Captain America: Symbol and Cypher
Captain America’s revival in the 1960s was a key event in the development of the Marvel Universe; the character quickly became a mainstay of the Avengers, and eventually got his own series. His inclusion, along with Namor the Sub-Mariner’s, was a sign that Marvel was not only a reboot of old Timely Comics concepts (such as the Human Torch, a Golden Age character who appeared decades before the Fantastic Four's Johnny Storm), but a continuation. Bringing in Captain America gave Marvel a long history.
It did not, however, promise anything resembling depth. As a person rather than just intellectual property, Captain America was one of the blandest characters in 1960s Marvel. The problem goes back to the character’s purpose and his design: wrapping himself in a flag, Captain America was more symbol than man. He did not need superpowers, nor did he require an inner life. From the cover of his first appearance, which famously depicted him punching Adolph Hitler in the face, Captain America was an external embodiment of an outward-looking, anti-fascist American ideal.
His return after an absence of nearly two decades could have provided the perfect opportunity to develop the character’s subjectivity. [1] After all, he was, as the comics of later decades would so frequently put it, a man out of time. Culture shock alone could have made him interesting, but it took at least another decade for later writers to take advantage of this dilemma. And by that point, it was too late to make this issue central to Cap’s character, since he had been around in the Marvel Age for longer than his adventures had lasted in the Golden Age. [2] It was only when Captain American was moved into other media (the Avengers film franchise) or alternate comicbook universes (the late 1990s “Heroes Reborn” experiment, and, most notably, the Ultimate Marvel universe) that his status as a temporal refugee would be exploited for greater effect.
Imported into the Silver Age, Captain Marvel never hid his Golden Age roots. He was a terrible fit with Stan Lee’s injunction to find the man behind the mask. While Captain America’s secret identity was technically Steve Rogers, this fact meant little when Steve Rogers was left so underdeveloped. It is telling that, when a 1978s storyline featured Captain America's realization that he had no memories of his life before the super-soldier serum. His memories restored, he (and we) soon learn about his childhood, his older brother who died during the attack on Pearl Harbor, and his life-long dream of being an artist. Only the art would survive the next several decades of retcons (Rogers was a commercial artist in the 1980s). All of this was in stories that appeared 15 years after Captain America was rescued from suspended animation on ice, and yet there was little Silver Age canon to reverse: nobody cared about Steve Rogers.
Indeed, even Steve Englehart, whose run on Captain America (from 1972 to 1975) rescued the book for the doldrums and transformed it into a bestseller, did little to establish a “Steve Rogers” who was in any way different from is costumed alter ego. If anything, Englehart took a step backwards, dispensing with Rogers’ job as a police officer. Instead, Englehart gave his protagonist a sense of subjectivity by doubling down on the very idea of Captain America: what did it mean to be a person who served as a country’s symbol, when the country was changing in ways he was only beginning to understand?
In order to do this, Englehart would have to pay attention to the gap between Captain America’s “natural habitat” (World War II) and the Vietnam War-era America in which he lived, all without pretending that the hero was such a recent arrival as not to understand basic facts of 1970s life.
In the first year of his tenure on the title, he paved the way for exploring Captain America’s complicated connection to the 1970s by displacing his culture shock onto others. In issue 161 (May 1973), Steve learns that his girlfriend, Shield Agent Sharon Carter, has a secret: an older sister named Peggy who has lived in an asylum for decades. [3] Peggy was Captain America’s lover while undercover in France during World War II, but he never knew her real name (she only briefly appeared in two Lee/Kirby stories published in 1966). Catatonic for decades, she finally awakens as a woman out of time, physically older than Captain America and unaware that her sister is dating him. Peggy’s confusion about the new world in which she finds herself and her dated cultural references simultaneously remind the readers that Captain America is the product of a different world while also showing how far he has come since he was defrosted by the Avengers.
Peggy’s story progresses at a measured pace, allowing readers to follow her development from total bewilderment to competent SHIELD agent, not to mention the maturation of her emotional ties. After accepting that she and Steve have no future, she gets involved with fellow agent Gabe Jones. A World War II veteran, Jones was her contemporary and, unlike Captain America, he had aged at a natural pace. They relationship was one of Marvel’s first interracial romances (Gabe is Black), another sign that Peggy is not stuck in the past. In one of Englehart’s last issues (185), both Peggy and Gabe are captives of the Red Skull, a Nazi who is disgusted by their bond, not to mention their defiance. It is a scene involving three former World War II combatants, all al least in their fifties, as the Red Skull himself notes:
“Ah, such insolence! Were we all not thirty years older, I could believe this was the war once again!
“But I have those thirty years of hatred to drive me now…”
To which Gabe replies: “Yeah, and I’ve got thirty years of life to drive me!” before spitting in the Red Skull’s eye. This is a double rebuke. Gabe’s words exemplify a healthy acceptance of the passage of time, as opposed to a sick obsession; in switching her affection from Cap to Gabe, Peggy is making the same choice. Her presence in the present day is a sign of strength and perseverance. The Red Skull expresses his surprise that Peggy has withstood seven hours of Nazi torture, and promises to keep it going for “seven days if necessary.” Peggy’s reply: “Well—still be here, creep—/ —and we’ll still spit in your eye!” Even in chains, Peggy is no longer the helpless woman who had been hiding for years in an asylum. Still fighting the good fight, she is exactly where she is supposed to be.
The same cannot be said for the other temporally-displaced characters Englehart introduces to the series: the 1950s-era Captain America and Bucky, who are the antagonists in his first storyline (Issues 153-156, September-December 1972). Their backstory is one of the rare instances when an obsession with continuity advances a thematic and aesthetic agenda that looks beyond the world of comics themselves. Englehart’s hook was based on a contradiction embedded within Captain America’s introduction to the modern Marvel Universe in Avengers 4 (March 1964). In one of the first major retcons of the Silver Age, the reader is told that Captain America and Bucky were presumed dead in a battle with Baron Zemo in the last days of the war. Bucky, it turns out, is indeed dead (and would stay that way for over four decades before his retcon as the Winter Soldier), but Captain America was frozen in ice.
The problem, though, is one that would be readily apparent to a comics reader of Englehart’s generation: Captain America was published until 1949, well after the end of World War II. In addition, he and Bucky fought communists in adventures published in 1953 and 1954. Lee, who wrote the 1950s stories, was only too happy to ignore them ten years later. But Englehart, who was determined not to shy away from the political implications of a hero wearing the American flag, saw the existence of a commie-bashing Captain America as an opportunity.
Englehart reveals that the 1950s Cap and Bucky were fanboys who idolized the original heroes. The man who would be Cap (decades later given the name William Burnside; I will use it for convenience’s sake, even though it is anachronistic) was a history PhD whose research centered on “Project: Rebirth,” the program that gave Steve Rogers his powers in 1940. Burnside rediscovers the Super Soldier serum, and undergoes plastic surgery to make himself look like Rogers, whose identity he assumes. “Rogers” makes the acquaintance of a boy whose name would later be revealed as Jack Monroe; Monroe idolized Bucky. Burnside and Monroe work with the FBI to use the Super Solider serum to give them both the original powers of Captain America. Assuming their idols’ identities, they fight crime and sedition, but lose hold of their sanity (without the “vita-ray” used on Steve Rogers, the serum makes them psychotic). The FBI puts them into suspended animation, but they are awakened not long before issue 153 begins.
The false Cap/Bucky team provides an excellent story hook, but their real significance comes from their effect on Steve Rogers, and, equally important, the reader’s perception of Steve Rogers. The real Captain America brings the best values of his generation to 1970s America without most of the baggage one might expect. He has a Black partner whom he tries (not always successfully) to treat as an equal, and he works alongside women without egregious condescension. His adaptation to his new surroundings began long before this storyline, and continued throughout Englehart’s four-year tenure. Steve’s growth during this time, and the stark contrast with his replacement, exemplifies Englehart’s liberal vision: (Captain) America is not set in stone (or rather, not frozen on ice), but is instead a work in progress.
This is not the case with Burnside and Monroe. Whether due to their rigid ideology or the deleterious effects of the Super Solider serum, they are not just incapable of change, but incapable of even understanding why change might be a good thing. To Englehart, who came of age in the 1960s, a 1950s-era Captain America and Bucky was an irresistible opportunity. It is the conformity and conservatism of the 1950s that are the enemy here, not the bravery and self-sacrifice of the 1940s.
Burnside and Monroe are obsessed with “commies,” who they assume are pulling Steve Rogers’ strings (it never occurs to him that he’s actually the genuine article). Monroe in particular almost never misses the opportunity to use a racial slur around the Falcon or the other residents of Harlem, while Burnside is continually shocked that Sharon Carter knows how to fight.
Even the conceit Englehart and penciller Sal Buscema use to differentiate Steve Rogers from his physically identical imposter drives home the contrast between the two men. [4]. Steve and Sharon are vacationing in the Bahamas when Burnside and Monroe attack them, and after so much on the beach, they are both completely sunburnt. While this is a tad ironic— the Red-baiting 50s “heroes’ battle the “pinkos” who have replaced them—it is also a reminder that the protagonists of the Captain America comic are influenced by their surroundings, while their antagonists resist anything that might change them.
Pinko Captain America rules!
Notes
[1] This is not counting Captain America’s 1950s adventures, which will be discussed below.
[2} Jodi Picoult tried to emphasize Wonder Woman’s alienation from “Patriarch’s World” during her brief 2007 run, showing the heroine in her civilian identity stymied by trying to go through a turnstile. But by that point, this particular iteration of Wonder Woman had been active in the DC Universe for 20 years (in real time), which made the scene rather jarring.
[3] Sharon Carter remains a mainstay of the Marvel Universe, despite her “death” in 1979 and return in 1995; Peggy’s World War II activities eventually made it impossible for Marvel to keep her and Sharon as sisters; in 2007, a retcon made her Sharon’s aunt.
[4] The real work would have fallen to the colorist, whose name is not listed in the comics’ credits.