Featuring: Captain America
Release: January 10, 1967
Cover: April 1967
12 cents
Inscribed, illustrated and immortalized by.. Stan (The Man) Lee and Gil (Sugar Lips) Kane
Lettered by Swingin’ Sammy Rosen
10 pages
| Previous | #671 | Next |
|---|---|---|
| Avengers #38 | Reading order | Tales of Suspense #89 |
| Tales of Suspense #88 | Tales of Suspense | Tales of Suspense #89 |
I’m imagining it!! He’s been dead for two decades! But…
We learned in Avengers #4 that Bucky died shortly before the end of World War II. Even though older Marvel comics showed Bucky alive and well into the 1950s. But the 1961+ Marvel Universe is our canon for this blog, so Bucky died.
Or did he?
We know that Captain America left his post on monitor duty while the other Avengers were getting burgers. But we did not know why.
Here we see the message Cap got that made him run off in such a hurry.
His teenage sidekick Bucky is alive, a prisoner, and has sent out a call for help.
Turns out, it’s a trap.
That Bucky was still a teenager over 20 years later should have been a clue.
A mysterious mastermind has hired Swordsman and Power Man to wait at Sea Gull Isle for Cap.
Besides the return of Bucky, the most notable thing about this issue is that Gil Kane takes over the art. He will spend a few issues on Captain America before Kirby’s return. And he has big shoes to fill in terms of depicting action.
But holds his own. Does he live up to Jack Kirby?
We do not learn who this issue’s secret villain is, but the character listing below may have a hint.
This is not the last time Captain America will have reason to suspect Bucky may be alive. Not even close. It will become an overdone trope. But this is the first time.
We’d read the first half of this issue some time back. This tied directly into Avengers #38, so we wanted to read it with that. But that would have meant bringing forward a lot of Iron Man saga, so we split the issue in two. I’d like to do this sparingly. As it’s plainly not the way anybody would have read these comics back when.
Mails of Suspense.
Rating: ★★★☆☆, 53/100
Significance: ★★★☆☆
Characters:
- Captain America
- Bucky
- Jarvis
- Swordsman
- Power Man
- Red Skull
Story notes:
- Bucky, still young, calls for help. Claims he’s been kept prisoner all this time.
- Bucky broke free to send a message to Avengers HQ to come to Sea Gull Isle, off the eastern tip of Nova Scotia. I don’t think this Isle exists in our world.
- Hawkeye is Cap’s alternate for the tour of duty. Cap has never before abandoned his officer-of-the-day-post.
- Cap has flown over Sea Gull Isle many times, and thought it was a barren, lifeless chunk of rock.
- Cap will take the new supersonic cruiser of Tony Stark’s, using prototype solar cells for power.
- Swordsman and Power Man arrived to Sea Gull Isle first. They had been paid a fortune to come, and find the apparent mountain is actually a giant trap door.
- Ray gun fires bubble which traps Captain America’s ship.
- Swordsman and Power Man do not know what voice commands them to destroy Captain America.
- The bubble ray can be used to capture an entire city.
| Previous | #671 | Next |
|---|---|---|
| Avengers #38 | Reading order | Tales of Suspense #89 |
| Tales of Suspense #88 | Tales of Suspense | Tales of Suspense #89 |
