The GCD credits the story to Otto Binder, Al Gabriele, and Vince Alascia.
Mostly a miscellaneous story we won’t dwell on. Three things stand out.
First, we note all clues about the identity of the Red Skull. He’s taken to using more German phrases than ever before. “Himmel”, “Donnervetter”. He refers to Captain America and Bucky as “American scum”. So perhaps this is a German villain, and not George Maxon.
Captain America and Bucky unmask him and recognize him as the “real” Red Skull they’ve fought before. This also implicitly acknowledges there may be “fake” Red Skulls out there.
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.
Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created Captain America and were the driving force and primary creators behind the first 10 issues. But they left for the competition, for the company that would be DC.
That perhaps understates what happened. They learned publisher Martin Goodman had been cheating them out of royalties with shady accounting practices, and so started considering leaving the company. Goodman learned of their intentions and fired them before they could quit, losing his most successful creators in the process.
Stan Lee, now 19 years old, has since taken over the role of editing the Captain America stories, and had long been the writer on many backup features in the series, including Headline Hunter, Hurricane, Father Time, and the Imp.
This is his first credited Captain America comic story. (His first Captain America story was the prose piece in issue 3.)
His distinctive narration style is already recognizable even at a young age, filled with excitement and hyperbole. “…most dangerous adventure of their amazing, thrill-packed careers!”
We get a cool double splash page for the feature image.
Was he wearing his skull mask in prison? Why?
Red Skull apparently died at the end of most of his appearances, but he was captured at the end of issue 7, so opening with him in prison is correct. Somebody is paying attention.
We’re well into Captain America’s adventures, but it’s worth noting this still predates America’s entry into World War II.
The Red Skull’s modus operandi has all been variations on a theme so far. Originally, he had a death gaze; he killed you by looking you. (It turned out he was also injecting you with a poison while he looked at you.) Then, the death touch; he killed you by touching you. (It turned out his glove was electrified and shocked his victims to death.)
Now… the tune he plays on his flute is deadly.
This time, the explanation is simpler. Red Skull whistles Chopin’s Funeral March, but then just shoots the guy.
The Coming of Agent Zero/The Red Skull and the Graveyeard of Doom!/Voyage to No-Man’s Land/Trapped in Nazi-Land!/Outwitting the Bloodthirsty Tyrants!/Captain America and the Human Torch to the Rescue!!
Featuring: Young Allies Release: July 23, 1941 Cover: Summer 1941 10 cents 57 pages
The table of contents lists Joe Simon as “Art editor” and Jack Kirby as “Art director”, while recognizing Carl Burgos as the creator of Toro. No hints as to who actually wrote or drew the comic are given. The GCD credits Otto Binder, Charles Nicholas, and Syd Shores, noting Jack Kirby supplied art for some of the chapter-opening splash pages. The cover is by Jack Kirby and Syd Shores.
We also take the on-sale date from the GCD, which disagrees with the July 10 date given in Mike’s Amazing World, but also offers an explanation for the discrepancy.
An ad shows an earlier version of the cover (and gives the July 10 release date). Notice in the original cover, Stalin is one of the villains (along with Hitler, Tōjō, and Mussolini). This comic was released in July 1941. Between its original advertisement and publication, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, so Stalin was now a good guy, and couldn’t be depicted as evil in the comic. The USSR was now part of the Allied forces.
America remained neutral in the war, but you couldn’t tell by the comic books.
We read the introduction of the Young Allies, a painfully long 57-page adventure. Our motivation is that this is the third appearance of the Red Skull, who was presumed dead in an explosion in Captain America Comics #3.
This comic is pretty rough reading. The most infamous part of it is the character of Whitewash Jones, a painful stereotype of an African American child, whose portrayal somehow keeps getting worse as the issue progresses. Even leaving aside that racial sentiment has evolved in 80 years, the other kids are also pretty awful characters. Tubby, the obese child, is portrayed no better. Nor is Knuckles, the street-tough kid. Jefferson, the nerd, probably comes off the best.
The history of cartooning is built on caricature and exaggeration, but these four kids just push it into the absurd and unreadable.
We’ve visited Captain America Comics #3 before. We read the text story, notable for being the first story written by a young Stan Lee.
The issue also contains three other Captain America adventures, a Tuk story, and a Hurricane story.
There’s a cool feature called “Amazing Spy Adventures” which tells a loosely accurate historical story from ancient Greece, about a secret message tattooed onto a bald head, then hidden as the hair grew. Perhaps the world’s first example of steganography. You can read more about the story here.
What interests us today though is the second appearance of the Red Skull. I’m just as confused as you are, because I also remember him dying in his first appearance. Let’s read on. Maybe they’ll explain.
Ah, so it seems that the Red Skull–unmasked as George Maxon– was immune to his own poison. That makes sense. And Captain America and Bucky did just run off leaving the body in the previous story. But then we clearly saw FBI agents at the scene standing over the body. Now, the Red Skull stands up in an empty room and runs off. Hard to reconcile these things.
When Captain America returned to the present in Avengers #4, we preceded that with a large read-through of a swath of his history from 1941-54. But we intentionally left out some pretty key issues. In particular, we neglected his battles against his nemesis, the Red Skull.
The last twoissues of Tales of Suspense have both retoldstories from Captain America Comics #1. This next one will do the same, retelling the first battle of Captain America and the Red Skull. We will then see some previously untold encounters between Captain America and the Red Skull in World War II. Eventually, the Red Skull will return in the present day to menace Captain America again.
In anticipation of all this, now seems like a good time to read through the early history of the Red Skull, starting with his introduction here in Captain America Comics #1.
We just read the modern retelling of the first two stories from Captain America Comics #1. We’ll soon read the modern retelling of the fourth story. These modern retellings will skip the third story, so we may as well read it now.
There’s also a text story, and stories featuring Tuk and Hurricane, but I’m not incentivized to read those at present.
This story is most notable for introducing us to the Sergeant overseeing Private Rogers at Camp Lehigh. The Sergeant is never impressed by the bumbling private, and will often give him a hard time. We will learn in issue 4 that his name is Sgt. Duffy.
The villain in this story is a Nazi spy named Rathcone. He plans out his strategies with pieces on a chessboard and communicates his strategies to his agents, all of whom have numbers, but some of whom also have nicknames like the Strangler. These plans involve assassinating a number of high ranking American military officials.
Featuring: Captain America Release: January 12, 1965 Cover: April 1965 12 cents Writer: Stan Lee Illustrator: Jack Kirby Delineator: Frank Ray Letterer: S. Rosen 10 pages
This is an extremely close retelling of the second story from Captain America Comics #1, which we covered back when Captain America first returned in Avengers #4.
The original story is most notable for being Captain America’s first case and for introducing Betty Ross.
I see I didn’t go into great detail on the plot in that post, writing this:
The story of the comic doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. I can’t begin to try to explain it and I’m not sure it’s worth considering all the many ways in which it makes no sense. Suffice it to say they stop the bad guys.
We’ll delve deeper here.
Last issue was a close retelling of the first story from Captain America Comics #1, which was the story of Captain America’s origin. Next issue will be a retelling of Captain America’s first battle against Red Skull from the same issue. It makes sense why one might want to revisit those two stories. And then there’s this one.
The original stories are by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Joe Simon’s name should probably have been in the credits of this comic, as it’s based so closely on his original story. The plot owes more to Simon than many of the comics Stan Lee claims “plot” credit on owe to Stan.
My issue with the original is that I didn’t really understand what Sando and Omar brought to the scheme. There were Nazi saboteurs in America successfully blowing things up. Why have a member of your crew go onstage and warn people about the attacks in advance by pretending to be psychic? The comic didn’t really try to explain.
Let’s compare the new one to the original. The first thing we will notice is the new one fits into very regular grid patterns that make it easy to crop out groups of panels. The original felt bound by no such structure, so the croppings will all be imperfect.
Looking to the opening splash pages, the crystal ball image is very close. The changes fit Kirby’s more dramatized style and generally make a more modern splash page. Omar is a little less freakish in the new one. The biggest loss is Sando, whose fingers had an unusual positioning in the original, almost suggesting his role as puppeteer. Kirby opted for a more standard-for-Kirby dramatized positioning.
The modern comic claims to be “introducing” Sando and Omar. This seems blatantly false, as they were obviously introduced 25 years earlier.
Featuring: Captain America Release: December 10, 1964 Cover: March 1965 12 cents Writer: Stan Lee Illustrator: Jack Kirby Inked by: Frank Ray Lettered by: Art Simek 10 pages
Rather than trying to tell a new Captain America story, this comic will retell the origin of Captain America. Subsequent adventures will recap his earliest issues and others will be new stories set in World War II.
I can only guess what’s going on here. One, you can imagine Kirby would like a bit of a break from drawing 5 stories a month, and it may be easier on him to retell old tales. Or, perhaps he is looking back on those tales now that he has grown as an artist and is looking to revisit them and tell them better.
I also suspect that Stan is starting to notice how much his readers care about the intercontinuity of the titles, something he probably doesn’t want to think about at all. Telling Captain America stories set in the past saves him the trouble of worrying that they line up with current Avengers comics.
I tend to find the best thing to do with these retellings is just go in depth and try to spot any differences from previous tellings, particularly the original story in Captain America Comics #1 (1941).
