Even Captain America Can't Escape Spider-Man's Most Ridiculous Meme
Warning: contains preview images for Captain America #0!
Not even Captain America can escape one of Spider-Man’s most ridiculous memes from Marvel Comics. In a preview for Captain America #0, on sale in print and digital April 20th, Captain America’s long-time foe Arnim Zola unleashes his latest scheme—to turn humanity into dinosaurs! Zola’s plan bears more than a passing resemblance to one cooked up by the pterodactyl-man Sauron, which would go on to form the basis for one of Spider-Man’s most infamous memes.
Sauron is one of Marvel’s most unique villains, with an outlandish origin and powers to boot. Sauron is Karl Lykos, who was bitten by mutant pterodactyls as a child. As a result of the bite, Lykos turned into an energy vampire and in his first appearance in 1969’s X-Men #60, Lykos drained Havok’s life energy, turning him into a giant humanoid pterodactyl. Christening himself Sauron, he would make the Savage Land his base of operations. In 2015’s Spider-Man and the X-Men #2, the Web-Slinger took a class of young mutants to the Savage Land, where they encountered Sauron, who had conceived a plan to turn humans into dinosaurs. Spider-Man asked Sauron why he did not use his formidable intellect to help humanity, to which Sauron replied he did not want to help humans—he wanted to turn them into dinosaurs. The panel sparked one of Spider-Man’s most popular memes, and now the two Captain Americas are facing a similar plan from Arnim Zola.
The preview for Captain America #0, written by Tochi Onyebuchi, Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzig, illustrated by Mattia De Iluis, and lettered by Joe Caramagna opens with a riff on the Spider-Man/Sauron meme. Arnim Zola has attacked New York City in broad daylight, revealing that through shell companies and other legal means, he was able to build, and launch, a rocket that will release a special compound that turns humans into dinosaurs, or “Zolasaurses,” as he calls them. The two Captain Americas, Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson, arrive to stop Zola; Zola launches the rocket, and it falls on Sam to disarm it.
Zola’s plan to convert humanity into dinosaurs is ridiculous, especially by his standards. While it is similar to Sauron’s plan on a surface level, there is a darker layer to it. Both Sauron and Zola are highly intelligent men, scientists who have made discoveries far beyond their contemporaries—yet both choose to use their intellect for evil means. In these particular instances, they want to convert people into dinosaurs, a ridiculous use of their gifts. Fans latched onto how silly Sauron’s scheme was, and reacted appropriately, turning it into a meme, and now Arnim Zola wants in on the act too. The creators behind Captain America’s upcoming relaunch have stated that Zola will not be the issue’s primary villain, meaning his plan to turn humanity into Zolasaurses is doomed to fail.
Sauron, and his dreams of a dinosaur planet, fueled one of the greatest Spider-Man memes of all time, and now Captain America is facing something equally ridiculous in a preview for April’s Captain America #0.