MARVEL COMICS wants to know if Captain America fans - and America in general - can handle "The Truth": The first Captain America was black.

This revelation will come in a six-issue mini-series ($2.99 each) that the comics company plans to issue beginning Nov. 20.

"Everybody's talking about it," said Martin King, co-owner of Showcase Comics on South Street. "We're getting a lot of subscriptions for it. Everybody just keeps going, 'When? When? When?' "

According to Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada, the idea for the new Captain America series first surfaced two years ago.

"We were in the process of creating this new line of Marvel Comics called the Ultimate line, which is sort of a re-envisioning of our Marvel superheroes," he recalled, "and the idea of a black Captain America came out of that meeting."

Marvel CEO Bill Jemas gets the credit, Quesada continued. "He just thought it was an interesting idea, because so much of America's military is African-American. He just felt that it would only make sense that an African-American male would most likely be Captain America."

Fiscal considerations scuttled the idea at first.

"We have so many companies that license out the image of Captain America, and that particular image of Captain America is of Steve Rogers, a white American male," Quesada said. "So we couldn't go in that direction with Cap."

But Marvel wouldn't let the idea die. Fan reaction was too strong, though it wasn't necessarily positive.

"The first time I had heard [the idea]," said "Truth" editor Axel Alonso, "was when I heard what a response it had evoked from people on the Internet...90 percent of whom were severely angry and uncomfortable with the notion of a black man in the Captain America outfit.

"From there, a common-sense question emerged, which is 'Why would it make people uncomfortable?'"

Indeed, a Southern retailer already has told Quesada he won't be ordering the series. Alonso said he didn't understand that response. To him, the new story line adds to the Captain America mythos. And it's a logical way to go.

"If you've heard of...Tuskegee [the United States Public Health Service experiment from 1932 to 1972, in which black men were denied treatment for syphilis and deceived about their condition so the disease's impact could be studied] and the history of Captain America - which involved a super-soldier program - you wind up wondering if it would have been blonde-haired, blue-eyed white guys who would have been the guinea pigs," he said.

"Truth" focuses on three African-American men in super-soldier experiments during World War II. Alonso tapped Bob Morales - who had never done a mainstream comic project - to write it, and Kyle Baker to draw it. Both are black.

"Bob and Kyle are aware of the cliches and stereotypes that are frequently perpetrated on black characters in mainstream media," Alonso said, "and they're making sure that their research is such that they can paint a broader portrait of what it meant to be black in that time."

"This is Kyle and Bob's story," he added. "Ultimately, if Bob and Kyle punk out, this book is dead. Thankfully, they haven't."

Alonso stressed that "Truth" is "not a stunt engineered by Marvel because we think it'll be controversial and make big sales."

He added, "If I had wanted it to be a big money earner, I could have contacted any number of people [to write and draw the series] ho would have been...the Tom Cruises and Steven Spielbergs of our industry... .Sometimes you want Steven Soderbergh and Steve Buscemi."