIII during a scheduled visit to Westminster Abbey, Cap and Bucky stood sentry on the Clocktower of the nearby Houses of Parliament. Bucky expressed skepticism at the reports, believing no one would risk such an assault because there were a large number of British troops present, but even as he said this, mystic power bursts from the Abbey caused the troops to collapse like dominos. Swinging across and into the Abbey through the windows the pair spotted the druids who had bespelled the troops outside now turning their casting against the King and his guards, while a figure cloaked by shadows watched, seated on the Coronation Chair which held the Stone of Scone. Despite being outnumbered twenty to two, the heroes initially had the upper hand until the head druid's mystic blast pinned them to the ground next to the king, struggling but unable to rise. The shadowed figure then stood and moved into the light, revealing himself to be the Red Skull, adorned in the British crown and regal robes. Gloating over his downed foes, the Skull boasted that by tomorrow night he would be the King of England.

The Skull and his druids departed, taking the Stone of Scone with them. Recovering, the king explained to Cap and Bucky that the Stone of Scone was not just a way of legitimizing a ruler, but also part of the soul of England (see comments). Bucky expressed surprise that druids still existed, and the king explained that they did, worshiping the soul of the land in the unspoiled, natural areas. Pondering this, Cap asked the king if there were other mystic artifacts in the country, and the king confirmed there were, notably in Tintagel on the west coast, where King Arthur was said to have found Excalibur and built Camelot, and also Stonehenge. Suspecting the Skull would go after these too, Cap noted however that the Nazi would be unlikely to steal the latter.

Comments: Created by Will Meugniot, Frank Gomez, Dave Simons and Jo Meugniot.

In 1998 Saban Entertainment, who had already successfully produced the successful X-Men Animated Series, began work on a proposed Captain America series for Fox Kids. Will Meugniot and Frank Gomez worked on the characters and concept art (Gomez specifically designed the Red Skull's look, among others, with Shannon Denton), and Will then wrote and drew a storyboard, inked by Dave Simons and colored by Jo Meugniot, for a promo film. The finished 60 seconds promo featured Cap battling Nazis and included CG scenes of Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighters and Cap's spinning shield. A 3D model of Cap was built to allow motion capture, but was not used for this pilot. The series went into production, with writers including Michael Reaves and Steve Englehart, design team including Will Meugniot, Frank Gomez, Shannon Denton, Roy Burdine and Jone Fang, and storyboard crew including Dave Simons, Rick Hoberg and Mike Swanigan. The exact reasons why it was never ultimately made remain uncertain, though most speculation seems to agree some combination of Marvel's mid-90s financial woes combined with the poor performance of Saban/Fox's Marvel Action Hour. Though some sites, such as IMDB, listed the cause to be a skittish about using Nazis, this seems to be incorrect, although Englehart has confirmed that the show wanted to avoid using the word Nazis, and also Swastika imagery. As a result, his script proposal for the seventh episode, Skullhenge, had to be modified. He notes:
The series was going to be set during World War II, in Europe (but, in true TV fashion, the enemy forces were not going to be called "Nazis"). The main villain was the Red Skull, and I had developed a plot in which the Skull was going to deconstruct Stonehenge and rebuild it as a gigantic swastika on Salisbury plain. That's when I first heard that we weren't doing swastikas, either - and while I was working around that (the Skull was going to purloin the Stone of Scone instead and crown himself King of England), Marvel's monetary troubles got the series cancelled.

It's possible that this series would have shared the same universe as the 1990s Fox Kids' X-Men and Spider-Man series, in which case the history above would need to be expanded to include all the appearances of Captain America in those shows. However, with so little concrete information to go on, it is impossible to say for sure.

The X2 Stealth plane the commandos used was based on a WWII-era Black Widow night fighter, and was built using CG.

I'm ASSuming that this version of Cap has the same height, weight and eye color as the 616 version.

For those not aware of London geography, Westminster Abbey (in the episode 7 synopsis) is on one side of the same square as the Houses of Parliament (a.k.a. Palace of Westminster, seat of the British government) and its clocktower (colloquially known as Big Ben, although strictly speaking that's just the name of the bell inside). However, it's not so close that you'd be able to swing across from the clocktower to the abbey. The buildings are nowhere near tall enough, and there's nothing in between to attach a line to, plus any swing line long enough to cover the distance would also be long enough for the user to smash into the ground midway there.

The Stone of Scone (a.k.a. the Stone of Destiny or Coronation Stone) is literally just a large stone that sits under the Coronation Chair. It was originally used by the Scottish kings and queens, and was brought down to Westminster Abbey in England when it was stolen during an invasion by the forces of the English king Edward I in 1296, a way of Edward laying claim to be Lord Paramount of Scotland, above even the Scottish king. It has only ceremonial value in the real world, so the Red Skull's plan to use it to become the new king wouldn't get him very far - plus, strictly speaking, it's only meant to make you the rightful king of Scotland, not England anyway. But in a comic book universe with real druids, perhaps it holds genuine power. However, even there, it wouldn't be the soul of England - if it's anything, it'd be the soul of Scotland. In the real world the Stone of Scone was stolen on Christmas Day 1950 by four Scottish students, who took it back to Scotland; it was recovered and returned to Westminster four months later, though rumors persist that the English actually got back a replica, and the real stone remains hidden in Scotland. These days the stone is actually kept in Scotland anyway, only to be taken down to England for coronations of new monarchs.

This profile was completed 3/14/2021, but its publication was delayed as it was intended for the Appendix 20^th anniversary 's celebratory event.

Profile by Loki.

CLARIFICATIONS:
Captain America is an alternate reality counterpart to:

Captain America (Steve Rogers), super soldier @Captain America Comics#1/1
any number of other versions of Steve Rogers across the multiverse

but has no known connections to:

any other "Captain America" characters - there's way too many to list.

Bucky Barnes

Bucky Barnes was Captain America's partner. Bucky helped him battle Baron Strucker, and later fought alongside Cap against the Red Skull and his druids when they attacked Westminster Abbey.