Some good points on the challenge of writing Captain America long term.I'm not sure thats its gone through significantly more creator changes in the last 50 years compared to other Marvel books but he's definitely taken more vacations.Since he is seen as the living symbol of America I can understand a writer wanting to play with that by using another persona to keep Steve Rogers pristine.I would include the Steve Englehart run in the early/mid 70s as one of the highpoints

Well, when Superman gets replaced, they just go all the way and replace him with four different dudes!

I am not a big fan of Gruenwald's run (on the whole, I think Gruenwald is a clumsy writer whose ambitions are too big for his actual level of taent, if that makes sense?) but travishedgecoke once told me that he beleves Gruenwald had to pull out the silly stuff and just go wild with Capwolf and everything, because there was nowhere to go with Steve Rogers, really.

I love Steve. I wholeheartedly buy into Steve Rogers (unless the talent are obviously getting him wrong).

But, I think there's only a few types of stories where he really is used strongest, and one of those is replacing him. Replacing him reminds us what Steve is, by his absence.

The others are Steve Loses His Faith, Steve Makes Someone a Better Person The Man or the Icon, Cap on Ice, and Steve Punches Hitler aka Fascism Gets It In the Jaw.

Everything else is less about using Steve Rogers' uniqueness, and more just putting him in a story. Which, is cool, too, but is not the same thing. I love CapWolf. It's got one of my favorite Marvel supervillains in it, Cap becomes a werewolf, a bunch of super-scenting characters gather together. I'm very down with it. But it'll never be a classic Cap story, because it's not highlighting anything special about Cap, it's just a story he's in.


Superman has been replaced, as mentioned above, but also, there are a lot  - a lot - of Superman stories centering around him being replaced in people's hearts, of newer flashier harder heroes that capture something he feels he can't. In the end, the story will prove Superman, generally, to be better or more right, but they still feel the need to do the story to show it.

I liked that Gruenwald, in particular, and Stan and Jack to a degree, gave Steve Rogers some character flaws that other heroes really didn't have. He's shell-shocked in the 60s when he comes back. In Gru's run, he can be a stick in the mud. He tells Diamondback he won't date her because of her hairstyle clashing with his public image. She changes it just for him, but it's highlighted that he doesn't care if she's a former villain, he's not denying he's attracted to her, it's just that he's embarrassed or uncomfortable with how her style might clash with how people see him.

My favorite Cap comic ever has him acting hugely irresponsible in a moderate-minded-adult sense, and also a bit immature just in general, when he's dealing with a recently reappeared Sharon Carter almost as pettily as he can, but he also refuses to bug out with an army breathing down his neck, unless SHIELD helps him free a field of slaves he unchained while he was being attacked. In real life, the papers would write that guy off as a clown, history books would probably try to claim he was insane or mentally subnormal, there'd be a parody meme flying around facebook and tumblr. But in that comic, it's just absolutely the thing to do.

And, the very next Captain America issue was Cap replacing... himself! in the Heroes Reborn universe, after seeming to die again.

I'd argue that it's 'cause Englehart did it, and his Cap stuff set the tone for everything that follows. (Also he was by far the best Cap writer.)