PRELUDE: Captain America #76

Featuring: Captain America
Release: January 18, 1954
Cover: May 1954
10 cents
6 pages

Credits aren’t evident. My copy of the Marvel Masterworks claims John Romita is the artist, but I don’t think that’s correct. The GCD offers a different interpretation, citing the same Marvel Masterworks volume I am looking at. Perhaps they have a newer edition. I am anyways assured the GCD credits are correct by no less an expert than Michael Vassallo, and that this story is the work of Bill Benulis and Jack Abel, not John Romita. It is possible Romita touched up some of the faces.

It’s 1954. The publisher once known as Timely is now known as Atlas. It will eventually be best known as Marvel.

We last checked in with Captain America in 1948, when an injured Bucky was replaced as Cap’s partner by Betsy Ross, the Golden Girl. Let’s briefly review his publishing history in the interim.

Bucky recovered in issue 71 for a couple more adventures. Captain America Comics continued until issue 73, published in 1949. Golden Girl remained his occasional partner until the end.

With issue 74, the series changed its name to Captain America’s Weird Tales. We saw one final battle between Captain America and Red Skull along with a handful of horror short stories. This was the end of Marvel’s time publishing superhero comics. For the next several years, they would focus on romance, humor, horror, crime, and western tales. The final Sub-Mariner story had been published 4 months earlier, with the final Human Torch and Blonde Phantom stories 3 months before that.

Captain America’s Weird Tales #75 (1949) did not feature Captain America at all. His name adorned the comic’s cover, but he was nowhere to be found amongst the horror stories within. With that, the series ended. A somewhat ignoble end to the comic career of America’s favorite superhero.

Jump forward to August 1953. Young Men #24 gave us the return of Captain America, Human Torch, and Sub-Mariner. We already reviewed that issue’s Sub-Mariner story. In that issue, we learned Steve Rogers had retired from being Captain America, but was still teaching at the Lee School, except it now seems to be a college. Bucky was now a college student, though he didn’t look any older. The Red Skull’s return convinces Captain America and Bucky to come out of retirement.

I plan to do a survey of Red Skull’s history separately, so am purposely not covering that story in any more detail now.

We turn now to Captain America #76. The numbering picks up where Captain America’s Weird Tales left off, but Captain America reclaims the book’s interior.

For 3 issues.

The Captain’s return lasted less than a year before he again disappeared from the comic book stands along with Marvel’s entire brief attempt at reviving their superhero line. We’ll peek at his final issue in the next post.

Interestingly, the stories haven’t changed much since 1941. They could basically use the same scripts. Change the swastikas to hammers and sickles, Nazis to Commies. Substitute racist depictions of Chinese people for Japanese people, and it’s like nothing has changed. Enemy spies and saboteurs are at work in America. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

The covers all boast… “Captain America… Commie Smasher!” The comic warns of the “ugly, grasping tentacles” of communism. But kids of the 1950s were perhaps ready to be more suspicious of blatant government propaganda than kids in the ’40s were.

Captain America will put a stop to the Commie plans and act very self-righteous about it. And sometimes overtly racist.

This series raises innumerable continuity questions. Later writers would attempt to fix some of them, but not all.

First, as we mentioned, Bucky still doesn’t really look any older, although he seems to be a college student now. He was a high school student 8 years ago in 1946 and a young child when we met him in 1940.

Steve and Bucky have rejoined the army: Private Steve Rogers and Company Mascot Bucky. But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would a college-educated professor with 5 years of active duty experience be a private? And why would this college student not be an actual enlisted soldier? Why a company mascot?

Clumsy dialogue informs us Betsy Ross is a reporter who idolizes Captain America, yet thinks Steve Rogers is a dud. But that makes even less sense. She was Captain America’s partner for a while. She knew he was secretly Steve Rogers.

For that matter, how does her career path take her from secret agent to superhero to reporter? Interestingly, in the concurrent Sub-Mariner revival, we saw Betty Dean was no longer a police officer. Coincidence? I suspect not. I suspect we are looking at 1950s sexism wanting to get the women out of traditional men’s roles. America of 1954 may be more regressive than America of 1939.

Also of note, both characters changed hair color. Betty Dean went from black-haired to blonde. Betsy Ross from a blonde to a redhead.

This story will put Betsy in the damsel-in-distress role, quite a step down from being Captain America’s costumed crime-fighting partner.

Anyways, the story is that Betsy Ross is accused of being a Red spy. Captain America tracks down the real spies and then basically straight murders one of them. He feels compelled to explain why he doesn’t murder the other one: he needs testimony. “He died the way he wanted the free world to die… in flames!”

Captain America definitely struck a blow for capitalism there. I’m inspired. Remember kids, if your neighbors seem to be doing anything un-American, call the proper authorities.

I barely have any idea what I just read. A glutton for punishment, I’d like to look at two more of these 1950s Captain America stories before we return to 1964.

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆, 19/100

I read this story in Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era Heroes vol. 2.

You can also find it on Kindle.

Characters:

• Captain America
• Bucky
• Sergeant Shanty Trucks
• Betsy Ross
• Will Benson
• Connie Blake

Story notes:

• Benson and Blake are real spies; Captain America ruthlessly kills Blake.

Next post: PRELUDE: Captain America #78
Next in order: Avengers #4
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