Captain America
United States of America, 1941.
Seeing the turmoil of war brewing in Europe, the United States government realizes it is just a matter of time before the U.S. will be involved in the conflict as well. One scientist, Dr. Reinstein, has created a "Super-Soldier Serum" to strengthen the American soldier. The first subject to receive this wonderful serum is weak and sickly Steve Rogers. Rogers had decided to join the military, but was rejected for being too frail. Begging to be accepted, Steve is overheard by a general who suggests that there is a way he can serve his country. Once given the secret serum and subjected to "vita-rays," Steve Rogers is reborn as a superb fighting man able to lift over a quarter of a ton and run some 30 miles per hour with extraordinary reflexes roughly 10 times that of a normal man in peak physical condition. But just after the amazing transformation, a mole agent planted within the U.S. government experiment murders Dr. Reinstein. The secret of the formula dies with him, and there can be no other super-soldier like Steve Rogers. Steve is trained in every aspect of fighting and strategy, and his superiors decide that he will become their weapon against the upcoming war in Europe.
Steve Rogers is fitted with the costumed identity of Captain America, Sentinel of Liberty, embodying all that is good in the United States of America! He is assigned as a private in the Army and is stationed at Camp Lehigh. It is there that his secret identity is found out by "Bucky" Barnes, the camp mascot (see individual entry), who, in exchange for becoming Captain America's partner, swears to keep Steve Rogers’s identity a secret. Many battles are ahead for Captain America and Bucky, and they meet the Axis threat at every turn. Facing such villains as the Red Skull and even Adolph Hitler himself, the pair valiantly fights on until the conclusion of the war. Captain America and Bucky also join the All Winners Squad, a group of crimefighters, dedicated to protecting America from the forces of evil. At one point, Bucky is wounded on a case, and Golden Girl (see individual entry) replaces him, until Bucky recovers. Later in the 1950s, Captain America and Bucky fight the Commie menace that threatens the security of the United States.
Bucky
James Buchannon Barnes is a ward of the state assigned to Camp Lehigh as a regimental mascot. One night "Bucky" Barnes discovers his friend PFC Steve Rogers changing from his Captain America (See individual entry) outfit back into his army duds. He convinces Steve that he could be a great asset to Captain America as his partner, if only Steve will train him. Of course, he tells Steve that he will help safeguard the hero’s secret identity, lest anyone else finds out. Steve Rogers agrees to train Bucky, and after a short period of time he is awarded his own uniform to hide his identity. The pair would go onto fight the Nazi menace and super-villains.
Later on, Bucky joins with the Human Torch's sidekick Toro (See individual entries) to form the Young Allies, which are comprised of other kids who want to aid the war effort.
After the war, Bucky and Captain America become
members of the All Winners Squad, crimefighters who are committed
to the cause of fighting crime in postwar America. Bucky is wounded in
one of his outings with Captain America and is briefly replaced by Betsy
Ross, also known as Golden Girl (See individual entry). Settling
down, Steve gets a teaching job, and Bucky returns to the school where
Steve teaches. But the crime-fighting pair does not give up its efforts
against evil, for there is a new evil to battle, the Commies! And so Captain
America and Bucky become America's Commie Busters!
Comments
Simon and Kirby’s Captain America is unquestionably the greatest patriotic superhero, epitomizing the American ideal in long johns. But contrary to some claims, he was not the first patriotic hero MLJ’s Shield (which Joe Simon had created) and Quality’s Uncle Sam preceded him by several months, while Fawcett’s Minute Man, DC’s Mr. America, and Quality’s USA, the Spirit of Old Glory, appeared around the same time. Much of Cap’s origin was derived from the Shield’s (chemical formula for enhanced strength, kid sidekick, recurring foreign spy villain, etc.). What made Captain America so special?
Part of the answer is Jack Kirby. Kirby’s Captain America embodied speed and action. For the first time, the young artist showed the world what he could do by pioneering in the use of full-page panels and other techniques he learned from watching the movies and drew the human figure in action like no one before.
But perhaps part of the answer lies in Steve Rogers’ transformation. Captain America received his powers from a chemical formula, just like Hourman, the Black Terror, and the Blue Beetle, the Shield. While the Shield was just that-FBI agent Joe Higgins shielding America from foreign spies, Rogers was America reborn, a weakling turned into a physical paragon. Professor Reinstein tells him: “We shall call you Captain America for like you America shall gain strength.” Physical fitness was a big American concern in the 1930s and 1940s. And this concern resonated in comics with their muscular heroes who hid behind weak or hypochondriacal alter egos were tailor-made. Simon and Kirby took the idea one step further and had a weakling Steve Rogers made into a superhero.
Like other Timely stories, Cap’s were filled with Gothic elements. Simon and Kirby handled them with the panache of the better monster movies. Cap fought the White Death, the Black Witch, the Ringmaster of Death, the Reaper, the Lord of Death and his Army of Hollow Men, and assorted monsters. But towering over them all was the Red Skull, the ultimate comic book horror.
For a Timely comic, Captain America’s adventures had a well-developed sense of place and character. In addition to Cap and Bucky, FBI agent Betty Ross provided the female angle (though little romance). Betty frequently helped the boys on their cases and carried a service revolver, making her a more formidable woman than the average comic book girlfriend. And there was the comic-relief figure Sergeant Duffy, who was forever assigning Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes KP duty for being AWOL. (They were lucky they weren’t shot for desertion). The stories mostly centered around Camp Lehigh. Captain America was created to fight spies and saboteurs on the homefront; he saw little foreign action.
A few words about Bucky: Just as Cap was not the first patriotic hero, so Bucky was not the first patriotic hero’s kid sidekick, being preceded by Uncle Sam’s Buddy and the Shield’s Dusty (there’s little variation in names here). Like most kid sidekicks, Bucky was probably intended to be a focal point for the young viewers and to give the hero a companion to whom he could be a surrogate father. Most kid sidekicks were orphans, and Bucky is one of the few whose parents’ deaths were not avenged by the main hero.
But in one area Bucky seems to be an original. He was a sidekick with his own strip. Sort of. Bucky was the leader of the Young Allies, a popular and long-running melding of the superhero team (it had Bucky and Toro from the Human Torch strip) and the kid gang (it had a variety of forgettable kid stereotypes). Soon imitators sprang up, including MLJ’s Boy Buddies (starring Dusty and the Wizard’s sidekick Roy the Super Boy) and the Little Leaders (featuring kid sidekicks Kitten and Mickey).
When Simon and Kirby left Timely for DC in 1942, the work on Cap fell to artists Syd Shores, Al Avison, and Vince Alascia and writers like Otto Binder, Bill Finger, and Stan Lee. After the war, Captain America settled down to civilian life as a schoolteacher with Bucky as one of his students. Bucky was eventually eased out of the strip in favor of Golden Girl (Betty Ross in a costume) who exemplified Timely’s move to increase its girl readership. (Note: Bucky did not die in the last days of Word War II, as asserted in post-Golden Age comics.) But times were hard for superheroes. The last few issues of his comic book were called Captain America’s Weird Tales, and they signaled Timely’s new direction. One of these issues had Cap and the Red Skull on the cover, but in place of Alex Schomburg’s classics of mayhem, the Skull loomed over a small, almost helpless Captain America. Cap and the Allies won the war, but the monsters were taking over comics.
After his series was canceled in 1949, Atlas (Timely’s new name) revived Captain America along with the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner in 1953, but it didn’t take. Fans had to wait until 1964 for Cap to return.
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