Captain America No. 34 has been on stands for over two weeks now and I’ve not commented on the changing of the guard.

It’s not that I didn’t want to say anything about the change in the wake of the death of Steve Rogers. The man had been Captain America since World War II and so I really wanted to think out what I was going to say when someone else assumed the post.

See, it’s not a simple costume change, it’s not handing over the togs to a new guy that’ll maintain the status quo … This really a whole new Star Spangled Avenger.

Truth be told, the fact that Captain America would carry a gun wasn’t that big of a deal to me. He carried a military issued 1911 Colt like every other grunt. I’d seen him fire rifles and even use explosives.

Steve Rogers never had an aversion to firearms, he just liked to take it easy on people. But the folks at Marvel have put my mind at ease, that carrying the sidearm didn’t mean a whole new attitude for the character.

By putting Bucky Barnes (formerly Caps side-kick Bucky and of late the Winter Soldier), they’ve put a man in the post that knows no one will ever take Steve Roger’s place.

And Eisner Award-winning writer Ed Brubaker let us see the man’s fear of letting down an idol. He gives us an insight into what it would be like to be forced to fill the void left by a legend. We would all find the shadow such a person cast was too great to fill, and so we would have to do the best that we could in their place.

And by humbling Bucky in this way, he raised him up.

You see, Captain America is a hero that I didn’t glean to right away. It took a while for me to realize that the man was an embodiment, not of America, but of what America was supposed to be. He was a man living his life to live up to the ideal. Not just as a symbol, but as a man.

He was one of the few heroes that I’d spent summer days writing about. I wouldn’t be sitting with paper and pencil, I’d craft the story in my mind. It would be an obsession that ran the course of days, weeks, whatever amount of time it took to get the story just so. But I didn’t put them to paper, they were to precious to me to share.

But I’m going to share one with you that I shared when Rogers was shot and killed.

See, I’d never been able to draw Captain America. I’d tried for years and it would never come out quite right. And then I realized that I didn’t need to draw him with the flag as so many have done in the past. I didn’t need to show some fantastic adventure. I realized I should have him shaking a child’s hand.

As a bit of a treat to myself, I thought I’d draw myself as a kid shaking my hero’s hand. I started with the child as I was worried that I wouldn’t get Cap right and that it would take several tries.

But for some reason I put a cap on the child, even though I didn’t often wear them. Then I remembered the story. And I drew the child I remembered from that summer of my youth.

I thought, if kids can believe that Santa can be fake but have real ties, why not the superheroes that show up at parties and parades. So I wrote this story in my head, where the party going heroes are actually folks with super powers, but they are very low level powers. They stand in for the heroes because they can manage to not get killed but they don’t really have the chops to be real heroes.

I imagined an adventure where some of these guys were hanging out together and something goes awry so they have to step up to the plate and save the day. I thought it’d be fun to mix up the powers like Spidey having mental abilities and such. But the idea is that one of them, the one dressed as Captain America, is awfully good and leads them to overcome the bad guys.

The heroes for a day go on to the places they were heading too when the story began and we see that the one dressed as Captain America was going to meet a child as a fulfillment for the Make a Wish Foundation. It’s the real man, he’d never send a substitute to something so important as meeting a child who loves him so much that his final wish is to see Cap. “Hang in there son,” he’d say. “I’ll be back to see you next month.”

He would mean it. And he would return each month, as long as he and the child lived.

My hand drew a cap because the child in the drawing is undergoing chemotherapy and he’s embarrassed, because it’s taken his hair.