Featuring: Captain America
Release: December 20, 1940
Cover: March 1941
10 cents
By: Joe Simon and Jack Kirby
8 pages
Here he comes. (Here comes the Captain)
Ladies and Gentleman! (Here comes the Captain)
The moment you’ve been waiting for! (Here comes the Captain)
The pride of Camp Lehigh! (Here comes the Captain)
Steve Rogers!
The 1940s had more Marvel superheroes than I could name. We’ve looked at some of the miscellaneous ones like the Angel. Some would be brought back for small roles by later writers. Many would lend their name to later characters. Despite the vast numbers of them, there is a “big three”. We’ve discussed two of them at length.
Jim Hammond, the Human Torch, would lend his name, likeness, and powers to a new character, Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four. Namor the Sub-Mariner would return in the pages of Fantastic Four, often as an adversary.
There is a third big one we have left out until now. But it’s time.
I’m not certain that what we are looking at up above isn’t the best comic book cover ever. To appreciate it, you must look at the date of release. December 20, 1940. It was completed prior to that date; thus, it was completed over a year before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. America’s official position toward the wars of Europe and Asia at the time was neutrality, as codified in various neutrality acts based by Congress over the previous 5 years. And yet, here was a hero garbed in the American flag punching Adolf Hitler in the face.
Jack Kirby is obviously a name we’ve seen a lot in our reading, as he created the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Avengers, etcetera. Before that, he defined the romance genre within comics. And long before that, he created Captain America. Born Jacob Kurtzburg, the son of Austrian-Jewish immigrants, he was 23 when Captain America #1 reached the stands. Two and a half years later, he would join the US Army and go fight Hitler’s forces in Europe himself.
Joe Simon, born Hymie Simon, was a few years older than Kirby, also the son of immigrants, of Russian-Jewish heritage. He joined the Coast Guard for the war and spent the war years in America. Simon and Kirby would be partners for 15 years and together shape American comics as we know them.
Unfortunately, the image on the cover is only on the cover and doesn’t relate directly to the interior content. Captain America spends the inside of the book in America, battling Nazi spies and saboteurs at home. The comic warns of the dangers of the “Fifth Column”.
There are other Captain America adventures in this issue, including his first battle with the Red Skull. We’ll save reading that story for if Red Skull ever returns. There are some non-Captain America stories here as well, including a story featuring Hurricane, the son of Thor.
Thor hasn’t mentioned having a son. Wonder if he was planning to tell Jane about him. Wonder if he even knows about Hurricane.
The origin of Captain America has been preserved basically intact over the decades. Later retellings would only expand on it. The basic elements are all here. Steve Rogers was deemed unfit for military service, but allowed to take part in a secret experiment.
He was injected (innoculated?) with an experimental formula meant to make him the first of an army of super soldiers.
But a Nazi spy within army ranks had infiltrated the audience of the experiment, and killed the scientist and destroyed the serum.
Steve Rogers becomes Captain America, a symbol of America’s fight against tyranny soon joined by his young sidekick, Bucky Barnes.
If you look to, say, the 2011 film, you’ll see all those same basic plot beats. They just expand on the character of Steve Rogers, in that they give him a character at all. This comic doesn’t bother to introduce Rogers prior to the experiment, so we get no sense of his motivations, except what we can glean from the above. It’s all there between the panels, just not explicit. You have to think through who this man was, why he tried to enlist when not physically capable and why he agreed to his secret experiment. His character can be inferred. But it’s not on the page.
He has no lines until after the experiment. He has a total of 6 lines in this entire story, 4 of which involve recruiting Bucky to be his partner. Two concern the attack on Professor Reinstein, the latter a reflection on the killer’s death: “Nothing left of him but charred ashes… a fate he well deserved!” Much more cold-blooded than the Captain America I am used to.
One odd detail is that Professor Reinstein notes the subject volunteered for military service that very day. He wasn’t even given a single night to think over his decision or get ready.
The comic also isn’t explicit that there will be no more super soldiers, though that is the clear implication. Later tellings will note that the scientist had all his formulas committed to memory, and that no other knew the secret. As with questions of Rogers’ character, I see that implication here, though not clearly.
The scientist’s name has changed over time from Reinstein to Erskine. Reinstein sounds like a play on Einstein’s name. Perhaps Marvel decided to change that.
Bucky is described as the regiment mascot. It’s not clear why Captain America made a child his sidekick. Probably because Robin was so popular. It’s also not clear why America’s front line of defense consisted of one super soldier and one child with no powers or even any particular training. They seem to go into action together pretty quickly.
On the art side of things, the panel layouts seem much more experimental than we’ve been seeing in the Marvel Age books. They’ve stuck pretty firmly to rectangular panels neatly arranged in the last couple years of books we’ve been reading. Here, panel shapes are all over the place. Wavy borders, circles…. even when they use rectangles, they don’t align in a neat grid. And the panels don’t seem to constrain the art in any way. They’re happy to have arms or legs protrude out of them.
In terms of design, this original drawing of Captain America has largely stuck. For comparison, let’s look at an image from 50 years later by Ron Lim and Jim Lee. Red boots and gloves; white sleeves; blue pants; top has chain mail texture, lower half red and white stripes, top half blue with a white star; blue mask with white “A” on head and little white wings coming off. What differences there are will mostly be made by Kirby himself during his tenure on the character. Fuller face mask, simpler belt… and of course that shield.
Why did we choose now to read the introduction of Captain America from 23 years earlier? Because it’s time for Captain America to return…
Rating: ★★★★☆, 72/100
I read this story in Golden Age Captain America Omnibus vol. 1. You can also find it in Marvel Masterworks: Golden Age Captain America vol. 1. Or on Kindle.
Characters:
- Private Steve Rogers/Captain America
- Bucky Barnes
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- J. Arthur Grover
- X-13
- Professor Reinstein
Story notes:
- Two Nazi spies have infiltrated the US Army.
- Reference to Human Torch, possibly as a comic book character.
- J. Arthur Grover is head of the FBI (In reality at the time, it was J. Edgar Hoover).
- Old woman running curio shop secretly government agent who unmasks to reveal the beautiful young X-13.
- Experiment involves Rogers being inoculated with a liquid.
- Captain America is to be the first of a corps of super-agents.
- The formula increased his intelligence, as well as physical prowess.
- One of army men FDR sent to witness the experiment was in the pay of Hitler’s Gestapo. He kills Reinstein then Grover.
- Bucky Barnes is the regiment mascot.
- Captain America makes headlines battling spies and saboteurs.
- Send 10 cents to Timely Publications to receive a badge and membership card for Captain America’s Sentinels of Liberty.
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