Captain America's 1960s Adventures in Color: A Marvel Comics Review

Captain America received his own series starting in Tales of Suspense No. 59 in November 1964, after being re-introduced to the comic book world earlier that year in Avengers No. 4. In that issue of the Avengers, the Sub-Mariner stumbles across Captain America frozen a block of ice, being worshiped by the locals in the Arctic. He throws the frozen Cap into the ocean, where the Avengers find and thaw him out.

Writer Stan Lee, in the introduction to this Marvel Masterworks edition, said he faced a challenge when it came time to write the Captain America series. The superhero didn't have a unique superpower like the other Marvel characters of the time, so Lee decided to compensate for Captain America's lack of power by ''giving him as many eye-popping, breathtaking, sense-staggering, mind-blasting action scenes in each story as we could possibly dream up!''

And, boy, did they! Each issue has Captain America running from fight to fight, battling gangs of hoods and bad guys for pages at a time. The stories fly by because of all the action, making this book a very quick read.

Shown here is the cover of Tales of Suspense No. 74.

The first four tales in this volume are one-issue stand-alone stories that, as Stan Lee says, are filled with wall-to-wall action -- Three start with Captain America jumping toward the reader on the first page!

Then Lee and artist Jack Kirby return Captain America to his World War II roots, first retelling his origin and then having him fight the Nazi for another eight issues. During the nine issues, Lee and Kirby bring back Captain America's teen sidekick Bucky as well as Captain America's arch-enemy the Red Skull.

The four issues that re-introduce the Red Skull contains the villain's evil origin, with an appearance of Adolf Hitler, and is a really good tale.

Kirby, who co-created Captain America in 1940, really excels during these World War II tales, and makes the red Skull truly menacing.

I think the World War II tales in this volume are worth the price of the book by themselves.

Shown here is the cover of Tales of Suspense No. 66.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby decided to return Captain America to the 1960s in Tales of Suspense No. 72, cutely opening the story with Captain America in the Avengers HQ surrounded by his teammates who comment on the World War II tale he apparently just finished narrating.

Even so, Captain America isn't done with the Nazi threat yet! This starts a three-issue tale starring the Sleepers, a superweapon that was set up 20 years earlier by the Red Skull. The story is OK, but the ending is kind of flat and the weapon is defeated too easily after a long buildup.

But then Lee found a direction for the strip. He has Captain America become involved with SHIELD, an international law enforcement agency run by Nick Fury. Captain America and Nick Fury met during World War II, when Sgt. Fury had been the leader of a commando squad.

These comics were being published in 1966, when stories about spies like James Bond were extremely popular, and with Captain America being an ex-soldier it made sense for him to become an ally of SHIELD.

The stories began to flow more, with some continuity at this point. The volume ends with a three-issue tale that reveals that the Red Skull also survived World War II and is back to menace Captain America! The issue shown here is Tales of Suspense No. 80, with the Red Skull in a most-threatening pose.

This collection of stories is fast-paced and any fan of Captain America will enjoy it!

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Captain America



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