Once upon a time Steve Rogers was the only product of America’s Project Rebirth, the super-soldier research project. But as chronicled in my new Screen Rant, he’s not even the first super-soldier now (Protocide beat him). My article looks at most of the heroes and villains who got power from Rebirth, from Nazi metahumans to aging mad scientists. Victorius, the Super-Soldier on the John Romita cover here (all rights remain with current holder) is the latter, and I find him surprisingly interesting: a scientist who finally cracked the super-soldier formula, realized he’d spent his entire life cooped up in a laboratory and so used the formula to turn himself into Victorius, the Super Soldier! I guess at my age that seems a very plausible personal arc.
There are lots of other super soldiers out there who have no connection with the original project. Man-Thing, for example, was the result of a super-soldier project with no ties to the super-soldier project. Though later retcons (references in this Ka-Zar story, actually) established scientist Ted Sallis was, in fact, trying to duplicate the original super-soldier treatment. In any case, I haven’t covered any such wannabes in my article.
