U.S. Agent

• 1. The Man on the Monument

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  U.S. Agent, the Marvel Comics hero whose real name is John Walker, once climbed the Washington Monument to stop a terrorist. The terrorist, known as Warhead, threatened to set off a nuclear weapon in Washington, D.C. from the top of the landmark. Walker scaled the monument and disarmed Warhead with a throwing star. It is a classic heroic moment, and it belongs to a man who was invented as a villain. Walker usually appears in comics starring Captain America and the Avengers, and he has worn at least three identities: Super-Patriot, Captain America, and U.S. Agent. Each one raises the same uncomfortable puzzle. What does it mean to love your country in a way that frightens other people? Why would a writer deliberately build a rival to the most famous patriot in comics? And why did readers keep asking for him back?

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• 2. The Opposite Game

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  Mark Gruenwald, the writer behind John Walker, described his design method as playing the opposite game. Steve Rogers, he reasoned, was a poor boy from a northern city. So Walker would be a middle-class boy from the rural South. Cap was getting old, so Walker would be a young up-and-comer. Cap held lofty ideals, so Walker would be more realistic and more pragmatic. The goal was to challenge the idea that patriotism is always good. In Gruenwald's own words, Walker was meant to be "a patriotic villain." Gruenwald and artist Paul Neary introduced him as Super-Patriot in Captain America #323, dated November 1986. He was not the first character with that name. A different Super-Patriot had appeared in Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #13 in July 1969, wearing an unrelated costume, and was never seen again. Scholar Neal Curtis described that earlier figure as an explicit racist who pushed anti-immigration policies. According to Curtis, he died after tripping on an American flag he had draped around himself and falling to his death. Curtis read the 1987 story as a good example of Marvel negotiating competing visions of America. He judged Walker's belief in America first, plus his appetite for revenge, to make him wholly unfit to carry the mantle. Gruenwald, though, was about to find that a villain built from opposites could sell comics, and that discovery started with a return appearance in issue 327.

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• 3. A Sales Experiment

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  Gruenwald never hid the commercial reason for what happened in Captain America #333. He said the main motive for replacing Steve Rogers was to lift sales, even though the story also grew logically out of earlier plots. He pointed to precedent. James Rhodes had taken over for Iron Man for roughly two years, longer than Gruenwald thought anyone expected. Beta Ray Bill had briefly stood in for Thor during a few issues. Gruenwald called this a trick he knew worked, because curious readers who normally skip a title will check out the big change. He also hoped the swap would sharpen what Captain America means, by showing someone groping to live up to it. Then the readers surprised him. His best selling cover was issue #321, which showed Captain America firing a gun. Fans wrote in wanting a harder Cap, closer to the Punisher or Wolverine. Gruenwald felt that would betray the character, so he gave fans the harder hero without making it Steve Rogers. Some letters even said they hoped Rogers would never return, because they could not predict what Walker would do next. Walker stayed the lead of Captain America from issue 333 through 350. The next step was a change of name, and it came in issue 354.

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• 4. Hero by Design

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  John Walker grew up in the fictional town of Custer's Grove, Georgia, idolizing his older brother Mike. Mike was a helicopter pilot who died in the Vietnam War in 1974, and their parents treasured his memory. Walker enlisted and served at Fort Bragg, but only in peacetime, so he never felt he matched his brother. After an honorable discharge, a friend told him about the Power Broker, a mysterious figure who granted superhuman abilities. Walker took the treatment and ended up in debt. He planned to join the Unlimited Class Wrestling Federation until he met Ethan Thurm, who became his manager and talked him into heroism instead. Thurm found financial backing, helped design a costume, and launched Walker as the corporate-sponsored Super-Patriot. At a rally in Central Park, Walker publicly criticized Captain America and was jumped by three extremist fans called the Bold Urban Commandos, or Buckies. The attack was secretly rehearsed. Steve Rogers later demanded he stop, warning that a panic could hurt real people. Walker refused, insisting the nation needed a new symbol. When Captain America kept declining a fight, Super-Patriot attacked him. Rogers landed more blows, but the trash-talking Walker absorbed them and finally hit him with a throwing star. Rogers was left doubting his own fighting ability. Then came the Washington Monument. Warhead, rather than be taken, died by detonating a hand grenade before he hit the ground. The rescue made Walker a celebrity, put him in The Washington Post and on national television, and let him call himself "America's future." It also caught the eye of Valerie Cooper, a presidential advisor, who had an idea about his future.

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• 5. Wearing the Shield

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  Steve Rogers left the Captain America identity after being ordered to report to the Commission on Superhuman Activities. He felt the name had outgrown its wartime role and did not want a political agenda. The Commission weighed Nick Fury and Sam Wilson as replacements. Fury was seen as too old and unwilling to give up his independence. For Wilson, the Commission did not believe the country was ready for a Black Captain America. Valerie Cooper proposed Walker. He hated the idea of becoming the symbol he had mocked, yet he answered, "Ma'am, if Uncle Sam wanted me to be Mickey Mouse, I'd do it." He had to give up Thurm as manager. Only Lemar Hoskins, one of the Buckies, passed a background check. Hoskins became the new Bucky and later switched to the codename Battlestar because of the racial connotations. Taskmaster trained Walker to use the shield. His early missions exposed the cost of the uniform. In one, he teamed with Tarantula to hunt political dissidents from Delvadia and grew uneasy as Tarantula threatened people in a detention center. They wounded Spider-Man, and Walker walked away, troubled that both Spider-Man and the immigrants feared him. He later learned the order came from a rogue agent, who was told the uniform should inspire, not terrify. Walker was still more brutal than Rogers. He inadvertently beat Professor Power to death. After Left-Winger and Right-Winger, the two rejected Buckies, announced his name and birthplace on television, the Watchdogs killed his parents. Walker nearly broke down, killed many of the Watchdogs, and left the two ex-Buckies in an explosion. They survived, badly burned. The Red Skull, in a clone of Rogers's body, lured Walker to Washington, but a thrown shield exposed the Skull to his own dust of death. Rogers took back the uniform, and the government then faked Walker's assassination so that he could reappear under a new identity.

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• 6. Difficult Teammate

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  Hypnotized into believing his parents were alive, Walker was given the cover name Jack Daniels and speech therapy to erase his old mannerisms. He soon resurfaced as U.S. Agent, in a Captain-style costume with a vibranium disc for a shield. The Commission posted him as a watchdog over the West Coast Avengers and Vision. His abrasive manner made him clash with the team, and above all with Hawkeye, Clint Barton. Their battle got both suspended. Later he nearly killed Spider-Woman, Julia Carpenter, then collapsed in grief as his guilt over past violence caught up. His hunt for the Scourge of the Underworld led to a cruel twist. A masked operative claiming to be his brother Mike offered him a place in the killers' program. The man turned out to be an imposter. The program's benefactor was former hero Thomas Halloway, who funded it after a bystander died from a bullet meant for him. Walker vowed that he would find true salvation where Halloway had not. When the Avengers moved to a United Nations charter, he received only one vote and lost his place before earning it back. After the West Coast Avengers dissolved, he threw his costume and shield into the Hudson River. Scarlet Witch persuaded him to join Force Works by calling him the team's backbone. In Tennessee he found Hawkeye, who was grieving Mockingbird, and the two fought before they reconciled. Walker admitted that he was haunted by his parents' deaths. Then he arranged a secret Christmas party in which Hawkeye listened from a distance to an apology from Tony Stark.

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• 7. Broken but Unbowed

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  During the Siege storyline, the villain Nuke cut off John Walker's left arm and leg. Walker was left in a wheelchair with a prosthetic arm. He refused advanced replacements because he did not want to become a cyborg like the man who crippled him. As thanks for his service, he was made warden of the Raft, the maximum security prison. During the Fear Itself storyline, Juggernaut damaged the Raft and a fail-safe reversed the air supply, threatening a deadly vacuum. Walker went to override it in person. Ghost helped him and earned his respect by protecting ungrateful inmates. Norman Osborn escaped, and Walker was left under suspicion. In Civil War II, Walker was persuaded by Steve Rogers to take on Sam Wilson, the new Captain America. Wilson won by dragging him into a tunnel full of great horned owls, whose sight gave Wilson the advantage in the dark. Years later, writer Christopher Priest called the story American Zealot a morality play in five acts. He described Walker as Captain America's scowling, emotionally damaged cousin. In Priest's miniseries, Walker has been fired and works as a private contractor. His younger sister Katie Tollifson, who resents him, claims their brother Mike killed himself. Cooper later says that claim came from Katie's psychosis. The story ends with Walker keeping the original shield, although it is official government property. Elsewhere, a later Thunderbolts team under Wilson Fisk had Walker as leader, and he told them, "I don't walk the line. I don't cross the line. I AM the line." Secretly, he was working with the FBI to find evidence against Fisk.

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• 8. Beyond the Page

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  Wyatt Russell plays John Walker in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, beginning with the television series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier in 2021. In that story, Walker takes the shield after the government hands it to him. He takes a recreated Super Soldier Serum and watches Karli Morgenthau kill his partner Lemar Hoskins. In rage, he kills one of her Flag Smashers in front of a horrified crowd. Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes take the shield from him, and the government strips him of his title. Valentina Allegra de Fontaine recruits him, and he forges a new shield from scrap metal and his war medals. At the end, she gives him a new suit and names him U.S. Agent. Russell returned in the 2025 film Thunderbolts*, where Walker's marriage to Olivia is strained, and he is set to appear again in Avengers: Doomsday in 2026. The comic character has also reached other media. He is a secret playable fighter in Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter and an assist character in Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes. His suit is an alternate costume for Captain America in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and Marvel Heroes. Action figures have come from Toy Biz and Hasbro, and a Minimates figure was paired with Taskmaster. Ranking lists have placed him in the top thirty of IGN's 2012 Top 50 Avengers, at 29th, and seventh in a 2020 list of Captain Americas from CBR.com. In the alternate reality of a What If story, Ronald Reagan and Nick Fury had to end his fight with Rogers.

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