Captain America Retrospective Part 1: Captain America Comics #1

Well here we are with the first real part of my Captain America Retrospective. Just in case you're just tuning in now, in anticipation of the release of Captain America: The First Avenger on July 22, I am going back and reading some of Cap's greatest adventures of the past 70 years. I'll be sharing my thoughts here on each graphic novel (or in this case single issue), as I go along. You'll find a link to Part 0 at the bottom of this article.

With all that catch-up business out of the way, let's get down to business. If you're going to do a Captain America retrospective, there's really only one place to start: Captain America Comics #1 (pictured above) by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.

Let's just start off with this amazing cover. Nevermind the fact that we never actually get to see this brutal beat-down or the promise of Captain America coming "face to face with Hitler," the cover imagery perfectly sets the tone for what Captain America would come to symbolize for the people of the Marvel Universe and, in times, ourselves. He is the flag-clad, shield wielding, ass kicking super soldier who makes all red-blooded Americans want to proclaim "AMERICA F@%* YEAH!" No publisher could've gotten away with doing something like this in 2002 with Bin Laden in Hitler's place but I can only imagine the visceral reaction this cover gave people during the height of WWII.

I could go on more about the incredible cover but I think it's time to take a look inside. The issue itself contains four separate Captain America adventures (or "45 thrilling pages" as the cover notes) as well as stories featuring Hurricane and Tuk the Cave Boy which I'll ignore for this review. In these four stories we see the origin of Steve Rogers' transformation into Captain America as well as battles with the hypnotic Sando, the extremely eerie Rathcone, and, of course, arch-nemesis Red Skull.

I'm sure everyone's familiar with the origin of Captain America: weakling Steve Rogers is injected with the Super Soldier Serum invented by Professor Erskine turning him into a human in peak physical prowess. However, in this original origin, the name of the professor was Reinstein instead of Erskine. From what I can gather (based on letter columns in future issues I'll be reviewing), when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby went back to re-tell Cap's origin in the '60s, they relied on their memories of the original stories instead of referencing the actual material which probably led to the new name of Erskine (it appears that a retcon was put in place explaining that Joseph Reinstein was a codename that Erskine used at the time).

The other thing that surprised me about this issue is that Steve Rogers had a secret identity. Having only read Cap's modern adventures, I never realized that at one time the identity of Captain America was protected even inside the military. Private Steve Rogers puts on the act of a Clark Kent-like bumbler who's always raising the ire of his commanding officer Sargent Duffy.

With that out of the way, let's talk about the writing and art. I understand that not everyone can tolerate Golden Age (or even Silver Age) storytelling and art but I am not one of those people. Jack Kirby's pencils, though very different from his Silver Age style that I prefer, are stunning. It feels weird to be writing that because it's such a no-brainer but it must be said anyway. As for Simon's writing, I don't find it nearly as campy and overbearing as many of the stories from the Silver Age (and some of those less-favored modern books as well). There's surprisingly little narration throughout the pages and the panels are not too cluttered with dialogue. It's interesting to see the panel layouts Kirby chose at the time; the panels aren't always laid out in an easy-to-follow manner and little arrows are drawn into the page to direct the reader to the next panel in line.

Alright that'll do it for this installment. I definitely did not expect to go on that long about one issue but I hope you enjoyed reading it. I'll be back within the next few days to go over the first part of the Captain America Omnibus Vol.1 (it's over 800 pages so I'll either be cutting into thirds or halves to review).

You can find my intro to this retrospective here.

Max Beckman is a manager at Pulp Fiction in Long Beach, CA and CheapGraphicNovels.com. You can follow him on Twitter @CheapGNsdotcom and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pulpfictioncomics. Pulp Fiction can be found on the web at www.pulpfictiononline.com and at 1742 Clark Ave. Long Beach, CA 90815.