Tales of Suspense #65, Story B

Featuring: Captain America
Release: February 12, 1965
Cover: May 1965
12 cents
By: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Inking: Chic Stone
Lettering: S. Rosen
10 pages

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Tales of Suspense #65	Reading order	Amazing Spider-Man #24
Tales of Suspense #65	Tales of Suspense	Tales of Suspense #66

As with the last two issues, this is closely based on a story from Captain America Comics #1. As with the last two issues, Joe Simon is not credited.

We at this point are well versed in the Red Skull stories of the 1940s and 50s. We are now primed to see the modern take on the Red Skull, beginning with this retelling of his first adventure.

There are significant changes, many with the effect to sanitize the story, make it less violent and more kid-friendly. For example, in this version the Red Skull is not a killer. The plot of the original was all about him murdering people.

I’ll note the shared story beats common to the stories.

• The story begins with Private Rogers and Mascot Barnes escorting Major Croy. They warn him it’s not safe to be alone, but he dismisses them any way.
• The Red Skull attacks Major Croy.
• Red Skull’s henchmen loot a bank.
• Captain America and Bucky track down the Red Skull, but the Skull escapes them.
• Mr. Maxon is observing a test of his new plane. Private Rogers is present. When the plane crashes, likely due to sabotage, Maxon expresses concern, but not for the lives lost, which upsets Rogers.
• Red Skull attacks a General, and then is revealed to be Mr. Maxon.

With that corresponding outline, there are heavy differences.

In the original, Red Skull had given Croy a card warning him of his impending death. So they had more then a general sense of unease to be concerned about with Croy. Perhaps Lee saw this as a plot hole, that the Major would be unguarded after such a specific threat.

In the new version, it seems nobody has yet heard of the Red Skull. They are concerned generically about Nazi agents. In the original, the Red Skull was already an infamous villain.

With the opening scene, the comics so far seem pretty in step. That will change fast.

The 1960s comics remain consistent with their rectangular grids, which make for easy cropping. The 1940s comics are uninterested in abetting my cropping tools.

We see where the major differences come in. In the original, Red Skull killed Croy with his gaze of death. The gaze of death was the key plot point of the story. In the new version, Red Skull uses a gas to remove Croy’s memory, rendering him ineffective as a major.

Now, this gets to one of those art/script dichotomies. It’s not clear that Kirby meant to be drawing the Skull as the nonviolent type. The artwork shows the major lying still on the ground after being struck in the head. If I just looked to the art, I could believe he was dead. It’s Lee’s dialogue that lets me know the Major is still alive. It’s possible that Stan is sanitizing the story Kirby drew, which itself already shied away from the violence of the original.

The “gaze of death” panel from the original is pretty great. What Kirby replaced it with can only be described as lame. And Kirby surely knew that. That’s censorship for you.

The look of the Red Skull has also changed, and not for the better. In the original, his face really looked like a skull. He had a scary visage. The new version doesn’t look much like a skull at all. It’s too soft looking. Tom Brevoort described his new head as a “meatball”, and it’s an apt description.

The new version omits Red Skull hovering outside the window while the police investigate. Rogers’ dialogue gives a nod to the idea he may be lurking around.

In the original, Captain America decides to tackle the Red Skull on his own, telling Bucky to stay behind. Bucky disobeys him and seeks out the Skull on his own. In the new version, Captain America suggests they separate to search for the Skull.

Artistically, Jack aims for constant dynamism better in the new versions. The original had two panels of them out of costume, then one of them in costume but standing around. The new one tells the same story, but has them changing into costume in the first panel, and combines the dialogue with their acrobatic jumping around. The original made more sense. Obviously they should get further away from the police before changing, but Kirby prioritizes the colorful over the sensible.

The retelling already has Captain America in his modern uniform, rather than trying to imitate his original. Notice for example the fuller face mask.

In the original, Bucky stumbles across their headquarters while they plot a robbery. That is pretty sloppy storytelling. In the new version, Bucky stumbles across the robbery instead, and follows them to their headquarters. Still a lucky contrivance, but at least a more plausible one, happening upon crooks running out of a bank. In the original, had Bucky just been looking through every window and skylight in town?

The new version changes local crooks to Nazi soldiers. Nazi soldiers operating in-uniform in pre-Pearl Harbor America is a terrible idea.

Notice that in the new version, the Red Skull seems to speak German. He uses words like “verdammte”. Is he German or American?

Neither version of the story bothers to explain how Captain America got there.

The scenes are pretty similar. The modern one involves more jumping. Kirby likes to make Captain America jump around a lot in the 60s. And of course more shield-throwing in the 60s. In the retelling, Cap already has his new circular shield, rather than the old triangular one, which wasn’t really fit for throwing.

I’m going to give points to Simon over Lee here. As throughout this issue, we see Lee is just more verbose. But for all the verbosity, there’s no phrase as fun as, “I’ll be back– with more murder!” Of course, that phrase wouldn’t make sense in the new one, where Red Skull doesn’t murder anybody!

We see opposite things at work above and below. In general, Kirby has less pages to work with in the new one, so should be finding ways to cut things down. We’ve seen in the previous comparison pieces a preference for the elder Kirby to be more efficient in storytelling.

Yet not above. Modern Kirby takes three panels where one had done before, to better justify how the Red Skull got away and to show Captain America uncover the nature of the Skull’s plans. In the name of more sophisticated storytelling, panels were added.

Now we see the more common efficiency. Not much happened in the 4 original panels. They show some idle time at camp as set up for the coming scene. Modern Kirby isn’t about idle time and jumps straight to the setup.

We see the same scene and again note the heightened melodrama of the modern version. The close-up on Rogers’ face, the more dramatized view of the explosion.

We get basically the same scene here, an early moment to let Captain America shine, with his indignation. More dialogue in the Lee version. Different uniforms. The biggest change is the expression on Maxon’s face. In the original, he looked utterly indifferent, the “tsk tsk” matching his expression. In the new one, he looks as shocked as anybody, but dialogue clarifies he is upset for purely selfish reasons.

A good update here. A bit more character for Maxon in the scene.

Spoiler you already know if you’ve been reading along. Maxon will turn out to be the Red Skull. You got a hint in the original that he was a bad guy in the preceding scene. The new version spells it out a bit more, with Captain America vocally expressing suspicion of Maxon.

The next page-and-a-half scene was deleted entirely from the new version, to save space and to keep it kid-friendly. For the second time, Red Skull uses his gaze of death, this time on General Manor. The entire “gaze of death” was simply removed from the new one. As was the character of General Manor. General Curtis basically fills his role in the new version.

The new version skips ahead to Captain America finding the General’s body. At least, it looks like a body as Kirby drew it. Lee’s dialogue clarifies General Curtis is merely hurt. In the original, Red Skull definitely killed General Manor. Because he’s a bad guy.

Red Skull is then confronted by the General’s wife in the original, and housekeeper in the new version. I have no idea why Lee decided to change the wife to a housekeeper.

They also remove a bit of agency from the woman. In the original, she confronts Red Skull with a gun, a scene omitted in the remake. In the original, the Red Skull punches the woman. In the nonviolent 60s version, he threatens her with sleeping gas.

This is where the new version really starts to fall apart. Having less pages and stricter censorship, Lee and Kirby were just not able to do a worthwhile retelling of this story.

A page and a half of battle is then cut down to 2 panels. It’s absurd and very un-Kirby like. This Captain America series hasn’t had much going for it storywise yet, but we’ve so far been able to count on some cool action by Kirby. Not here. Cap hits Red Skull once. Then Bucky hits him once. And he’s down for the count. The original was a back and forth. One on one, Red Skull was as formidable as Captain America and almost beat him.

The new version is just awful.

George Maxon’s name is changed to John Maxon for some reason. No idea why. Best guess is Lee wasn’t paying attention.

In the original, John Maxon was an industrialist, who betrayed America to ally with Hitler. In the new version, I guess they don’t want to suggest any capitalist could be a bad man, so we learn the real Mr. Maxon was captured by Nazis and the Red Skull was just impersonating him. The phrasing we pointed to earlier suggested this Red Skull may be German, rather than American.

The mask seems to be made of different material. It looks like rubber in the new one, whereas it was a harder substance before. In the original, it breaks like clay, and in the new version it’s pulled off. The new version is generally more sanitized, less scary looking.

Dramatically, the difference between shattering the skull mask and pulling off the mask is night and day. The original version was much better, and I’m sure Kirby knows that. Nobody has a better instinct for the dramatic than he. Yet for some reason he looked at that old panel he and Simon had done with the shattering of the Skull mask and decided to pull off a rubber mask instead.

Finally, in the original, Red Skull dies in the end, a victim of his own poison needle. In this version, he gets away. Now, we saw in Captain America Comics #3 that he had gotten away in the old version as well, or so they decided when they wanted the character to come back.

Red Skull still had his checklist, but it makes way less sense this time when he’s not killing people. Why did he cross off Curtis’ name, because he’d wonked him on the head?

This comic took a classic story, retold it, but with a series of extremely lame changes. Less action, less melodrama, worse character design, no murder.

Just a worthless comic, hardly fitting for the modern return of the Red Skull.

Rating: ★½, 20/100
Significance: ★★★☆☆

I read this story in Marvel Masterworks: Captain America Vol. 1. You can also find it in Captain America Epic Collection vol. 1: Captain America Lives Again. Or on Kindle.

Characters:

• Red Skull/John Maxon
• Captain America/Private Rogers
• Bucky/Mascot Barnes
• Major Croy
• Sgt. Duffy
• General Curtis

Story notes:

• Red Skull’s gang robs City National Bank.
• Skull impersonating John Maxon.

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Tales of Suspense #65	Reading order	Amazing Spider-Man #24
Tales of Suspense #65	Tales of Suspense	Tales of Suspense #66