Why Marvel Zombies Doesn't Actually Have a Captain America
Although he may have the iconic costume and shield, Marvel Zombies’ Steve Rogers isn't actually Captain America. Introduced during Ultimate Fantastic Four’s “Crossover” storyline, the Ultimate Reed Richards is seen talking to an alternate version of himself who proposes a meeting. Once the technology has been built, Reed discovers he’s been manipulated into opening the door to a universe full of zombified superhumans. As the story played out, further exploration into the origin and adventures of the superpowered zombies revealed that while their world is like the mainstream Marvel universe, there are significant changes that prevent it from being an exact replica.
In Ultimate Fantastic Four #21 by Mark Millar and Greg Land, the Earth-1610's Reed Richards is seen secretly conversing with an older version of himself from another world. Appearing like the Reed Richards from the mainstream Earth-616, he marvels at the differences between his world and the Ultimate Universe and follows up on their plans to meet. Having sent instructions on how to build a gateway to travel between worlds, Reed finds a destroyed and desolate New York, full of rubble and corpses. He is approached by his doppelganger and his Fantastic Four, with the team revealed to be conniving zombies looking for the next world to consume.
As narrated by the zombie Reed in Ultimate Fantastic Four #22, their world had an unexpected visitor appear, with the Avengers dispatched to the scene, one of them being Colonel America. The visitor was a zombified Sentry from another dimension who infected the Avengers and thus began the infection that overtook the Earth in a matter of days. Other books such as Marvel Zombies vs Army of Darkness and Marvel Zombies: Dead Days which detailed the early stages of the infection confirmed these events with Colonel America and the zombie Avengers returning to Avengers Mansion shortly afterwards. Upon their return, they devoured their faithful butler Jarvis together and later put out a call to the entire Avengers roster, including the reserves so they could infect them as well. Strangely, while almost all of these heroes appear as they are in classic comics, Steve Rogers has some notable differences to regular canon.
Although Marvel confirmed that the Marvel Zombies’ Steve Rogers life was almost identical to his mainstream counterpart, there were one or two noticeable differences. Besides the rank change, the Marvel Zombies Steve had also served as President of the United States, a characteristic that he shares with his counterpart in the Ultimate Universe (both inspired by a canonical but unsuccessful campaign to elect the mainstream Steve Rogers.)
The Marvel Zombies began as an interesting alternate reality for Reed to visit, but once they had their own series, Marvel heavily cut down on the differences to mainstream lore. Originally, the story arc was about a parallel reality full of zombies failing to continue their invasion into the Ultimate Universe but once the story continued, the focus shifted to be about the Marvel Zombies characters dealing with their situation, at which point they needed to be recognizable. This ended up with the "heroes" of Marvel Zombies as similar as possible to Earth-616... apart from Steve Rogers, who gained a new codename and a past stint as President of America due to early comments in Ultimate Fantastic Four.
Whether it was cosmically powered zombies grappling with the reality of their actions or survivors trying to live in a dying universe, the noticeable differences between Marvel Zombies and other universes quickly disappeared as they were no longer necessary for the creative direction. While this was ultimately the right call so fans could jump into Marvel Zombies with existing assumptions about the characters, leftover details like Colonel/President America show that the franchise originally had fun with its multiversal, alt-reality status.
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