Featuring: Young Allies
Release: June 17, 1942
Cover: Summer 1942
10 cents
Script and editorial: Stan Lee
Illustrated by: Al Gabriele
45 pages
| Previous | Next | |
|---|---|---|
| Captain America Comics #16, Story D | Prelude | Captain America Comics #37, Story C |
| Sgt. Fury #16 | Reading order | Tales of Suspense #65 |
Let’s begin by noting this is not the most amazing story of all time. This is an awful series and nobody should read it. Least of all me.
This story drags on for 45 bloody pages. At least it’s not as bad as the last one we read. And it’s actually a much faster and smoother read than the first issue. Perhaps that’s Stan Lee’s scripting at work.
We noted last time how awful all the characters are, so we’ll just try to skip to the Red Skull stuff this time.
I’m including this story only because the continuity remains pretty tight, and I do want us to be able to untangle Red Skull’s contradictory appearances intelligently.
We’ve met Red Skull in 4 issues of Captain America Comics (#1, 3, 7, and 16) as well as the first issue of Young Allies. The Captain America stories all picked up directly where the previous one left off, explaining how the Red Skull d0esn’t really die. Only the Young Allies story didn’t really fit anywhere. This Young Allies story pointedly picks up where issue 16 left off. There, we saw Red Skull fall to his apparent death.
We see Red Skull had a secret parachute that saved him from falling, and that he killed a farmer and switched clothes to make them think they saw his corpse.
OK, let’s try to get through this as quickly as we can.
Boxing match between Bucky and Toro. It’s a theme of this series that they are always fighting.
The Young Allies have a theme song.
They rescue Betty Ross, Captain America’s FBI friend.
She had been trailing the Red Skull.
I’ll grant this comic one good moment. The escape hatch they find needs someone to operate the lever, so one person has to stay behind. Bucky volunteers to stay back, but Knuckles punches him, sacrificing himself to save Bucky. To add to the heroism, Knuckles was already injured earlier by a bullet to the shoulder.
But then it turned out Knuckles survived after all! I’m relieved.
Captain America and Human Torch join the fray.
In the end, Red Skull falls to his death. For real, this time.
OK, it’s not for real, but it’s for a while. He’ll next be back in All Select Comics #2 from 1943. In the interest of getting back to our normal Marvel reading and my sanity, we’ll skip that appearance and jump straight to his next appearance in Captain America Comics, which is issue 37, from April 1944.
This wasn’t quite as awful as the first issue, but oh 1940s America. Do better, Stan Lee.
Rating: ★½, 27/100
This story can be found on Kindle.
Characters:
- Captain America/Private Steve Rogers
- Bucky
- Red Skull
- Tubby
- Whitewash “Wash”
- Jeff
- Knuckles O’Toole
- Toro
- Betty Ross
- Human Torch
Story notes:
- Picks up directly from Captain America Comics #16 and shows how Red Skull survived.
- Boxing match between Bucky and Toro; match interrupted when Toro spots a battleship on fire.
- Red Skull fires at Betty, but misses and wounds Knuckles.
- Allies follow Red Skull to secret underwater tunnel.
- Red Skull plans to destroy DC by dropping gas-releasing papers.
- Betty Ross with FBI.
- Betty enlists the Human Torch, who contacts Captain America.
- Red Skull falls to death.
| Previous | Next | |
|---|---|---|
| Captain America Comics #16, Story D | Prelude | Captain America Comics #37, Story C |
| Sgt. Fury #16 | Reading order | Tales of Suspense #65 |
Unsurprisingly I have a lot more tolerance for this stuff than you do. I just love the look of this period of Marvel… And seeing ’40s depictions of black people gives me that pleasant sense of self-satisfied superiority that I crave.