Featuring: Captain America
Release: March 11, 1965
Cover: June 1965
12 cents
By: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Inked by: Chic Stone
Lettered by: Artie Simek
10 pages
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| Tales of Suspense #66 | Reading order | Tales of Suspense #67 |
| Tales of Suspense #66 | Tales of Suspense | Tales of Suspense #66, Story B |
We’ve been very slowly saying goodbye to Chic Stone, as this represents his last month with Marvel. So we’ve seen his last work on many titles already. This is his final Captain America Story. He is Kirby’s best inker on these books so far, for my money. And he will be missed.
These Captain America stories have been set in his early days. The last three issues retold stories from Captain America Comics #1, with last issue retelling the introduction of the Red Skull (and making it really lame). This issue offers a new Red Skull story. At last we learn his origin.
In the original story, Red Skull was revealed to be American industrialist George Maxon. Last issue played out similarly, (though now he was John instead of George), but it added that Red Skull was not the real Maxon. He had killed Maxon and was impersonating him. That leaves room for his new origin here. As we’ve noted before, for my purposes we are treating the post-1961 stories as canonical for this Marvel Universe. The 1940s Marvel canon is separate. So the origin of the Red Skull is what gets told here. He is not Maxon.
We learn in this issue that he had also not been impersonating Maxon. That was someone pretending to be the Red Skull pretending to be Maxon. Yeesh. And apparently Captain America is desperate to hunt down the real Red Skull based on the crimes of a fake Red Skull. Maybe?
Will the real Red Skull please stand up?
The story opens with Captain America a prisoner of the Skull. That is not where the last issue left off at all. Perhaps they will fill us in how we got here.
Continue reading “Tales of Suspense #66, Story B”