Captain America #135 - More Monster Than Man!

There was once a long-standing belief in the American comic book industry that the sure-fire way to sell any book was to put a gorilla on the front of it.

Whether that theory was correct or not, I can neither confirm nor deny, being bereft, as I am, of a doctorate in psychology but, in retrospect, perhaps the industry had a point.

My reading of American comics began in earnest in that hot summer holiday of 1972 when green flies, black flies and ladybirds seemed to be waging a vast war against each other wherever you looked. I'd read one Spider-Man comic before that and one Superman comic but it was during that holiday that my super-hero reading truly became a, "thing."

And one of that very first batch of American comics I read was Captain America #135, which did indeed have something that vaguely resembled a gorilla on the front of it.

Had the presence of the sinister simian led me to buy it from that Blackpool indoor market stall? Or was it some other quality that had piqued my interest?

I don't know but I do know that, once I got it open, the thing that most gripped me about the story was Captain America's costume. That collision of colour and shapes was like taking LSD, opening up a whole new way of viewing the world, for me. Once you'd seen a thing like that, how could you ever go back to drab reality?

Well, that's all well and good but that was then. What of now? Reading that tale again, for the first time in decades, what do I make of it?

I make of it that it's great. Facially challenged SHIELD boffin Doctor Gorbo dreams of wooing his youthful assistant Julia who only joined SHIELD in the hope of finding a boyfriend. I assume she didn't tell Nick Fury that at the job interview or I suspect another candidate might have got the position.

Sadly, Julia might be desperate for a man but she's not so desperate that she'd settle for Dr Gorbo. In response, Gorbo reacts as the lovelorn have always done throughout the centuries, and makes himself a serum from ape blood and then swallows it.

No, it's not some kind of weird suicide attempt. It's an attempt to become a Captain America style he-man who can sweep Julia off her feet.

Unfortunately, he instead becomes a King Kong style gorilla who could sweep anyone off their feet, by sheer brute force alone.

However, he's not just any ape. He's a criminal ape. Armed with genius intelligence, super-strength and the power to mentally control dogs (No, I'm not sure how the last bit ties in thematically with him being a super-ape) he goes on a crime spree.

Needless to say, it's not long before Cap and Falc are on his tail and failing to stop him.

But, in between all this, there's the small matter of a huge drill that's going to dig a hole deep enough for the world's nuclear waste to be buried in.

And wouldn't you know it? No sooner do Cap and the gorilla start fighting but they manage to inadvertently fall down it.

Are they doomed?

Are they about to go splat when they hit the bottom?

We'll have to wait for next month's issue, to find out.

Actually, I had to wait five or six years to find out, when Part Two of the tale was finally reprinted in Marvel UK's Super Spider-Man comic.

In all honesty, a number of the very earliest comics I read as a child have turned out to be less than special when I've re-read them as a grown-up but this one is a definite exception. We get to see the Falcon meet Nick Fury for the first time and prove his fighting skills by grappling with Dum Dum Dugan. We get some trademark Stan Lee soap opera, as Cap tries to patch things up with Sharon Carter after their latest bust-up. We get a super-intelligent gorilla, a big machine that's drilling down into the depths of the Earth and we get a dramatic ending. What more could you ask to be crammed into a twenty page story? And there really is something strangely compelling about the sight of Cap and his opponent plunging down into a bottomless pit.

Most of all, there's Gene Colan's art which is amongst the most appealing I've ever seen from him, aided considerably by Tom Palmer who is, surely, indisputably the best inker Colan ever had or ever could have had.

So, maybe I did buy the thing purely because it had an ape on the cover.

Or maybe I didn't.

But I can safely say that, in convincing me to get, it, the comic certainly didn't make a monkey out of me.

Random comics I have owned. Part Four.

When it comes to the National Lottery, a wise man once said, "It could be you."

Sadly, he was wrong. It couldn't be me. Why? Because I've never entered it.

Happily, there's another lottery. A better lottery. One that brings far more joy into people's lives than winning ten million pounds could ever do.

And that's the lottery that is, "Random comics I have owned."

Just what magic will it fling at us tonight?

I don't know.

But one thing's for sure.

I'm not going to let it change my life.

At one point, I had every one of the Black Orchid's original Adventure Comics appearances. All three of them. Sadly, it wasn't long after her debut before she was booted off the book, to be replaced by the Spectre.

Happily, for fans of women with flower obsessions, she was soon back, in the pages of The Phantom Stranger.

As for this tale, I have no recall at all of what happened in it but I gather that sailors and boats were involved.

It's one of my childhood faves, as Superboy finds himself turned into a merboy.

And if that's not one of the greatest comic book covers of all time, I'm a seahorse.

The X-Men come up against the Hellfire Club who seem to be an awful bunch of bounders and not at all inspired by a notorious but celebrated episode of TV's Avengers.

Batroc and Mr Hyde come up with a plan to blow up New York, with a boat, unless they get zillions.

Needless to say, Captain America soon puts a stop to their devilish plans.

Is it my imagination or is, "Batroc," misspelled on that cover?

It's the only original issue of the Hulk comic that I ever owned as a kid but I loved it, as, now residing in Canada, the Mimic is in danger of draining all our hero's life energy from him

This was the firs time I ever encountered the blue furry version of the Beast and was initially most confused as to whether he was meant to be the same character as the one from the X-Men.

I got this from a newsagents in a place called Heeley Green. This fact will mean nothing to 99.9% of the people reading this post but, somehow, that memory adds a certain charm to it all.

I seem to recall that an alien robot tyrant takes a fancy to the female member of the Metal Men and decides to bombard Earth with loads of missile-shaped robots because of it. How this was supposed to win her heart, I have no idea.

With their sharply defined personalities, I did find the Metal Men quite charming at the time.

It's the comic that gave us America's first teenage president.

More to the point, thanks to its unfeasibly visaged bad guy, it was the first time I ever encountered the smiley-face symbol with which all internetters are now so familiar.

I also learned from it that Mussolini made the trains run on time.

Who says comics aren't educational?

Iron Fist comes to London and immediately gets into a punch-up with Radion the atomic man.

Sadly, it turns out to be curtains for the Post Office Tower, which meets an explosive fate.

Whisper it quietly but I do believe this strip featured John Byrne's finest artwork.

Random comics I have owned. Part Two.

Quiver, mortals! It's time to cower once more before the raging power of nostalgia - because it's time for Part Two of my random look back at various comics I used to own when I was barely more than knee-high to a Kurrgo.

It's one of my childhood faves, as Superboy re-encounters a child genius with a knack for landing him in trouble.

I recall nothing of this book's contents. I do however still dig that cover.

But just what is the way in which the Flash dies?

Purchased from an indoor market in Blackpool, in the summer of 1972, this was one of the first American comics I ever owned.

As you can guess, it has the Angel vs Red Raven, as they meet in the latter's city in the clouds.

Yet another of my very earliest American comics, as Cap and Falc come up against a scientist who turns himself into a talking gorilla.

The gorilla was fine but I remember being most taken at the time by the colour scheme of Cap's costume.

A comic strip artist inadvertently creates a winged bad guy who I seem to recollect has plans to conquer the world.

Exactly how it all plays out, I don't remember. Did the artist foil the villain's mighty plans by erasing him/redrawing him/spilling ink over the paper he'd originally been drawn on?

The Phantom Stranger meets Frankenstein's monster.

Despite my lack of enthusiasm for DC's take on the monster, I do remember enjoying this one.

I seem to recall there being some sort of demonic possession thing going on and some typically rugged artwork by Jim Aparo inside.

I believe the cover to be by Mike Kaluta.

I'm pretty sure this is the first colour Conan comic I ever owned, as our hero comes up against a gold statue of a scorpion that inconveniently comes to life.

The cover's always driven me up the wall. I'm convinced John Buscema borrowed Conan's pose from a Jack Kirby panel but I've never been able to work out in which comic that panel first appeared.

Hooray! Marvel's reprint mag gives us Kraa, who I seem to recall being surprisingly helpful in a crisis and coming to a sad end.

Poor old Kraa.

Giant-Size Invaders #1.

What a cruel mistress The Mighty World of Marvel could be. Much as I loved it, there were times when it could inflict horror unimaginable upon a reader.

One such occasion was when it decided to run reprints of Sgt Fury and His Howling Commandos for what seemed like an eternity. I really did try to read those stories but must confess that after a while I simply gave up and habitually left that section of the comic unread. How I celebrated when they were dropped from the mag, to be replaced by some other strip or other.

The other nightmare was when the comic started running reprints of The Invaders.

At this point, I have to come clean. As a kid, I hated war comics - all that, "Achtung!" and, "Donner und blitzen!" Even as a young child, it all seemed horribly stereotyped and juvenile. The truth is that the main reason I read Marvel Comics in the first place was because they bore no resemblance to the war comics that British publishers routinely inflicted on us.

The only exception to this antipathy was Weird War Tales - but that was only because it was full of ghosts and great artwork.

Sadly, The Invaders possessed neither, being straightforward super-hero fare and drawn by Frank Robbins. I don't like to be harsh on Frank Robbins but if he wasn't drawing The Shadow, I couldn't cope with his weirdly distorted characters who fought in strange balletic poses, with proportions that suggested they 'd been through some sort of mangling machine.

Well, the first time they made their appearance was in Giant-Size Invaders #1. How will that comic fare, upon me re-reading it for the first time since the late 1970s?

After bashing up some Nazis, Captain America learns that one of the scientists who helped create him has been taken to hospital after a run-in with yet more Nazis. There, he discovers the Germans have created their own super soldier known as The Master Man who's out to attack a British battleship headed for America.

Cap, Bucky, the Human Torch and Toro head off to stop him - and discover the Sub-Mariner's already on the boat. Our heroes then proceed to hit the Axis Antagonist from all sides.

When The Master Man's finally dispatched, it turns out his target on the boat was Winston Churchill who tells them to stay teamed-up in order to thwart the Germans, at which point our heroes go all gung ho and tell the Nazis (who aren't there) that they're going to smash their faces in, or words to that effect.

It'd be nice to say my adult self was won over by all this in a way my youthful incarnation never was but I still didn't like it. Roy Thomas' script is full of caricatured Germans being beastly and having silly accents (I'm sorry, I should have said, "Haffink der silly accents, schweinhund!") and it has to be said The Invaders are strangely inept and ineffectual. The only reason they beat The Master Man is because he loses his powers at an inconvenient moment, otherwise they'd have failed completely in their mission and Britain would have been looking for a new Prime Minister.

On top of that is the same old complaint that Frank Robbins' art just isn't suited to super-heroes. He was suited to the 1940s - just not men in tights in the 1940s.

There's also the problem that Namor talks like he did way back in the Golden Age. Granted, this makes some sort of sense, bearing in mind that the story's set in that era but, for a reader used to the more haughty Silver and Bronze Age Sub-Mariner, it really is jarring to see him rattling on about, "Ratzis," and slanging it up big-time. You also have to feel sorry for him not having a youthful sidekick like the other two adult members do. Could Marvel not have let him abduct Aqualad or something?

So, there you have it. I remain unconvinced that I was ever wrong about the strip. Still, at least it's not Nick Fury and His Howling Commandos.

Now that really would be a terrible thing to be.

PS. You can never say this blog isn't educational. Apparently, the phrase, "OMG," was first used in a letter sent to Winston Churchill way back in 1917.

I have no info on whether his diary entry for June 6th 1944 read, "Just invaded France. lol."

Steve Fights Crime! Getting it off your chest.

If there's one thing in life a Bronze-Age super-hero needs, it's a shirt.

Why?

To hide the fact he has no nipples.

It's not just the male Bronze and Silver-Agers who have this affliction. When Mary Jane Watson saunters into Peter Parker's living room in Amazing Spider-Man #55, she's clearly wearing a see-through dress and yet there's not a nipple in sight.

From this we can conclude that comic book people are not mammals at all and must reproduce by means of laying eggs.

But, if one's constructing one's ideal super-hero costume, just what shirt should one wear? My quest to assemble such an outfit has already seen me plump for Ant-Man's helmet and Batman's cape but what shirt could possibly do them justice?

Iron Man has a metal, bullet-proof chest-plate. I think we can all agree that bullet-proof chest-plates are a good thing in the fight against crime - unless the bullets ricochet off your chest-plate and shoot up your nose.

The Valkyrie has metal hubcaps to hide her boobal appendages of Valhalla. Sadly while such a feature might be eye-catching, I fear such adornments might prove uncomfortably cold in winter.

Killraven has that strange chain-mail thing that only covers one side of his chest; and Spider-Man has a large spider on his shirt, which is rarely the best way to make friends and influence people.

No, wonderful as all these items are, I can't get round it. If I'm to have a shirt, there can be only one choice.

And that's Captain America's.

Captain America's shirt might be corny and not at all appropriate, bearing in mind I'm not American, but I still remember how striking his outfit seemed to me when I first clapped eyes on it as an eight-year-old. When it comes to dealing with wrong-doers, you simply can't beat a combination of red, white and blue.

But that's not enough.

If I'm not to be arrested for indecent exposure before I've even punched my first super-villain in the hooter, I'm going to have to acquire something to cover my heroic nether-regions.

And that's the problem my next post'll be tackling.

In the meantime, feel free to discuss your favourite super-hero shirts of all time.

Captain America's greatest ever foe - Poll Results!

It might be the Hollywood Oscars tonight but all eyes are on a far more glittering occasion, as it's time for evil to duck once more beneath the Table of Justice and the results to be announced from our poll to find Captain America's greatest ever foe.

It has to be said it wasn't the most vote-heavy of occasions but still it mustered enough responses to give us an unequivocal answer.

In joint third, with one vote each, were Madame Hydra, the Sleepers and Modok.

Second, with two votes was Baron Zemo.

But the winner, with a walloping 58% of the poll, and seven votes, was the man whose head's as crimson as that carpet the stars walk on - the Red Skull.

Sadly, the Red Skull can't be here tonight to collect his award, what with him not existing, and there're those who'll say he rigged the voting, using his Cosmic Cube but I know he'd never pull such a stunt. So, congratulations to the Red Skull, commiserations to the plucky losers, and thanks as always to all who voted.

Captain America's greatest ever foe.

A wise man once said that when Captain America throws his mighty shield, all who choose to oppose him must surely yield.

And yet still those opposers keep opposing.

What fools they be.

But what's bad news for them is good news for us, as it's time to ask the question of just who is Captain America's greatest ever foe.

Being a veteran of World War Two, Cap's been around a long time and has had plenty of opportunities to make enemies. There's Baron Zemo, a man with a paper bag stuck to his face, the Red Skull, a man with a rubber skull stuck to his face, and Modok, a man with a flying chair stuck to his face.

But, in all this face-happy action, we shouldn't forget those with other body parts, such as Batroc Ze Leapair, the Super-Adaptoid and Dr Faustus.

And who could forget the Human League haired beauty that was Madame Hydra?

But that's enough of my thoughts. Nominate your own favourite, in the comments box, and, as always, in a couple of days from now, I'll compile it all into a poll.

And then, at last, the world shall decide just who is Captain America's greatest ever foe.

Captain America #110.

As we all know, within the last few days, comics legend Joe Simon has died. I would write a glowing tribute but my knowledge of his life and work is probably too limited for me to get away with it. I will say though that it's always a sad day when a comics great dies, especially as - even though their creations are frequently household names - the creators themselves have often lived their lives completely unknown by the general public.

It does however give me an excuse to look at his most famous creation - Captain America - and take a look at one of that strip's most celebrated phases, the short period when it was drawn by Jim Steranko.

I have to admit I've not always been sold on Steranko's work, sometimes finding it too like an exercise in graphic design rather than heart-felt story-telling but even I have the taste to have always appreciated his stint on Captain America. And issue #110 was where it started.

It's a significant issue for other reasons too because this is the tale in which Rick Jones officially becomes Captain America's sidekick and gets to run around dressed as Bucky. Luckily we're spared the horror of him being referred to as "Ricky" but not the necro-something-or-other of seeing him dressed as his 1940s' predecessor.

It all starts when Steve Rogers is roaming the city at night, minding his own business, when none other than the incredible Hulk smashes through a brick wall. During Cap's tangling with the monster, Rick Jones shows up, gets injured and - unconscious - has to be taken back to Cap's flat. Once recovered, Rick declares he wants to take Bucky's place, and goes with our hero on his next mission, a subterranean battle with Hydra who're out to contaminate the city's water supply. Needless to say Cap sees off this threat to New York - and a new partnership is born.

What leaps out at you about this issue is what a complete and total weener Rick Jones is - and, frankly, what a nut-job. Upon waking in a strange apartment, his first reaction to seeing a dead crime-fighter's costume is to put it on and parade around in it in front of that dead man's guilt-stricken ex-partner. Not only is this presumptuous but plain weird. Who upon finding a dead man's clothing feels compelled to put it on? He then whines and grizzles his way though the rest of the tale, managing to mess up everything Captain America does, and leaving you wondering why Cap doesn't just smack him in the mouth like he's asking for.

Cutting a far more impressive figure is villain-of-the-piece Madame Hydra, who shares the Valkyrie's love of having her hair hanging over one eye. Unlike the Valkyrie, she also has a taste for carrying whips and wearing skin-tight green leather which I suspect can never be a bad thing in a woman. From what's said in the story, it appears to be her first-ever appearance and she certainly makes her début in style.

But if Rick Jones and Madame Hydra are the characters who drive the tale, overall it's dominated by Jim Steranko and his work. Aided by Joe Sinnott's clean inking, it's a beautiful thing to look at. But, also, Steranko's determinedly stylish layouts lend the story an atmosphere that, for some reason, brings to my mind the classic 1950s' sci-fi flick Invaders From Mars. Not because there's any similarity in either the look or content of the thing but because it shares the strangely surreal air of that movie. It seems odd to speak of sound when reviewing a story told in purely visual terms but there's a strange silence to Steranko's work, that lends a sterilising and haunting feel to things, almost as though what we're reading is some twenty page dream that Captain America's going through.

Perhaps a sign of how much Steranko's thinking's dominated by style rather than story is that, when we first meet Cap in the back alley, he's lighting a cigarette and having a smoke. It makes no sense at all in terms of character. Does the most physically perfect specimen of manhood, whose body is a presumably a well-honed temple, really smoke?

Of course he shouldn't and of course he doesn't but it looks stylish, so it gets used. Such liberties with the basic nature of a character should be unforgivable but the story's surreal air allows Steranko to get away with it, thanks to the feeling that we're seeing some sort of alternate version of Captain America to the one we're used to.

Essential Captain America Volume 1.

As I defy the warning notices and try to climb the trees in Sheffield's Winter Gardens, people often say to me, "Steve, why do you look so good naked and where did you get your ability to only ever be shot by stun guns?"

"It's simple," I tell them. "I got the first quality from drinking a strange frothing formula that turned me into a perfect physical specimen of humanity. I then had to kill the scientist responsible so there could never be any others like me. The second quality I got from reading too many issues of Captain America."

You guessed it. Thanks to my recent spending spree, I've been reading Essential Captain America Vol 1.

Now, I must own up that I bought it because it was going cheap, rather than through any huge compulsion to catch up with the star-spangled superstar. In truth I read most of these tales as a kid, in the pages Marvel UK's The Titans but to say my memories were vague would be an understatement.

Still that didn't stop me leaping in with my usual gusto.

Surprisingly, Cap's Silver Age series doesn't kick off with his origin. Instead we leap straight into the action, with him seeing off a gang of crooks who break into the Avengers' Mansion. This lays down an early template with Cap repeatedly coming up against gangs of brawlers who he soon sees off with his fighting skills in what're clearly just an excuse for Jack Kirby to draw punch-ups.

After just a few stories however we're suddenly flung back into the past as, instead of present day tales, we're given a diet of World War Two outings. As with the very early Hulk comics, you get a feeling of Lee and Kirby not being quite sure what to do with the strip and trying different approaches to see what sticks. It's during this period that we get the classic retelling of Captain America's origin.

We also get the origin of the Red Skull, which comes after a jarring leap from the events of the previous issue, with no explanation of what happened in between. That aside, this is easily the best of the WW2 tales, even if the Skull's ascent from mere bellboy to arch-villain relies a little too much on luck on his behalf.

Clearly Lee and Kirby decide the WW2 approach isn't what the readership want because, after a few issues, they switch back to tales set in the present. Once there, the stories settle into one of two moulds. Either Captain America comes up against the always irritating Batroc the Leaper who quickly realises he's better off helping Cap than fighting him, or a mystery villain kidnaps SHIELD's enigmatic Agent 13, and Cap has to launch a one-man attack on his base to rescue her. The mystery villain nearly always turns out to be either the Red Skull or the almost identical Baron Zemo, and so the regular shock revelations rarely come as a shock.

For some reason, Lee and Kirby seem reluctant to move away from a James Bond template and also seem to fear straying too far from Cap's past, as we keep getting World War Two menaces repeatedly rising from the grave to pester him. This trend reaches its nadir when, in the present, he finds himself up against the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Sleepers, giant robots created by Hitler to destroy the world in the event of his defeat. To say the Sleepers are among the lamest robots ever seen in comics would be an understatement. Basically think of a giant robot hanging from a flying manta ray with a giant metal skull on top.

The one major exception to this World War Two-ness is the introduction of the huge-headed Modok who, despite being arguably the most interesting villain of the collection, only appears in one tale and isn't seen again, as we get yet more of the Red Skull and Zemo.

Modok aside, perhaps the strip's two most impressive creative contributions during this volume are the introductions of the Cosmic Cube - that little box that allows its owner to do anything he wants - and the 4th Sleeper, a Nazi robot far superior to its predecessors which, thanks to its control over its density, can walk around underground while firing devastating force beams upwards to destroy whole swathes of real estate.

One of the things you can't miss when reading this collection is that Captain America isn't a Silver Age character. He's a Golden Age one, crafted long before the Marvel template for the fallible hero was laid down, making him much less interesting than other Marvel do-gooders. There's also the problem that he'd been in suspended animation for nearly twenty years before returning in The Avengers and so, unlike other Marvel heroes, has no inbuilt supporting cast.

Lee and Kirby try to remedy this by making SHIELD and its agents his supporting cast but there's an obvious problem that, while this makes some sense - bearing in mind Nick Fury's shared World War Two background with Cap - it means it's Captain America's supporting cast and not Steve Rogers'. In these tales, Rogers literally has no existence. He has no family, no friends, no neighbours, no job, no interests, no hobbies. We simply never see him other than when he's about to become Captain America.

Even when Lee and Kirby try to give our hero a love interest in the shape of Agent 13, she's not Steve Rogers' love interest, she's Captain America's. Despite being in love with him, for most of this volume Agent 13 never even sees him without his mask. And when he finally does reveal his true identity to her, we get the unlikely sight of them on a date, with him referring to her throughout as, "Agent 13". Gwen and Peter this isn't.

There's also the somewhat bizarre idea that Cap's in love with her because she's identical to a resistance fighter he loved during the War. At one point it's hinted that Agent 13's the younger sister of that original love interest, making Cap's infatuation the sort of thing a psychiatrist would have a field day with. Fortunately, after their first meeting, that particular idea's never mentioned again. Nor is the fate of that original love interest, last seen in the 1940s, wandering off with amnesia.

This failure to develop Steve Rogers is a glaring weakness in the strip and means that while other Marvel titles of the era were able to widen and deepen their dramatic appeal though the heroes' private lives, the world of Captain America, even his love life, effectively becomes one long fight scene.

If the tales tend to be uninvolving on an emotional level, the upside of them is Jack Kirby's art which, mostly inked by Jolting Joe Sinnott, looks as good as it ever did, up until the final few stories when Syd Shores takes over the inking. I don't like to be mean but I've never liked Shores' inking and for me it does Kirby's work no favours here.

All in all, I can't get round the fact that there're good reasons I didn't previously remember these tales. Their reliance on action action action can make it a hard grind ploughing through them at times and you really do start to feel you're reading the same story over and over again. Still, it's yet another piece of Marvel's history caught up on and I did at least become reacquainted with the births of the Cosmic Cube, AIM and Modok.

The things I learned from reading Essential Captain America Volume 1:

1. Captain America survives most of his fights by dumb luck. In virtually every story, there's a point where the bad guys could kill him but choose not to because, "That would be too easy," or because, despite being ruthless killers/assassins, they're only packing stun guns.

2. All foreigners are stereotypes.

3. The Red Skull thinks Scotland is in England.

4. All vehicles belonging to top secret organisations whose existence the world knows nothing of, have the name of that organisation written on them in giant letters.

5. The Avengers have daily meetings with military types, at which they're given the current co-ordinates and travel plans for every US naval ship and submarine. Those meetings must just fly by.

Tales of Suspense #63. The origin of Captain America.

Hände hoch! Steve Does Comics has gone World War Two crazy. Only two days ago I was celebrating the death of Hitler in 1963, and now I'm celebrating the birth of Captain America in 1941, as retold in Tales of Suspense #63. 

And what a masterpiece of compression it is as we get not only the origin of Captain America but also the origin of Bucky, and even their first adventure together, all done and dusted in just nine pages.

Within the origin story there's a strong hint of the problems that'd plague Cap's solo tales of the 1960s, as we get no introduction to Steve Rogers at all. The first we see of him is when he's in the secret, government-funded lab of one Dr Erskine. Rogers is a skinny weakling rejected by the military, for being too puny, but about to drink Erskine's formula that'll turn him into a perfect physical specimen, one of a planned army of super-soldiers ready to take on the Nazi menace. Inevitably a Nazi agent sneaks into the room and shoots Erskine. Now a walking powerhouse, Rogers sorts out the spy, but not in time to save Erskine, meaning Rogers'll be the only super soldier America'll ever have.

They never did explain what was camp about
him.

We then get a little bit of characterisation as we see Rogers in the army, as a private, acting incompetent in order to disguise his true identity. I assume this idea came from Superman and his Clark Kent alter-ego. The only problem is it means that in our one chance to see what Steve Rogers is like, we're given a fake persona and're still no nearer knowing anything about him than we were at the start of the tale. The truth is that, just as Superman's really Superman, with no true identity beyond that, so Captain America's only himself when he's behind a mask that's meant to be a disguise.

If Steve Rogers is based on Clark Kent then I assume his sidekick Bucky's based on Robin. One night, as Rogers is putting on his costume, ready to smack up yet more Nazis, camp mascot Bucky Barnes blunders into his tent and discovers his secret.

If I were Rogers, I'd show him my fist and tell him to keep his trap shut or else. This may be why they never let me have sidekicks. Cap, on the other hand, is cut from a different cloth - a star-spangled cloth - and so acquits himself far more honourably.

Bucky then carries out his missions under the brilliant pseudonym of "Bucky". Who could ever hope to discover his secret identity when he has that kind of smarts?

Still, as portrayed here, Bucky's a more successful character than Robin - perhaps because Captain America's a less dark character than Batman, with Bucky a less colourful character than Robin. Somehow, despite the irresponsibility of a grown man taking a child into combat, it doesn't seem as unlikely for Captain America to hang around with a youthful sidekick as it does for a Dark Knight to do so.

It's a story where plot dominates to the cost of all else, which is inevitable given the short page count and the amount of info to pack in but it does an excellent job of it, cramming a whole pile of information into a bite-sized chunk and I really do like Kirby's art here.

So, the hero of the Free World gets off to a promising start but can he keep it up?

I suspect we may be finding out in my very next post.

As long as a Nazi agent doesn't get me first.

Avengers #56. Sidekicking the bucket.

If there's one thing you can say about 1940s' super-heroes it's that few of them were in any danger of winning awards for social responsibility. Leaving aside their love of a good fight - often involving guns - virtually none of them seemed to see anything wrong with dragging children into battle at any opportunity.

This made no sense. If you're going to drag an annoying sidekick into battle with you, make sure it's an adult. He'll be much better at getting between you and any bullets that might be flying around, leaving you to survive and get the plaudits.

Captain America was of course no exception to all this - showing his magnificent lack of regard by making sure it was always he and not his youthful sidekick Bucky who got to hold the shield whenever there were bullets about.

But every so often Cap'd take a break from dressing Rick Jones up as Bucky, to get a pang of guilt about his past and, in the Avengers #56, thanks to Dr Doom's time machine, he and his team-mates go back to the 40s to make sure the original Bucky really did die in the Second World War.

Once there, they show their usual inability to stay out of trouble by inadvertently becoming solid and getting into a fight with Baron Zemo before witnessing Bucky's demise.

And so it is that, at the tale's conclusion the star-spangled Avenger stands alone to reflect on the fact he can now well and truly cross his ex-sidekick off his Christmas card list.

Written by Roy Thomas, a man never afraid to raid Marvel's vaults for ideas, this has always been one of my favourite Avengers tales, with the art team of John Buscema and George Klein at the peak of their collective powers and a chance for Cap to do the agonising he always did so well. It also leads into the Avengers Annual #2 which has always been a fave of mine.

I would mention its faults but I really can't think of any. We get to see the Panther sneaking into a castle. We get to see Goliath take on giant robots. Those of us of a younger persuasion get our first glimpse of Bucky in action. Even the Wasp's lame nodding off while womanning the time machine controls, is later revealed to be for a good reason. We even get the sense of pride that comes from being able to spot the panels in which John Romita's clearly added Cap's head after Buscema opted not to.

I suppose the one complaint I'd have is it proves that breath-taking irresponsibility isn't confined purely to 1940s' super-heroes. You do have to wonder just what was going on in that stretchy head of Reed Richards that, all these years, he's been happy to leave Dr Doom's time machine lying around in his abandoned castle where any idiot could find it and use it to rewrite history.

Then again, didn't multi-billionaire Gregory Gideon remove the time machine from Doom's castle, in The Fantastic Four #34, and place it in the Baxter Building? Does this mean that Richards then removed it from his own HQ and put it back in Doom's castle? Super-heroes, you really do wonder why they're allowed out without a minder.

Horizontal heroics from a long-gone landscape. The Titans #1.

Has there ever been a greater comic book cover than that of Marvel UK's The Titans #1? What kind of comics fan could resist the sight of all those heroes rushing out of the page at him?

Of course, the other thing that leapt out at you when you first saw The Titans was that it was printed the wrong way up. Surely such a thing was madness but it was also genius, allowing twice as much content at no extra cost.

Admittedly, not all those heroes on the cover could exactly be called easily recognisable. Just who is, for instance, that blue man with the pointy ears behind Nick Fury?

But, if the cover wasn't packed entirely with what you could call Marvel "A" Listers, it was at least a reflection of the mag's not-always Top Line content as the issue kicked off with the Inhumans in a tale written as well as drawn by Jack Kirby, which means the dialogue's often made up of people just describing what's happening and we get a silly plot by Maximus the Mad to start a war between the Inhumans and humans by making the former think the Fantastic Four are firing missiles at them. The Inhuman Royal Family, having seemingly had lobotomies, all fall for this cunning ruse and, within mere pages, Black Bolt's all ready to declare war.

If the Inhumans are ready to launch into conflict, the next story starts in the thick of one as we get Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's 1960s retelling of Captain America's origin. At just ten pages, it can only be seen as a master class in compression - although it does bring home Captain America's irresponsibility in making a young boy his accomplice on deadly missions and it does beg the question as to why Captain America - who was presumably a captain - spent most of the war pretending to be a private instead of just being Captain America.

From one World War Two veteran to another as we're then given the first half of Nick Fury's first-ever adventure as Agent of SHIELD. It's not exactly a secret that I'm somewhat allergic to both Nick Fury and SHIELD but the story does at least feature a flying car, so it has something to appeal to me.

Next we get the issue's only real clunker as Stan Lee and Gene Colan give us the start of a Sub-Mariner epic in which Namor returns to Atlantis only to discover Warlord Krang has claimed the throne of Atlantis in his absence. It'd be easy to say one's outraged by this villainous behaviour but the truth is Namor acts like such a complete jerk in virtually every panel that when Krang has him flung into a cage to rot, you're hoping he spends the rest of eternity there. Sadly, Lady Dorma - who betrayed Namor to Krang in an attempt to win Namor's heart - then helps him to escape in order to try and win his heart. Those Stan Lee scripted women, eh?

Captain Marvel too finds himself threatened by a menace that arrives from underwater as he faces the Metazoid, a Soviet dissident who, exposed to experimental rays, has become a strange inhuman creature. The Metazoid's been told by his masters that if he kidnaps Mar-Vell's alter-ego - rocket scientist Walt Lawson - they'll restore him to normal. The tale's dominated by the Metazoid's struggles with his conscience and endless philosophising as he tries to work out whether he can justify kidnapping a man to return himself to normal. Surprisingly the haunted nature of the Metazoid makes the Captain Marvel tale the best story in the issue, marred only by the fact that some of the pages are printed out of order. Was this a consequence of the printers struggling to make sense of the new format or was it just one of those things that happens?

Throw in a John Buscema poster featuring a whole host of Marvel super-doers, and a plug for that year's Marvel annuals and there you have it; as far as I know, Britain's - and possibly the world's - first ever landscape format comic. I can't deny it, the format and the five stories per issue always made The Titans feel like something special to me. There was also something that appealed about the unpredictability of just what strips were going to be in it that week.

Have there been any comics since The Titans and Super Spider-Man that were printed in landscape format? It's a shame if there haven't because it was an ingenious idea and, when my destiny's finally fulfilled and I hold ownership of the American comic book industry in my talons, then the world had better beware, for I shall make sure the landscape format returns to once more bamboozle printers and newsagents alike.

Captain America movie poster revealed.

As I'm sure you know, Marvel Studios have unveiled the new Captain America movie poster and I can't deny I like it.

From what we've seen of the film so far - which is admittedly just a load of photos - I have to say that of all the Marvel movies in the pipeline Captain America's the one that's looking most promising to me - and I never would've thought that a while back.

Meanwhile, the Spider-Man movie manages to look worse with every image released.

All the latest movie news from Planet Comic (Potential Spoilers).

Being a fan of comics, I do of course take an interest in all the latest super-hero related movie news that washes up on my front beach of belligerence. The world is still trembling from my recent coverage of the latest images from the new Spider-Man flick. Sadly, more often than not, I find myself failing to be impressed by super-hero movies. However, every so often one comes along that actually gets it right. So, will the next crop of super-hero flicks be hit or... ...erm, something that rhymes with "hit" but isn't quite the same word?

It seems Anne Hathaway's been cast as Catwoman in the new Batman film The Dark Knight Rises. On the one hand, speaking as someone who only knows Anne Hathaway from her time as William Shakespeare's wife and from certain "interesting" photos of her on the Internet, this intrigues me. On the other, the fact that we're getting Catwoman and Bane in this film fails to light my candle. Will I never get to see Killer Croc on screen?

Meanwhile, More photos of Captain America in Captain America: The First Avenger have come to light. There've been some complaints about his costume but I like it. It has the look of the 1940s to it and my disappointment that - like Thor - Cap's to lose the wings from his head has been largely assuaged by the fact that he will at least have them painted on his helmet.

Meanwhile there's always the Thor trailer that's up on Youtube. Admittedly It's been up for months but no one ever accused me of rushing these things. I won't bother getting into the, "Oh My God! Heimdall's black!" arguments, as everyone with any sense knows the Norse Gods aren't even human, let alone Scandinavian, so they can be any colour anyone wants them to be. I do worry it might all turn out to be a bit dry and humourless and therefore ultimately uninvolving but it does mean we get to see the Destroyer smashing things up.

Elsewhere, there're pictures of January Jones as Emma Frost, on the set of X-Men: First Class. Well, I suppose it's better than some of the outfits Emma's been lumbered with in the comics over the years but my fashion senses tell me it's a look that'll never catch on. Being the red-hot Hollywood-watcher I am, I don't have a clue who January Jones is but it probably doesn't hurt that her real name makes her sound like a comic book character from the get-go. Apparently it's a prequel, so it probably won't be any good.

Captain America vs Daredevil. Poll results.

The results of our latest sensational poll are in and, with a walloping majority of twelve votes to one, Captain America's battered poor old Daredevil when it comes to people's opinion on who'd win a fight between the pair.

Poor old Daredevil; not only the Man Without Fear but also the Man (almost) Without Friends. So, congratulations to Captain America, commiserations  to Daredevil, and thanks to all who voted.

Will the results of our Favourite DD Costume poll be equally as momentous? Only this blog can tell you. And it can only tell you tomorrow. Be there or be L7.

Daredevil #43. DD vs Captain America.

If ever there was an obvious hero for Daredevil to fight, it had to be Captain America, mostly because there weren't many Marvel heroes you could see him being able to tackle without getting his teeth smashed in. As Daredevil: The Man Without Teeth! would make a rotten title for a comic, it's just as well that in this issue he comes up against a hero who's similarly unencumbered with super-strength.

But if there's one thing our childhood selves should've learned  it's that Daredevil was versatile. It wasn't only super-heroes he couldn't handle.

He couldn't handle women either.

Like all good Marvel heroes, Matt Murdock didn't have the first clue about how to conduct a relationship, and so Daredevil #43 kicks off with him kicking off about the mess his love life's in. He's leaping around in his gym, giving its equipment a hard time because Karen Page has left him. Bearing in mind how dull she was, some might think this a difficult thing to get upset about but love's a strange beast and, when smashing up his gym doesn't work, he goes out in the hope of smashing up the Jester.

Gene Colan's original, rejected, cover for the issue.

Sandwiched between the emotional drama of the first half of this tale and the physical drama of the second, the mention of the Jester has to be the worst part of this comic. It's like someone's got three balloons, the middle one of which they've suddenly let the air out of. Maybe I'm alone in my hatred of the character but frankly the only thing that could drag the comic down more than the Jester showing up would've been Mike Murdock turning up. Happily, Mike Murdock was "dead" by this point, having been blown to smithereens.

Instead of the Jester, our hero finds a thief who's stolen some radioactive materials. What DD doesn't expect  is that the radiation from the thief's haul affects his super-senses and turns him aggro - and if you're an aggro super-hero, there's nothing better to do than fight another hero.

So he shows up at what I assume to be Madison Square Garden to fight Captain America who's busy beating up members of the public for charity. I'm not sure what charity this was that expected people to get beaten up on its behalf but remind me never to give to it.

After a few pages of action, Daredevil regains his senses and makes like a banana by splitting as Cap's left in the street, none the wiser as to what it was all about. As for the fight itself, you do get the feeling that if it'd gone on for much longer Daredevil would've lost. Let's face it, that was the inevitable fate of Daredevil no matter what hero he met. There really aren't any Marvel heroes -  apart from maybe Ka-Zar - who you could realistically see him beating.

Gene Colan's art's as splendidly untidy, chaotic and energetic as ever and, when it comes to the fight, he repeatedly finds dynamic perspectives and angles with which to convey the action. You do wonder how both men don't end the scrap on a stretcher, such is the apparent force of the blows he has them land on each other, while, in the tale's opening section, Stan Lee merrily ladles on the human drama. The truth is there aren't many Daredevil tales from this era that grab me but I've always had a liking for this one. Ultimately it makes no difference to anything. Nothing's resolved. Nothing's proven. Nothing's answered. But it's sufficiently different from the typical DD yarn of the time to make it stand out.

PS. Don't forget the breathless results of our Captain America vs Daredevil poll are in, fresh from the burning inferno of democracy -- and it's not good news for one of them.