CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON: BICENTENNIAL YEAR

This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post here at Balladeer’s Blog will look at Jack Kirby’s Captain America storyline for America’s Bicentennial Year: 1976. 

CAPTAIN AMERICA Vol 1 #193 (January 1976)

Title: Screamer in the Brain

Villains: The Elite aka the Royalist Forces of America

NOTE: Legendary comic book artist and writer Jack Kirby, who co-created Captain America back in 1941, had returned for this Bicentennial storyline.

Synopsis: Captain America and the Falcon are casually hanging out at the apartment of Leila Taylor, the Falcon’s romantic partner. Suddenly, a radiation that feels like screaming in one’s brain induces madness in everyone within a couple block radius including Cap and Falc. 

They are eventually able to resist it and fight the destructive mob of other victims until Cap finds and destroys the device responsible. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents arrive on the scene and take our heroes to a briefing by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Increasingly large versions of these “Madbombs” have unleashed chaos in multiple locations across the U.S.

For the cliffhanger ending, Kissinger shows our heroes a photo smuggled out by an agent – a photo depicting “Big Daddy,”a Madbomb so enormous that it will be capable of afflicting the entire United States. The conspirators and their thousands-strong army will then be able to take over the country by mopping up all the crazed and disabled people and superbeings rendered helpless by the Madbomb.

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON Vol 1 #194 (February 1976)

Title: The Trojan Horde

Villains: William Taurey, General Heshin and the Elite

Synopsis: Over the next few days Cap and Falc get subjected to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s new brain bolt machine to give them a small degree of immunity to Madbomb radiation. We readers meet the villains behind this crisis – the Elite, a group of tycoons, politicians, military people and celebrities who consider themselves America’s New Royalty.

They plan to unleash their enormous Madbomb on July 4th of 1976, so that Independence Day becomes instead the day America fell back under “royal” control. The top man is William Taurey (lower right), and General Heshin is the commander of his armies. (So in Kirby’s typically silly way, their names amount to “Tory” and “Hessian.”)   

The Elite top brass wear Colonial-era costumes years before the X-Men’s foes the Hellfire Club did it. Taurey’s ancestor was a British Loyalist who was killed in 1776 by Steve Rogers’ rebel ancestor in a duel. Taurey wants to find a modern day descendant of Rogers and avenge his ancestor by killing that man.

Back with Captain America and the Falcon, they pilot a top-secret aircraft to the South Dakota site of the most recent disappearance of a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent trying to infiltrate the Elite. The villains catch them and unleash genetically engineered giants and other creatures on them, then hit Cap and Falc with mild Madbomb radiation. Though immune to it thanks to their brain bolt exposure, they feign succumbing to it and eventually passing out.

They stop playing possum and start fighting back in a prison where they are about to join the other captive agents in being experimented on. Those unfortunate agents have all been mutated into giants and warriors or, sadly, into subhuman grotesqueries by the Elite’s scientists.    

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON Vol 1 #195 (March 1976)

Title: 1984

Villains: The Elite aka the Royalist Forces of America

Synopsis: Captain America and the Falcon break out of the prison and while engaged in running fights around the underground installation they learn some of the ways that the Elite aka the Royalist Forces of America plan to rule.

Designated Thought Criminals (like in the novel 1984) are punished and anyone talking about freedom or Constitutional rights are executed. Variations of Madbomb radiation can make mobs of people adore political figures in the Elite’s good graces but turn on a dime and want those same figures imprisoned if they displease their new masters. 

Eventually surrounded and forced to surrender, our heroes are given a standard Villain Rant and Tour by Cheer Chadwick (at right), a filthy rich “princess” among the Elite. Her father is Hesperus Chadwick and William Taurey is her uncle. Cheer eventually has one of the Elite’s mutated supervillainesses – a brawny black woman whom Kirby inanely calls Tinkerbelle – take Cap and Falc by surprise with her super strength and take them away.

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON Vol 1 #196 (April 1976)

Title: Kill-Derby

Villains: The Elite/ R.F.A.

Synopsis: On a royal whim, Cheer Chadwick wants to see Captain America and the Falcon fight against fellow condemned prisoners and freakish mutates in the R.F.A.’s gladiatorial games. She and her indulgent father Hesperus are among the “nobility” watching the Games.

Meanwhile, a regular U.S. Army man, General Argyle Fist (Hey, “don’t ask, don’t tell” was years in the future.) leads his men in searching for Cap and Falc where their tracers stopped functioning.

Cap and Falc overcome all the superpowered and/or monstrous inmates set against them in the Kill-Derby. They eventually refuse to fight any further, so the woman warrior called Tinkerbelle (pictured at right) outfights Cap and steals his shield.

If he wants it back, he and the Falcon must resume the life and death combat.

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON Vol 1 #197 (May 1976)

Title: The Rocks are Burning

Villains: The Elite/ R.F.A.

Synopsis: Captain America wins back his shield, then he and the Falcon continue fighting (and beating) their superpowered and/or monstrous opponents in the Kill-Derby. The two also struggle to survive all the other deathtraps, flame-throwers and mini-missiles that are thrown at them and their opponents. 

Back on the surface, General Fist and his men penetrate into the subterranean compound of the Elite and begin an all-out military assault. With Cap and Falc’s help, the U.S. Army eventually wins, taking the base and capturing the Elite’s soldiers and superpowered gladiators. Cheer Chadwick, her father and the other costumed “royals” escaped in the confusion, however.

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON Vol 1 #198 (June 1976) 

Title: Love Story

Villains: The Elite/ R.F.A.

Synopsis: Over the next few days, the army plus our two heroes impound all the weaponry and tech they’ve taken from the Elite/ R.F.A. They find that the enormous Madbomb was originally held at this vast underground fortress but has since been moved to an unknown location.  

With the 4th of July target date fast approaching, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents covertly locate Mason Harding PhD. He is the long-missing scientist suspected of creating the Madbomb technology for the Elite. They provided medical care for his daughter Carol under the condition that he work for them.

Captain America surreptitiously romances Carol along the beach near the Elite mansion where she has been hiding. Cap determines that Carol is innocent and her father works for the Elite under duress. While Cap distracts Carol with another date to get her safely out of the mansion, the Falcon leads a S.H.I.E.L.D. team in a raid of the palatial residence.

With the mansion taken and all the Elite personnel inside arrested, Carol realizes what’s been going on. Cap sadly tells her that though he had to deceive her, his attraction to her was no lie. 

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON Vol 1 #199 (July 1976)

Title: The Man Who Sold the United States

Villains: The Elite/ R.F.A.

Synopsis: As Captain America continues questioning Carol over the next few days, he and the Falcon also help mop up other Elite agents given up by the ones who got arrested at the mansion. 

Carol knows nothing more about her father’s work or where the enormous “Big Daddy” Madbomb is located. July 3rd, 1976 arrives and that night at William Taurey’s party for the highest members of the Elite (including Cheer Chadwick and her father Hesperus.) Carol’s father escapes his guards and flees to his daughter’s location since he’s worried she got arrested in the raid and Taurey can’t be trusted to give him an honest answer.

Elite agents are sent after Dr. Morgan, but Cap and Falc stop them from recapturing or killing the scientist and Falc saves Cap from a car-bomb.

Carol tells her father what happened and he agrees to tell Cap and Falc where the Madbomb will be set off.

Back at William Taurey’s ball, he remotely addresses his technicians in Philadelphia, the location from which the Madbomb will be set off just after Midnight as July 4th arrives. 

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON Vol 1 #200 (August 1976)

Title: Dawn’s Early Light

Villains: The Elite/ R.F.A.

Synopsis: Captain America leads a S.H.I.E.L.D. assault on William Taurey’s New Jersey mansion to take on him plus General Heshin and his remaining troops. Meanwhile, the Falcon leads a separate S.H.I.E.L.D. unit in a raid on the Philadelphia building where the hidden Madbomb will soon be set off. 

Cap and the agents under him defeat Heshin and his army, and Steve settles his ancestor’s feud with the Taurey family in a duel. William Taurey, despite all of his tough talk and pompous posturing, turns out to be nothing but a pampered tycoon and gutlessly surrenders without even firing a shot.

In Philadelphia, the Falcon and his agents reach the enormous Madbomb and the Falcon manages to destroy it before it can go off. For the final dialogue in this story the Falcon contacts Cap and his team and asks “How stands the nation?” Cap replies “The nation stands, Falcon, the nation stands.”

(Schmaltzy I know, but it’s only a comic book.)

COMMENT: Many years later, Marvel Comics would bring back the Elite/ R.F.A. under the name the Imperial Forces. The word “imperial” let them retcon things so that this group had always been connected to the various incarnations of the villainous Marvel group called the Secret Empire. That group dated back to the 1960s. 

FOR MY LOOK AT BRAZIL’S SUPERHEROES CLICK HERE.