CAPTAIN AMERICA: HIS 1950s STORIES

This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog will look at the short-lived revival of the Captain America series during the 1950s. 

YOUNG MEN Vol 1 #24 (December 1953)

NOTE: For people unfamiliar with these topics, the initial boom of superhero comic books which thrived beginning in the late 1930s started to sag after World War Two ended and by 1949 many series – and even comic book companies – were gone completely.

Marvel Comics was called Timely Comics in the 1940s but was going by Atlas Comics by this point in the 1950s. They briefly experimented with reviving their Captain America, Human Torch and Sub-Mariner series.

Title: Back from the Dead

Villain: The Red Skull

Synopsis: Steve Rogers aka Captain America is now teaching at a prep school called the Lee School in a New York suburb. James Buchanan Barnes aka Bucky is one of his students. In old school comic book disregard for the passage of time, Bucky is still that young despite having been a teen in 1941.

At any rate, Cap and Bucky discuss having retired from superheroing years earlier and are dismayed that the students at the Lee School consider Captain America and his sidekick to be mythic figures, not real. The pair ponder returning to action, a decision clinched by news reports of the Red Skull raiding the U.N. with an army and holding all the delegates hostage.

Donning their old costumes, Cap and Bucky enter the U.N. building, defeat the Red Skull’s army and then the Skull himself, who has proclaimed his allegiance to communism here in the 1950s. The Lee School kids and everyone else realize Captain America and Bucky are real and are back. 

NOTE: Okay, this needs separated into Reality and Retcons. REALITY: When this story was published, Atlas (Marvel) was genuinely just relaunching their Captain America series and these characters really were supposed to be the same Cap and Bucky from the original 1941-1949 series.

RETCONS: In the 1960s, as Marvel Comics, the company relaunched their superhero comic books, successfully this time, via the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Hulk, Thor, etc. To reintroduce Captain America into the new continuity (the 616 Universe) they retconned events to claim the Steve Rogers Captain America had been missing and in suspended animation since 1945.

In addition, Marvel pretended that the Captain America stories from 1945-1949, plus these 1950s stories featured different men using the Captain America costume plus “the Steve Rogers cover identity.” Same for Bucky. And this new communist Red Skull was an imposter.   

YOUNG MEN Vol 1 #25 (February 1954)

Title: Top Secret

Villains: The Executioner (Lupa Lupoff) 

Synopsis: The government has Captain America and Bucky go to an army base in Nevada to protect nuclear scientist Jim Slade and observe a desert test of his new atomic trigger. Slade is being stalked by two communist spies – the Executioner aka Lupa Lupoff and her husband Arnold.

Cap and Bucky survive the Executioner’s deathtraps and thwart the communists’ attempt to abduct the scientist. Rather than be captured and questioned, the Executioner shoots her husband to death and then kills herself. 

YOUNG MEN Vol 1 #26 (March 1954)

Title: Captain America Turns Traitor

Villain: Dr. Standish

Synopsis: A Soviet spy named Oranoff is running American scientist Dr. Standish as a communist agent. He informs Standish about how Captain America and Bucky have been thwarting Soviet schemes all over America and orders the scientist to deal with the duo.

Dr. Standish invites Cap, Bucky, the Human Torch and Sub-Mariner to attend and supplement a series of lectures on the dangers of communism. They all agree, and Standish has Cap and Bucky with him for the first lecture at Oaklake University. 

Standish injects Cap with a serum which makes him praise communism at the lecture, then has him agree to defect to the Soviet Union with him. Along the way he has Captain America attack and inflict damage on a U.S. Alaskan military station. 

The super-soldier serum in Cap’s body has let him resist Standish’s serum, but he has been faking his obedience. Cap and Bucky capture the sub that was meant to take Standish and Oranoff to Russia with the mind-controlled Cap.

YOUNG MEN Vol 1 #27 (April 1954)

Title: The Return of the Red Skull

Villain: The Red Skull

Synopsis: Captain America and Bucky stop the Red Skull and his latest gang of Soviet agents from breaking into a U.S. military base. They capture all his men but the Skull escapes.

In the days ahead, our heroes clash with the Red Skull’s underlings at various defense installations around the country. Presently the villain leads Cap and Bucky into a trap.

At the Red Skull’s lair, he and his men torture Captain America for vital national security secrets. Ultimately, Cap and Bucky turn the tables and cause the deaths of the Soviet agents and seemingly the Skull himself.

CAPTAIN AMERICA Vol 1 #76 (May 1954)

NOTE: At last Atlas (Marvel) relaunched Cap’s own series. 

Title: The Betrayers

Villains: Soviet spies

Synopsis: Captain America and Bucky burst in on a meeting of a communist spy cell and corral all the agents. The next day their old friend FBI Agent Betsy Ross is framed for selling American defense secrets. (No mention is made of her having been Cap’s costumed sidekick Golden Girl to replace Bucky during the late 1940s.)

Our heroes clear Betsy’s name and round up the real spies for the government. 

Title: Captain America Strikes

Villains: Foreign Minister of War and his agents

Synopsis: Cap and Bucky are assigned to accompany a U.S. military mission to an unnamed fictional island nation. America is hoping to woo the country into the Free World’s camp but our heroes uncover a Soviet conspiracy led by the nation’s own Minister of War to cause a disaster at the American embassy and have all U.S. personnel expelled from the country.

Captain America and Bucky thwart all of the communist attacks and expose the Minister as a spy for the U.S.S.R. They defeat him and his fellow agents and turn them over to the fictional country, whose government cements ties with America.

Title: Come to the Commies

Villains: Communist China

Synopsis: Captain America and Bucky are briefed about an ongoing series of American tourists and diplomats being abducted by Communist China and brainwashed into giving anti-American radio speeches broadcast around the world.

The two are dropped into Indochina, where they covertly locate the broadcast center and base for drugging the American captives and having them read pro-communist scripts on the air. Cap and Bucky manage to defeat the Communist Chinese soldiers, free all the Americans from brainwashing and lead them to safety on Taiwan.     

YOUNG MEN Vol 1 #28 (June 1954)

Title: The Cargo of Death

Villains: Communist Chinese drug traffickers

Synopsis: Along a Pacific Ocean waterfront, Captain America and Bucky bust a gang of drug traffickers from Communist China who smuggle narcotics into the U.S. That leads to them uncovering additional Communist Chinese agents behind the drug smuggling ring. Our heroes shut down the ring. 

CAPTAIN AMERICA Vol 1 #77 (July 1954)

Title: You Die at Midnight

Villains: Soviet spies

Synopsis: Enemy agents threaten to kill the child of a worker at a Naval Shipyard if he doesn’t provide them with the plans to the latest nuclear subs and ships. Captain America and Bucky become aware of the situation, so they save the child, defeat the communist spies and turn them over to the government. 

Title: The Man with No Face

Villain: No-Face

Synopsis: Philip Wing, an agent for Communist China, is really the costumed villain No-Face, who hides his identity behind a full-face mask. No-Face runs a ring of spies who extort money from Chinese people living in America by threatening harm to any loved ones that they still have back in China. The money is used to fund C.C.P. operations. 

Captain America and Bucky are called in to help when No-Face and his men strike in New York City’s Chinatown. No-Face and company capture several cops but Cap and Bucky free them and defeat the Chinese spies. No-Face escapes across the rooftops but is pursued by Cap, who beats him in a fight, but the villain throws himself to his death rather than be captured.

Title: Captain America

Villains: Communist China and North Korea

Synopsis: North Korean and Chinese soldiers who had been POWs in American prison camps during the Korean War are all coming down with signs of poisoning. The two communist nations accuse the U.S. of having used time-released poisons on the men when they were POWs. 

The U.S. denies this and even comes up with an antidote for the poison. Captain America and Bucky are assigned to deliver the antidote in person to be used on the former POWs. Our heroes survive several attempts on their lives by communist agents along the way but reach their destination and prove that the antidote works. 

CAPTAIN AMERICA Vol 1 #78 (September 1954)

Title: His Touch is Death

Villain: Electro

NOTE: This communist Electro has no connection to Spider-Man’s later foe called Electro nor the 1940s Timely Comics hero Electro.

Synopsis: Through assorted inhumane experiments that killed off several human guinea pigs, Soviet scientists at last succeed in granting superpowers to a Russian who is christened Electro. The villain is sent to the U.S. to kill Captain America and Bucky.

Electro attacks the pair at a parade and fights them. The battle spreads to the New York City rooftops, where Cap ultimately uses water to cause Electro to electrocute himself, thus defeating him.

Title: The Green Dragon

Villain: The Green Dragon

Synopsis: In South Korea, Captain America and Bucky defeat a North Korean spy. An item found on the man details how the Green Dragon, a mythical beast who once helped China against its foes in ancient times, is scheduled to return during an upcoming festival. Upon returning, the Green Dragon will lead China in wiping out its modern-day enemies. 

Cap and Bucky covertly slip into China and infiltrate the Green Dragon festival in Shanghai. They discover that the dragon is really a giant mechanical vessel made to look like a dragon. Cap has Bucky pilot the Green Dragon while he attacks Chinese soldiers at the festival. They defeat them all and escape after making it look like the Green Dragon considers the C.C.P. to be the real enemies of China. 

Title: The Hour of Doom

Villains: Chuck Blayne and Soviet agents

Synopsis: The American public – even Captain America and Bucky – have been wowed by Chuck Blayne, an incredible athlete who is also a brilliant scientist. Though Blayne pretends to be patriotic, he is secretly a communist agent.

Captain America and Bucky take action when Blayne one day carries out a plan with several communist spies to plant bombs in the United Nations building, which they seize in a raid. He announces that the bombs will blow up half of New York City unless the demands of his communist masters are met.

Cap and Bucky defeat all the Soviet spies, including Blayne himself, and trick Blayne into revealing the location of the final bomb before it can go off. (They should have given Chuck Blayne a supervillain codename like “Adonis” or something to match his powers.)   

NOTE: After this issue, the revived series was canceled.

FOR MY LOOK AT THE FIRST TWENTY CAPTAIN AMERICA STORIES IN THE 1940s CLICK HERE.

FOR MY LOOK AT THE FIRST TWENTY CAPTAIN AMERICA STORIES IN THE 1960s CLICK HERE.

FOR MY LOOK AT CLASSIC CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE FALCON STORIES IN THE 1970s CLICK HERE.