Captain America: The First Avenger First Avenger" tells the story of Steve Rogers, a sickly man from Brooklyn who is transformed into super-soldier Captain America and must stop the Red Skull, who intends to use an artifact called the "Tesseract" as an energy-source for world domination. "Captain America: The First Avenger" began as a concept in 1997 and was scheduled for distribution by Artisan Entertainment. However, a lawsuit, not settled until September 2003, disrupted the project. In 2005, Marvel Studios received a loan from Merrill Lynch, and planned to finance and release it through Paramount Pictures. Directors Jon Favreau and Louis Leterrier were interested in
Captain America (William Burnside) in contemporary times, to battle the original Captain America). This complicated origin is the reason that some sources list "Young Men" #24 as this character's first appearance, when in fact this, and subsequent 1950s-published Captain America stories, was clearly created with the intention of depicting the original Captain America. A 1977 story, "What If" Vol. 1 #4, (August, 1977), introduces two other, previous Captain Americas - William Naslund, appointed by Truman in 1945 to succeed the original Captain America, and Jeff Mace, who succeeds Naslund as Cap in the spring of 1946 after Naslund is killed in action. These versions