MIDNIGHT MARVEL
Captain America: Sorcerer Supreme
Origins: The Boy Who Refused the Serum
Born into a wealthy American family, Steve Rogers spends much of his childhood suffering from tuberculosis. His father uses the family's wealth to finance journeys around the world, seeking medical treatment and possible cures for his ailing son.
During the worst periods of his illness, Steve experiences what he believes may be a deeper connection to another dimension of reality. These experiences awaken his fascination with theology, miracles, mysticism, magic, the paranormal, and ancient artifacts.
His travels eventually take him to Kamar-Taj, where the Ancient One, the reigning Sorcerer Supreme, refuses to cure him. Steve ultimately overcomes his tuberculosis, but his interest in the supernatural never diminishes.
Only much later does he discover why the Ancient One refused him: curing him would have prevented the experiences that ultimately led him toward the mystic arts, his rejection of the Super-Soldier Serum, and his eventual succession as Sorcerer Supreme.
When World War II begins, Steve's accumulated knowledge of the occult makes him indispensable to the American military. Although offered the opportunity to undergo super-soldier enhancement, he refuses, choosing instead to pursue the limits of his natural mind and body.
Unlike Red Skull, Steve believes that physical enhancement is not the ultimate expression of human potential.
World War II: The Howling Commandos
Captain Steve Rogers becomes the commanding officer of an extraordinary American military unit: the Howling Commandos.
Led in combat by Nick Fury, the Commandos are soldiers who have undergone experimental biological transformations, including diluted or genetically targeted variations of the Super-Soldier Serum. Their enhancements grant them the ability to assume ferocious, animalistic forms resembling werewolves, werebeasts, and other supernatural creatures.
Steve uses his occult knowledge, a personal talisman, and enchanted dog-tag-like necklaces to help control the soldiers' increasingly feral transformations.
During an assault on a German outpost, the unit becomes trapped on grounds that interfere with Steve's magic. Their regulating enchantments fail, and the transformed Commandos lose their ability to recognize their commanding officer.
Having completed their violent assault, the creatures turn upon Steve.
With the men threatening to tear him apart, and Steve facing the possibility of destroying them through magic, he discovers that the only conditioning remaining in their minds is their allegiance to America.
Desperately attempting to communicate his identity, Steve proclaims that he is their Captain America.
The creatures begin howling "America" in broken speech.
The name Captain America is born, not through military propaganda or a national ceremony, but through the desperate attempt of a commanding officer to reach the humanity still buried within his monstrous soldiers.
Red Skull and the Opening of Hell
During WWII, Steve and the Howling Commandos oppose Red Skull and his occult activities within the SS.
Red Skull has acquired an extraordinary shield inscribed with runes and mystical symbols. His objective is to harness the artifact's authority over Hell, enabling him to command infernal forces and eventually use them to conquer Earth.
A confrontation between Steve and Red Skull involving the shield opens an actual gateway into Hell.
This event has an importance neither the Allied forces nor the wider human population understands.
The gateway permits Mephisto to escape Hell and enter the mortal realm.
Steve ultimately recovers the shield, and Red Skull is banished into Hell through its supernatural powers.
The Super-Soldier Serum allows Red Skull to survive encounters with demons, hellions, and other infernal beings. His enhancements also amplify an innate affinity for dark magic, allowing him to accumulate occult knowledge during his imprisonment.
Meanwhile, Steve comes to understand the shield primarily as a means of reaching the Howling Commandos, who eventually establish their existence within Hell itself.
He does not initially comprehend the full extent of the shield's ability to exercise authority over Mephisto.
The Howling Commandos: Seven Rulers of Hell
Rather than attempting to restore his comrades to ordinary human life, Steve allows them to reside in Hell, where their increasingly feral natures can thrive.
For a human being, the realm is a nightmare of incessant violence, warfare, and survival.
For the Howling Commandos, it is an enormous supernatural playground.
They can hunt, fight, grow, conquer, and establish territories without suppressing their transformed identities. Over decades, they become powerful enough to command territories and populations of their own.
Their identities and abilities are:
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Nick Fury — The Werewolf. The most formidable of the Howling Commandos, Fury transforms into a traditional bipedal werewolf whose size can vary considerably. He becomes a baron or king within Hell, establishing his own realm and raising a family. Although increasingly independent, he continues answering Steve Rogers' summons.
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Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan — The Sasquatch. A great ape-like werebeast possessing immense physical strength and the ability to become invisible to human sight. He retains the strongest powers of speech among the Commandos and can mimic animals and people, inducing mental disarray in his targets.
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Gabe Jones — The Amphibian. A highly durable aquatic werebeast resembling a creature from the Black Lagoon, equipped with venomous barbs and talons.
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Isadore "Izzy" Cohen — The Biomechanical Beast. A fusion of living corpse and machinery, continuously repairing, expanding, and reconstructing himself into an increasingly enormous mechanical monstrosity, reminiscent of Frankenstein's creature.
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Dino Manelli — The Demon Beast. A ferocious, demonic-looking transformed warrior distinguished by his horns.
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Robert "Rebel" Ralston — The Howling Wolf. A second werewolf, thinner and faster than Fury, whose howl functions as a powerful offensive weapon.
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Percival "Pinky" Pinkerton — The Werehare. A monstrous rabbit, hare, or jackalope-like creature whose hypnotic eyes induce terror, disorientation, mesmerism, visual duplication, and perceptual distortion.
Over time, the Commandos' allegiance to America and even their original commanding officer begins to diminish as their own infernal kingdoms become more important to them.
Nick Fury remains the exception.
He continues answering Steve's calls, though not always agreeing with him. His loyalty is intertwined with his desire to prevent Steve from personally entering Hell and investigating the political arrangements underpinning the Commandos' territories.
The Commandos also become central to Mephisto's continued freedom.
Although powerful enough to govern much of Hell and contain the rivalries of its native inhabitants, their earthly origins prevent them from exercising the infernal authority necessary to bind Mephisto to his own kingdom.
They are consequently ideal rulers in his absence.
The Secret Bargain: Captain America and Mephisto
Unknown to the public, and to those who believe Captain America is humanity's greatest supernatural protector, Steve Rogers knowingly entered into a bargain with Mephisto.
The bargain originated from Steve's lifelong confrontation with human mortality.
His childhood illness, experiences during WWII, understanding of the Super-Soldier Serum, and subsequent mastery of magic convinced him that neither conventional medicine, political institutions, nor physical enhancement could permanently protect humanity.
Even a perfect super-soldier could not save everyone.
Human beings would continue to age, suffer, and die. Governments would continue to fail them. Their children would inherit the same vulnerabilities.
Mephisto offered Steve something greater: the immortality of America, its sons and daughters, and ultimately the human race.
In exchange, Steve would periodically use his shield to open the gateway between Earth and Hell, enabling Mephisto to remain in the mortal world.
Without the renewed connection, instability in Hell would eventually pull Mephisto back into his domain and close his escape.
The Howling Commandos' continuing warfare and control over Hell's rival principalities further sustain the arrangement, preventing infernal powers from restoring Mephisto's confinement.
On Earth, Mephisto begins granting immortality to the original Empyres, creating a population of vampires whose feeding, killing, transformations, and allegiance nourish his supernatural power.
The Empyres, including vampiric mutants, become the foundation of a growing immortal civilization.
Steve understands what is happening.
His campaigns against vampires are not intended to exterminate vampirism entirely. Instead, they regulate its expansion, preventing uncontrolled outbreaks from destabilizing humanity before the larger arrangement is prepared.
The emerging Dark State is the structure through which the vampiric population can eventually become sufficiently widespread, organized, and accepted that human beings begin voluntarily choosing transformation.
Steve believes this process will ensure America's survival and ultimately give him access to power beyond anything the Super-Soldier Serum could have provided.
What appears to be Captain America's prolonged struggle against a supernatural infestation is actually his management of its development.
Captain America Becomes Sorcerer Supreme
Throughout his long life, Steve continues developing the mystical knowledge first acquired during his childhood journeys.
He eventually succeeds the Ancient One as Sorcerer Supreme, establishing the New York Sanctum Sanctorum as the principal house of sorcerers and making America a center of mystical authority.
His mastery of magic fundamentally transforms the way he fights.
Steve retains the shield recovered from Red Skull, eventually incorporating the Eye of Agamotto into it.
The artifact possesses capabilities extending far beyond its physical defensive qualities.
Steve can manipulate time during combat, temporarily freeze its passage, teleport through the shield, perform powerful spells, and control the shield's movements without regard for ordinary physics.
He can throw it across battlefields, strike multiple opponents through magically controlled ricochets, suspend it in midair, and recall it at will.
Most distinctively, he can open gateways to Hell through the shield, allowing members of the Howling Commandos to emerge at different positions during an engagement.
The physically unenhanced Steve Rogers has become one of Earth's most formidable supernatural beings.
Yet the greatest power associated with his shield remains the one Red Skull covets: its authority to compel Mephisto to grant favors and requests.
Red Skull: The Conquest of Hell
Red Skull has spent decades surviving inside Hell, accumulating occult secrets, supernatural protections, and loyalties among its inhabitants.
His resistance to the Penance Stare results from a combination of his complete absence of guilt, accumulated infernal knowledge and protective occult practices, and the dark magical affinity amplified by his Super-Soldier Serum.
His ambitions remain rooted in the objectives he pursued during WWII.
He wants to escape Hell, recover the shield, and command infernal armies in the conquest of Earth.
To accomplish this, he seeks to restore Mephisto to direct authority over Hell.
With Mephisto returned to his kingdom, Red Skull intends to exploit the shield's binding authority to compel the infernal ruler and obtain the military power he originally sought.
Red Skull begins gathering his own infernal allies and preparing assaults against the territories controlled by the Howling Commandos.
The objective is to destabilize their rule and force Steve Rogers to intervene personally.
His plan threatens Nick Fury's kingdom, family, and the other Commandos' accumulated power, creating a direct confrontation between Captain America and Red Skull within Hell.
But Red Skull ultimately faces a revelation that transforms his understanding of their decades-long rivalry.
Steve Rogers knew Mephisto had escaped. He had deliberately maintained the gateway and had willingly entered into a bargain with the Devil.
Red Skull discovers that the man who defeated him and rejected the Super-Soldier Serum has secretly helped construct the supernatural order Red Skull is attempting to seize.
Their ambitions remain opposed: Red Skull seeks dominion over humanity, while Steve intends to secure humanity's immortality through the arrangement he made with Mephisto.
Johnny Blaze, Zarathos, and Blade Rider
The Spirit of Vengeance becomes essential to the growing conflict between Earth and Hell.
During his imprisonment, Red Skull encounters Zarathos, who has been held captive by Mephisto. Red Skull frees the entity, allowing Zarathos to reunite with Johnny Blaze for a period.
Mephisto subsequently confronts Johnny, separates him from Zarathos, and transforms him into an undead vampire.
Johnny becomes one of the earliest vampires associated with this infernal arrangement. His transformation prevents his damned soul from reuniting with Zarathos in Hell.
Meanwhile, Zarathos becomes embroiled in warfare with Hell's principalities and the increasingly powerful Howling Commandos.
Blade, already a vampire hunter, enters Hell to recover the Spirit of Vengeance.
With assistance from Red Skull, Blade successfully binds Zarathos to himself, becoming Blade Rider.
This new incarnation combines Blade's vampiric heritage and vampire-hunting abilities with the supernatural powers of Ghost Rider.
His appearance retains Blade's distinctive black sunglasses, now worn over a flaming skull with pronounced vampire fangs.
He continues riding a motorcycle and wielding his vampire-killing sword, which can now be manipulated and directed using Ghost Rider's supernatural chains.
Blade Rider emerges from Hell as a formidable opponent of the Empyres, Mephisto, and the vampirized Johnny Blaze.
Red Skull's assistance is connected to his own infernal ambitions, while Blade's objectives remain centered on combating vampirism and Mephisto's influence.
Their interests intersect without becoming the same.
The Opposition to Captain America
As Mephisto's arrangement approaches the point where the Dark State can openly reshape humanity, several powerful figures become obstacles to Steve Rogers' vision.
Blade Rider and Zarathos oppose the vampiric expansion and Mephisto's influence over the living and the dead. Blade's personal history as a vampire hunter and Zarathos' experience with Mephisto place them at the center of the resistance.
Spider-Man is caught between the supernatural factions and the wider conflict over humanity's future.
The Fantastic Four, whose Midnight Universe reinterpretation includes experimentation with magic, become involved in the struggle surrounding the supernatural transformation of Earth.
The mutants are drawn into the conflict through the existence and expansion of the Empyres, whose vampirism intersects with mutant abilities.
Nick Fury ultimately stands among those opposing Steve's larger arrangement, despite his continuing personal bond with his former commanding officer, his status as a ruler of Hell, and his responsibilities to his infernal family.
Red Skull, pursuing his own conquest of Earth, also stands against Captain America and Mephisto's intended order. His desire to seize the shield and command Hell makes him an independent enemy rather than an ally of the resistance.
These characters do not share the same motives or ambitions.
But each, in a different way, stands between Captain America and the fulfillment of his bargain.
The Central Conflict
The Midnight Marvel Universe is ultimately shaped by a supernatural agreement originating from WWII.
Red Skull's attempt to command Hell through an occult shield opened the gateway that allowed Mephisto to escape.
Steve Rogers recovered the shield, defeated Red Skull, and became Captain America through his relationship with the transformed Howling Commandos.
The Commandos eventually became rulers of Hell, while Steve continued opening the gateway to maintain his connection with them.
Yet Steve was not merely preserving his comrades.
He was honoring an agreement with Mephisto that promised to eliminate humanity's greatest vulnerability: mortality.
The emergence of the Empyres, the expansion of vampirism, the political development of the Dark State, the instability of Hell, and the continuing authority of the Howling Commandos all became interconnected parts of that arrangement.
The revelation places Steve Rogers at the center of the supernatural order his fellow heroes believed he was defending humanity against.
He remains an extraordinary sorcerer, a veteran military commander, and a man whose ambition is rooted in the suffering he witnessed throughout his lifetime.
But he has decided that ensuring humanity's survival is worth an alliance with Mephisto.
And now the immortality he intends to give humanity threatens to become inseparable from the dominion of Hell.
Captain America refused the Super-Soldier Serum because it could only perfect one man. Decades later, as Sorcerer Supreme, he has made a bargain with Mephisto to offer immortality to an entire civilization—and the heroes of the Midnight Universe must decide whether that promised salvation is worth the price.
Source: r/MarvelMidnight · by /u/Willbraham