Category Archives: Superheroes

For Part One of this series click HERE. 

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON Vol 1 #174 (June 1974)

Title: It’s Always Darkest …

Villains: The Secret Empire

Synopsis: This story picks up right where the previous issue left off. The disguised Captain America and the Falcon, posing as drifting, mutant-hating goons for hire have been recruited into the Secret Empire. That villainous organization has been plotting to take over the United States and has also been hunting down and capturing mutants in furtherance of that goal.

The Empire’s operative Number 13 is escorting the disguised Cap and Falc via elevator into their secret headquarters far beneath the New Mexico desert. (Where the group has been lurking ever since their first battles with the Hulk in the 1960s.)

As our undercover heroes are led by Number 13 throughout the high-tech and armament-loaded lair, Captain America reflects to himself how this whole convoluted saga began with the public campaign against him by the Viper and his crooked colleagues on Madison Avenue. Continue reading →

For Part One of this series click HERE.

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON Vol 1 #171 (March 1974)

Title: Bust-Out!

Villains: Stone-Face and Moonstone

NOTE: This is the first story with the Falcon using his new wings in action.

Synopsis: We pick up right where we left off last time. The country is heatedly divided regarding the jailed Captain America’s guilt or innocence on the murder charge. We readers know that Cap was framed by Moonstone and Quentin Harderman (a former colleague of the supervillain the Viper) as the capstone of their smear campaign against our hero.

A gang of armed men have blasted their way into Captain America’s jail cell, claiming to be on his side and offering to help him escape. Cap is torn, apprehensive that people will conclude he’s guilty if he escapes but fearful that if he stays nobody will be able to prove his innocence.

Our hero ultimately decides to stay in his cell to let the legal process play out. It is then that the supposedly “pro-Cap” armed men reveal that they are really part of Harderman’s organization and tell him he has no choice: come with them or they’ll kill him. Continue reading →

For Part One of this series click HERE.

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON Vol 1 #168 (December 1973)

Title: And A Phoenix Shall Arise

Villain: Phoenix (The son of the original Baron Zemo) FIRST APPEARANCE

Synopsis: We pick up an unknown number of weeks or months after the end of the Yellow Claw storyline. In the intervening time period Captain America was in action with the Avengers saving the universe from Dormammu and Loki alongside the Defenders. 

Captain America and the Falcon are out on their nightly patrol looking for crime. At length they pause on a rooftop to discuss how much guilt that Steve (Cap) still feels about the way that the long-lost Peggy Carter is still adjusting to the years she lost in the mental hospital.

And, sadly, has been relying on Cap more and more to cope with the modern world since he went through a similar experience when the Avengers found him frozen in suspended animation years ago. Worst of all is the way that Peggy thinks that she and Steve/ Cap are still an item even though in the years that she was gone he and Sharon Carter, Peggy’s much younger sister, have fallen in love.

NOTE: Over the decades, as the World War Two era was left further and further behind, Marvel retconned it so that Sharon was really Peggy’s niece, then grand-niece, etc instead of her younger sister.

Without warning, Steve and Sam (Falcon) are attacked by a new supervillain calling himself the Phoenix and using a high-tech rifle that shoots deadly energy rays. Phoenix taunts Cap that he has a grievance to settle with him, puzzling our hero, who doesn’t recognize him. Continue reading →

For Part One of this series click HERE.

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON Vol 1 #165 (September 1973)

Title: The Yellow Claw Strikes

Villain: The Yellow Claw (later called the Golden Claw)

Synopsis: We pick up right where we left off last time around, on top of the walls around Grimrock Prison in Maryland, where Captain America and the Falcon defeated the supervillainess Nightshade. 

Nick Fury, who arrived recently with several armed S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in helicopters, is still explaining to Cap and Falc that Nightshade was being financed by the Yellow Claw. Fury and his agents arrived hoping to capture the Claw but that villain had already escaped.   

Things are still a bit tense between Cap and Nick because this is only their second face to face meeting since Contessa Valentina went back to Nick after making him think she was leaving him for Cap. (She did that to get back at Nick for the way he temporarily dumped HER for Laura Brown. What a Soap Opera.)

Fury, in a ridiculously irrational dispay of anger, tries accusing Steve and Sam (Cap & Falc) of screwing up S.H.I.E.L.D.’s attempt to arrest the Yellow Claw, even though our two heroes were lured to Grimrock Prison by Nightshade as part of her plan.
Continue reading →

For Part One of this series click HERE.

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON Vol 1 #163 (July 1973)

Title: Beware of Serpents

Villains: The Serpent Squad

Synopsis: We pick up long after the end of our previous installment. Peggy Carter’s psychological recovery has been proceeding apace as Captain America alternates between the Carter Family’s Connecticut home and New York City where he and the Avengers have had a few recent missions. Cap’s secret identity – Steve Rogers – has officially resigned from the New York City Police Department.

NOTE: The writers apparently felt they had milked as much as they could out of Cap/ Steve’s double life as a cop and decided to put that chapter of his tales behind them. 

Nightshade

At the Paranormal Criminal Detention Wing of Sing Sing Prison, Thor’s old foe the Cobra has paid off corrupt prison guards to sneak their costumes and weaponry into the cells of the imprisoned Eel and his brother the Viper. Donning their gear, Eel and Viper, old foes of Cap and Falc, break out, killing at least four guards as they do. Cobra picks them up in a waiting vehicle and christens their new gang of three the Serpent Squad as they drive off to Cobra’s hideout.   

A few days later, Captain America, the Falcon, Sharon Carter, her much older sister Peggy Carter and their parents arrive at the mansion estate of the Carter Family in northern Virginia. Peggy’s new psychiatrists have declared her to have made sufficient progress that she can move to that home and try reestablishing her life.

Peggy is still fairly vulnerable, however, so Cap and Sharon have still not told her about their romance, which started during the years she was gone. Not helping the situation is the way that news reporters have smoked out enough of the facts of Cap and Peggy’s reunion to make a big story about the “miracle reunion of two lovers separated for decades” angle. Continue reading →

For Part One of this series click HERE.

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON Vol 1 #160 (April 1973)

Title: Enter: Solarr (The internal titles often differed from Marvel Comics’ titles on the cover.)

Villain: Solarr

Synopsis: We pick up an unknown number of nights after our previous installment. Captain America and the Falcon are still mopping up the scattered leftover criminals from the Cowled Commander’s organization called Crime Wave.

This is the final group of several masked men armed with machine guns and bazookas who were trying to pull off a robbery. The crooks remark out loud about how much stronger Cap is now, giving him and the Falcon the opportunity to explain to them (and to readers who missed the past few issues) how he now has Spider-Man level strength. It’s thanks to the way the Viper’s custom venom interacted with the super-soldier serum in his metabolism.

NOTE: This much higher level of super strength for Cap will last until Captain America & The Falcon #218 (February 1978).

After Cap and Falc defeat all but two of the masked men, that final duo try to escape by driving off in their gang’s armored vehicle. Our hero’s new strength makes him able to stop the vehicle, tear off the thick steel door and then easily knock out the final two Crime Wave operatives. Continue reading →

For Part One of this series click HERE.

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON Vol 1 #157 (January 1973)

Title: Veni, Vidi, Vici … Viper

Villain: The Viper

Synopsis: We pick up an unknown number of days after Captain America has returned to New York City from Miami with the Falcon and S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Sharon Carter. The Police Commissioner, who is aware that uniformed cop Steve Rogers is really Cap, relayed a message to Steve to meet him in costume at the 13th Police Precinct building in Hell’s Kitchen. 

On his way there, our hero gets ambushed by a trio of armed punks who say that someone called the Cowled Commander ordered them to prevent Cap from reaching his destination. Naturally Cap defeats all three of them.

In a private room at the 13th Precinct the Commissioner informs Captain America that the Cowled Commander is leading a secret group of criminals and crooked cops in an unknown plan. The Commish wants Cap to find out which cops really have gone bad and to clear innocent ones, like Steve Rogers’ antagonistic Sgt Brian Muldoon, who has been suspended pending investigation.

No sooner have the two men worked out their plans than the Commissioner leaves and a bomb explodes, leaving the precinct building a fiery ruin with no sign of Cap. Cut to the office of social worker Sam Wilson, who is secretly the Falcon. Sam and Leila Taylor are having another of their duels of insults, as Leila tries to get a rise out of Sam by implying she finds the Falcon more attractive because he’s a fighter, unlike Sam. Continue reading →