Did Earth-616 Captain America get a power upgrade in recent years?

[ixfd64]

A long time ago, I posted a thread on the old CBR forums asking which characters were more powerful than their comic book counterparts, and several people mentioned Captain America from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This was before the helicopter feat in Captain America: Civil War further increased the upper limit on Steve's strength. However, I've seen some threads on other forums that suggest Earth-616 Captain America outclasses the MCU version. For example, some people are saying that Master Chief would stomp MCU Captain America but lose to Captain America from the comics. Is there a reason for this consistency? Or did Earth-616 Steve become more powerful in recent years?

[Beadle]

Comic Cap is, to the best of my knowledge, still one of the poster children (along with Batman and classic-rather-than-weird-King-of-the-Dead Black Panther) for Comic Book Peak Human, abbreviated hereabouts to CBPH, in all physical characteristics (strength, speed, endurance, durability, agility…). CBPH is, by real world standards, well into superhuman territory, but in comics it’s achievable by an unpowered human’s natural genetics and pure training, without any other enhancements (see Wayne, Bruce).

Note: there are examples of people among the Big 2 exceeding CBPH without physical enhancements (Daredevil’s or Cassandra Cain’s speed, Classic Wilson Fisk’s strength etc.), but those are crazy outliers and should be treated as such.

MCU Cap is explicitly superhuman in strength and durability, even by comics standards. Has been since Day 1, but later feats such as the likes of the aforementioned Civil War helicopter feat and the motorbike throwing feat from… I think Age of Ultron…?… have extended that further.

In a fight, if he got hold of him, MCU Cap would probably crush 616 Cap. And if he landed a solid hit, it would seriously hurt him.

But…

… the important thing here is that MCU Cap’s superhuman status doesn’t extend to his speed, which isn’t even close to CBPH, and the phrase ‘Speed Kills’ makes a big difference here.

616 Cap’s speed and skill advantage mean that he can hit MCU Cap with impunity, as the latter would be too slow to block most of his hits, and at the same time 616 Cap can dance round MCU Cap’s own attempts to hit or grapple him, and would be incredibly difficult to hit.

Whether 616 would actually beat MCU, I can’t recall the consensus and we might need to debate.

But there’s certainly the start of an argument there, and the Master Chief example is quite clear, in that MC has no significant speed feats at all, to the best of my knowledge.

Hope that helps.

[ixfd64]

Yeah, that makes sense. And I agree speed makes a big difference. It's definitely a reason speedsters are often considered to be overpowered.