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Captain America stands as perhaps the most richly-textured superhero in American popular culture, in that he enjoys not one, but two origin stories.
Originally created in 1941 by writer Joe Simon and seminal artist Jack Kirby, “Cap” was patriotism writ large. As one of the three Invaders he infiltrated Nazi-occupied Europe and launched counter-insurgence operations. His first issue closed with him soundly planting a fist on the jaw of Adolf Hitler. But the end of the Second World War saw a drop in circulation and the inevitable discontinuation of Captain America from publication.
It was during the 1960’s that then Editor-In-Chief at Marvel sought to resurrect the original Captain America character. In Avengers issue #4, it was discovered that Cap had indeed survived the War, frozen in a block of ice. It was the Avengers who discovered Cap and thawed him out.
It was this decision by Stan Lee that would make Captain America a complex tapestry of meaning. The bright, gaudy Cap who knew only the certainty of enemies that could be confronted with a strong right hook would forever be changed. Boldly-clad Captain America would now become a character negotiating an equally garish future.
It is this sense of alienation, an innovation of Stan Lee’s, that connects Cap with two popular literary figures; Washington Irving’s Rip van Winkle, who slept away a generation, and Philip Nowlan’s Buck Rogers, a twentieth century astronaut catapulted forward five centuries. But which character provides a better analog for Cap?
In this coming Wednesday’s “Iconographies” feature, we explore the 2007 Death of Captain America, and the impact of this iconic character.
