Tag Archives: Captain America

May 25, 2024 · 12:01 am

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. 

cap back from the deadYOUNG 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

ym 24Synopsis: 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. Continue reading →

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January 2, 2022 · 6:51 am

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON: 1970s CLASSICS

Superhero-hungry readers have been letting me know they want more Marvel Comics blog posts. With my look at 1970s classics for the Avengers and Spider-Man completed this post starts a look at 70s classics for Captain America & the Falcon. 

ca f 153CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON Vol 1 #153 (September 1972)

Title: Captain America – Hero or Hoax?

Villains: The Captain America of the 1950s (William Burnside, one of the men whom the U.S. government had assume the role of Captain America while the real Cap was M.I.A. and presumed dead for decades.) and the Bucky of the 1950s (Jack Monroe, one of the young men the government assigned the “Bucky” identity during that same period.)

Synopsis: Captain America and the Falcon, in their secret identities of Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson, are with S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Sharon Carter at the airport. Sam is seeing off Steve and Sharon as they fly to the Bahamas for a long vacation together (By this time Sharon knows that Captain America is really Steve Rogers.)

When the two lovebirds’ plane flies off, Sam Wilson returns to his life as a social worker in Harlem while also fighting crime there in his costumed identity of the Falcon. Because this is before the Falcon got his high-tech wings (that story is coming, too) back then he got around by the way his falconing glove shot a wire like Daredevil’s billy club did, too, so Falcon could swing around the city like DD and Spider-Man. Continue reading →

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February 12, 2021 · 7:54 am

FIRST 20 CAPTAIN AMERICA STORIES FROM THE 1960s

Regular readers have let me know they are going through Marvel withdrawal right now because WandaVision just isn’t giving them enough of a fix. Last year I looked at Captain America’s first 20 stories from the 1940s. Now here’s a look at his first 20 solo stories from the 1960s.

tales of suspense 59TALES OF SUSPENSE Vol 1 #59 (November 1964)

Title: Captain America

Villain: Bull

Comment: After being thawed out from his suspended animation in Avengers #4, Captain America had been serving as a member of the team while trying to adjust to the way he had lost twenty years preserved in ice. Now he was getting his first Silver Age solo stories. Jack Kirby was drawing Cap’s stories, just as he had during the 1940s when he co-created the character. 

Synopsis: Alone on monitor duty at Avengers Mansion one night, Captain America was helping to pass the time by looking through old World War Two scrapbooks and memorabilia. He still missed his late partner Bucky. (NOTE: It was not until decades later that Marvel retconned events so that Bucky had survived as the Winter Soldier.)

Elsewhere in New York City, a gangster called Bull and his dozen or so men have learned that it’s Cap’s turn on monitor duty. With the other Avengers (Thor, Iron Man, the Wasp and Giant-Man) elsewhere, Bull and his men decide it’s their best chance to mount a raid on Avengers Mansion and make off with some of the Top Secret tech and national defense secrets in the place. Continue reading →

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June 25, 2020 · 8:24 pm

THE FIRST TWENTY CAPTAIN AMERICA STORIES IN THE 1940s

Balladeer’s Blog’s readers always remind me that they can’t get enough superhero articles, so here we go again. With the Fourth of July Holiday coming up, I figured I’d look at the earliest stories of the Timely Comics (later called Marvel Comics) red, white & blue hero Captain America.

Captain America 1CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS Vol 1 #1 (March 1941)

Story 1: Meet Captain America

Villains: Assorted Nazi saboteurs

Synopsis: Voluntary guinea pig Steve Rogers is subjected to the Top Secret Super-Soldier Treatment and becomes Captain America. With his trusty shield, Cap defeats Nazi saboteurs up and down the East Coast, becoming a media sensation. At Camp Lehigh, army mascot James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes walks in on Private Steve Rogers switching from his uniform to his Captain America costume.

Cap agrees to risk the teen’s life by making him his costumed sidekick.

Captain America OneStory 2: Case Number 2

Villains: Sando and Omar

Synopsis: Steve Rogers and J.B. Barnes are stationed now at Fort Bix. With the help of FBI Agent Betsy Ross (yes, Betsy Ross) they become involved in the case of stage psychics Sando and Omar. Sando uses psychic powers to cause the mentally challenged Omar to “see” (really produce) visions in a crystal ball depicting disasters occurring, the first night at Fort Bix, the next night at a nearby bridge.

           The disasters really occur, and Captain America, Bucky and Betsy eventually expose Sando as Nazi Agent Sando Von Krantz, a probable mutant who used his psychic powers to fill his stooge Omar’s mind with the disasters shown in the crystal ball. Somehow Omar’s powers caused those disasters to come true. (Hey, it’s a comic book.) Sando and Omar are captured, and Betsy pleads for mercy for the simple-minded Omar.

Story 3: The Soldiers’ Soup Continue reading →

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