Super Soldiers by Jason Inman

Author:Jason Inman [Inman, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633539952
Publisher: Mango Media
Published: 2019-05-21T16:19:42+00:00

Chapter 9

Isaiah Bradley

The First Captain America

Isaiah Bradley is the finest fictional soldier I will mention in this book, and I bet most of you reading don’t even know his name. Isaiah is an addition, a retcon if you will, to the history of Captain America—a secret chapter even Steve Rogers didn’t know about. When talking about the past of the US military, we are often forced to look at the blemishes amidst the victories—and to bear witness to them straight-on, without flinching. For every successful D-Day invasion victory, there is a darker, not as morally clear, questionable action, such as the bombs being dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Fictional comic book soldiers follow this same trend, and the story of Isaiah Bradley is one of the most troubling tales ever rendered on panel. His is a story of personal courage—a value he maintained through every mission, through every slight, and through his months away from his family, even after his government betrayed him and his body.

In Truth: Red, White & Black #1, released in January 2003, we are introduced to Isaiah Bradley, an African American man who is excited to join the infantry. He kisses his pregnant wife goodbye and ships out to basic training. What began as a dream of responsibility for the young man soon turns into a tale of discrimination and humiliation. At Camp Cathcart, Mississippi, we first met Isaiah’s unit when they have recently finished digging and covering the camp’s latrines. The all-Black unit marches back to their barracks as the white soldiers turn their noses up at the stink.

Dealing with latrines is a foul job everyone in the military has to face at one time or another. It becomes another sad fact of Isaiah’s story that the all-Black units of the time—like Gravedigger’s unit from Chapter 2—would be forced to complete the missions no other soldier wanted to do. The bitter fact of the matter is that Isaiah’s unit would be subjected to racism and violence at every turn. These Black soldiers, whose only difference was their appearance, had to fight twice as hard to get anything close to the rights and recognition of their peers.

Some of the greatest moments in Isaiah’s story come when all their misfortune is transformed into teachable lessons. The men of this unit are sweaty and covered in an ungodly filth that would make a dog run for the hills. They are also angry. Not certain of the point of it all. Is there a point? Sgt. Lucas Evans, their African American squad leader, strolls in with the mail and, when one of the men asks Evans why they had to go into the smelly field, he drops a truth bomb on them without warning. It is a lesson many soldiers have to learn the hard way. He tells the men that battles require luck and skill, and if you ever find yourself face-to-face with the enemy in a foxhole on the other side of the world, your enemy may stink to high heaven.

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