Originally Posted by
Kurt Busiek
I don't get it. Kirby didn't say Steve's ancestor was a figment of his dreams, he says Steve dreamed about him. People dream about real people often. If I wake up one morning and tell my wife I dreamed about her father, I'm not saying her father's a figment of my dreams, merely that I had a dream about someone I met often and liked.
The character Roger was telling a story about is, if I recall correctly, partly the guy referred to in this story, and partly another Kirby creation -- from a pinup in CAPTAIN AMERICA'S BICENTENNIAL BATTLES, that imagines what Cap might have looked like had he been created in 1776.
The ancestor who fought Taurey's ancestor was presented as an actual relative of Steve's. The costumed guy in the pinup wasn't said to have been an ancestor of Steve's -- he was just Kirby having fun and filling space, as with the other pinups, showing a Wild West Captain America and an "Astro-Hero" Cap.
I think I was the guy who suggested to Roger that he tell a story about the 1776 Cap somehow, merging the ancestor from the Madbomb story with the pinup from Bicentennial Battles.
And yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense that Cap would have a direct ancestor in America during the Revolution and that he'd be the son of fairly recent Irish immigrants. But there's almost always a way to work around it.
For one, maybe Colonial Steve came to the Colonies to make money so he could return to Ireland and marry the girl he loved -- he'd have lived and died well before the Potato Famine, which started about 70 years after the Revolution did.
Or maybe Colonial Steve came to the Colonies to make money so he could send it back to Ireland to bring his wife and son Li'l Steve over, but something went wrong and he died before that could happen. His diary was sent back and became a keepsake.
Or maybe, when Steve called Colonial Steve an ancestor, he didn't mean he's a direct descendant of the guy. Maybe Colonial Steve is Our Steve's great-great-great-whatever-uncle, and the Rogers Steve is descended from is Colonial Steve's brother.
Maybe Colonial Steve's son was born in the US, but grew up to become a sailor, and his ship was taken by pirates and he was taken prisoner and bla bla bla, and he eventually wound up in Ireland, and was going to head back to Nantucket but he met a girl...
Or he was kidnaped by Stone Men from Saturn, and wound up back in Ireland. Comics can handle a lot.
But based on what we know from the comic excerpted above, Steve had an ancestor in Revolutionary Days and his diary survived for 160 years or so. And Modern Steve had a dream about the guy. That's not any sort of contradiction.
kdb