Spoilers follow for last night’s Agents of SHIELD.
On last night’s Agents of SHIELD episode, "Meet the New Boss," actor Jason O'Mara’s character was introduced. As the replacement for Clark Gregg’s Phil Coulson as the new director of the titular organization, Marvel had kept O’Mara’s character a mystery leading up to the new season of SHIELD -- though they had also hinted that he has roots that extend back in Marvel history to the 1940s. And now we know the new director’s name: He’s Jeffrey Mace, and he certainly does have a pretty significant backstory in the comics.
But first, let’s note that while the character is only verbally called “Jeffrey” in last night’s episode, subtitles reveal that his name is “Mace.” Obviously Marvel is planning on teasing out his true identity in the coming weeks, but it’s clear that this is Jeffrey Mace… also known in the comics as the Patriot. And also once known as… Captain America!
Mace first appeared all the way back in The Human Torch #4 in 1941, back when Marvel was still known as Timely Comics. (This was the Golden Age of comics, an era where the Torch wasn’t that smart-mouthed kid from the Fantastic Four but rather an android who could burst into flames.) Going by the name the Patriot, the character also popped up in a batch of issues of the anthology book Marvel Mystery Comics, though he never achieved the popularity of his fellow Timely players the Torch, Prince Namor, or Captain America.
Decades later the character reappeared in the 1970s, first in the popular Kree-Skrull War story in The Avengers in 1972 and then in The Invaders in 1976. That latter book retconned the history of Cap, Namor and the Torch (and their sidekicks) as teammates who fought together in World War II, while Patriot was revealed to have been part of a team called the Liberty Legion alongside the likes of the Whizzer and Miss America.
But the really interesting part about Jeffrey Mace/Patriot came when it was revealed in another retcon that he at one point served as Captain America while Steve Rogers was on ice after the war. What had happened was when Rogers was revived from suspended animation by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in Avengers #4 in 1964, the writer-artist duo were in fact reinventing Cap’s history. When the character was actually in publication during and after World War II, there was no storyline involving him getting frozen. He came home from the war -- with Bucky even! But as superhero comics became less popular in the intervening years, so did Cap. There were attempts to keep the character relevant into the 1950s, where he fought no-good Commies and the like, but ultimately Steve Rogers faded away…
But with Marvel’s continuity being so important, it must’ve bugged the writers and artists following Cap’s return in 1964 that there were all these weird and random stories about him that took place after he was supposedly frozen. And so it was eventually explained that other guys secretly took over the mantle of Captain America while Steve Rogers was missing. That included the former Patriot, Jeffrey Mace, for a spell.
Now, while it seems unlikely that Agents of SHIELD will have their version of Mace don the uniform and shield of Captain America, it is worth nothing that Cap was mentioned in last night’s episode. Mace is relaunching SHIELD as a “legitimate agency” again, and he specifically mentions that Steve Rogers has gone AWOL in the wake of Captain America: Civil War. Mace is no ordinary human either -- he’s been established as an Inhuman with super-strength and durability, so he certainly could fill in for Cap in a pinch. And who knows, maybe in the MCU there were also other guys who filled the role of Captain America in the decades between WWII and Rogers’ reappearance… guys like Jeffrey Mace.
Talk to Senior Editor Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottCollura.
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