Captain America IV / Grand Director

William Burnside, PhD, also known as the Captain America of the 1950s, is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. He was created by writer Steve Englehart and artist Sal Buscema in Captain America #153–156 (Sept.–Dec. 1972) as an explanation for the reappearance of Captain America and Bucky in 1953 in Young Men comics and their subsequent adventures in the 1950s. It established through retroactive continuity that the character was a completely different one from the original Captain America, who was firmly established in The Avengers #4 as disappearing near the end of World War II. Since this revelation, the character serves as a foil personality to his predecessor.

In a later storyline, the character was given a new white costume and the title The Grand Director by Buscema and writers Roger McKenzie and Jim Shooter, in Captain America #232 (April 1979), and altered to be a villain and leader of a group of white supremacists that included a brainwashed Sharon Carter. The character was killed off at the end of that storyline and not used again until Captain America vol. 5 #42, returning to being active as the Captain America of the 1950s separate from the then-current Captain America, James "Bucky" Barnes.