Captain America in 1966
The readers had clearly requested stories of Cap in the then-present, and Lee/Kirby have acceded to the demands.
One side question: why do all silver age giant super-robots look like something I would have doodled when I was five years old?
Random time-thing I thought of: a frozen Captain America brought back today would be an absolute relic. The time displacement would be insanely jarring. Yet, we’re talking twenty real-time years when these stories were written.
Iron Man would have been in, what, high school during World War II? Fury and Cap were contemporaries during WWII. The displacement in these issues seems less crazy when you stop and think about it. We’re still pre-moon landing here, and most people have careers that easily exceed 20 years. Guarantee that Cap would have several friends still around, only somewhat older.
Kirby briefly hands over the artistic reins to John Romita, after having decreased his Cap output to layouts. No complaints here: both Kirby and Romita were aces, even though their art styles were almost diametrically opposed. But Kirby suddenly roars back with a vengeance, delivering probably his best 60s output this side of the cosmic Fantastic Four Tales.
The stories themselves? Not bad. Red Skull is one dimensional to the extreme, but it’s not like you can make a capital-N Super-Nazi anything but unadulterated evil. Introducing the cosmic cube/ tesseract, and putting it in the hands of Red Skull is a thrill for the modern MCU fan, but I’m not sure I would have seen it as anything more than a boring plot device if I were alive and reading comics at this time.
The Super-Adaptoid story sucked, though. I despise that super villain with an intensity verging on hate. It always reminded me of Street Fighter II Turbo, where someone would pick the same character as you and force a mirror match. Bah.
Internal and external tension is important. There’s understandably little grey area in any battle involving Nazi remnants, so Cap’s own stress over his time displacement serves as a decent stand-in.
Rating:
