Black Crow to replace Captain America?

COMIC URBAN LEGEND: J. M. DeMatteis planned to kill Captain America during his run on the title.It’s true. My last year on the book was one long ongoing saga involving Captain America’s final battle with the Red Skull. It was to reach a turning point with a double-sized CAP #300 in which the Red Skull dies and Cap, after (at the time) forty-plus years of solving problems with his fists, begins to wonder if there’s another way to live his ideals and change the world. In the proposal I presented to my editor, the late, great Mark Gruenwald, Cap was, ultimately, going to disavow violence as a tool for change—essentially rejecting the entire superhero mindset—and start working for world peace. (Keep in mind that this was at the height of the Reagan “evil empire”/cold war period, so it was a pretty radical idea for its day.)

The plan was then to find Cap’s replacement. I toyed with the idea of Sam Wilson, the Falcon, becoming the new Cap ... but (as I recall—and, let’s face it, it’s been a while) I finally settled on Black Crow, a Native American character I’d used in the book, as the new Captain America.