The year 2009 was the 70th anniversary of Timely Comics, and to mark it, Marvel launched a bunch of one-shots beginning in June and running through to the end of the year. Each one bore the name of a Timely Comics series (i.e., the name of Marvel’s publishing company before it was rebranded as Marvel). These are pre-616 continuity stories by my reckoning: I think the 616 really launches with Fantastic Four #1, and everything before that may or may not be canon, depending on whether some writer decides to fold it in.
I am assuming these one-shots are intended to show pre-F4 in-continuity adventures, so I’m not tagging this as not within the 616. However, not much in these issues really matters all that much so I’m just doing a group post for all of the one shots.
Captain America Comics 70th Anniversary Special was the first of these one-shots, which is fitting, and featured the stellar creative team of James Robinson and Marcos Martin. Surprisingly, it doesn’t feature Red Skull. Instead, Bucky recalls how Steve Rogers, after being rejected by the Army as 4F, managed to defeat a Nazi hiding in Brooklyn and secure a copy of the Super Soldier Formula.
As a result of his efforts, he’s recruited to be the first test case.
This is definitely a heavy origin retcon that appears to be an attempt to make the movie version canonical, but it’s also consistent enough with what we know about Steve’s character.