Captain America

• 1. Introduction

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  Captain America Comics #1 reached newsstands on the 20th of December 1940, carrying a cover date of March 1941. Its cover showed the hero punching Adolf Hitler. That hero, Captain America, was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby for Timely Publications, a corporate predecessor of Marvel Comics. His civilian self was Steve Rogers, a frail man whom the United States Army had rejected as physically unfit. An experimental super-soldier serum raised him to the peak of human physical perfection. Dressed in a costume inspired by the American flag and carrying a virtually indestructible shield, he fought the Axis powers. Since that first issue, he has appeared in more than ten thousand stories. How did a comic book that attacked a living dictator come to exist at all? Why did a hit character vanish for years, and why did his own creator end up suing the company that owned him? And how did one costumed soldier become a way for writers to argue about America itself?

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• 2. A Villain First

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  Martin Goodman, publisher of Timely Comics, felt pressure in 1940 from Superman, the hit hero of rival National Comics Publications. Goodman asked his editor, Joe Simon, to create a patriotic wartime superhero for the Timely line. Accounts of what happened next are not entirely consistent, but Simon's version is the one most often told.

  Simon said he began with the enemy rather than the hero. He had noticed that the most successful superheroes were defined by their relationship with a compelling villain. He settled on Adolf Hitler, whom he called the "best villain of them all" because he was "hated by everyone in the free world." Facing a real adversary instead of an invented one would also be a fresh approach.

  In 1940 the United States had not yet entered the war, yet Goodman's superhero line had already taken a strong stand against the Nazis. Simon and Kirby shared that opposition, and they extended it to Nazi Germany's supporters inside America. The decision to build a hero around that fight was deliberately political.

  Goodman gave the hero a self-titled comic book. No earlier Timely character had debuted with its own ongoing series instead of first appearing in an anthology. Simon wanted Kirby to draw the whole series. Goodman wanted a team of artists so the first issue could be rushed out, because he feared Hitler might be killed before it reached the newsstands.

  Kirby still served as penciller, working from Simon's rough layouts of figures and backgrounds. Credit for the inking is disputed. Al Avison and Al Gabriele are the usual attribution, while Simon says cartoonist Al Liederman did the work. Simon and Kirby had become friends after working together at Fox Feature Syndicate in the late 1930s, and they had already created characters for Timely.

  Simon also negotiated a 25 percent share of the profits, with 15% for himself and 10% for the artists. Whether Goodman honored that promise would soon divide the partners.

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• 3. Newsstand Sensation

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  The first issue sold out in a matter of days. The print run for the second issue was set at more than one million copies. Circulation stayed close to a million a month, outstripping news magazines such as Time. Timely started an official fan club called the Sentinels of Liberty. The US Department of War placed the comic among 189 periodicals it approved for soldiers without prior screening.

  Not everyone cheered. The German American Bund, an American Nazi organization, sent threatening letters and made threatening phone calls to Timely. When Bund members began loitering on the street outside the office, police protection was posted. New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia personally contacted Simon and Kirby to guarantee the safety of the publisher's employees.

  Kirby said he choreographed the action as one would a ballet, aiming for continuity from panel to panel and exaggerated movement. His layouts are known for distorted perspectives, irregularly shaped panels and heavy use of speed lines. Simon was less proud of the hero's origin. He called it "the weakest part of the character" and said he and Kirby "didn't put too much thought into the origin. We just wanted to get to the action."

  Simon wrote the first two issues, the only Captain America stories he ever wrote directly, and then became the series editor. The pair gained acclaim and industry fame, but they believed Goodman was withholding the promised profit share. Simon began seeking jobs for himself and Kirby at National Comics Publications. When Goodman learned of it, he effectively fired them and told them to leave after Captain America Comics #10. Otto Binder, Bill Finger and Manly Wade Wellman were among the writers who took over.

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• 4. Shield and Serum

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  MLJ Comics published The Shield, the first United States-themed superhero, and it noticed that Captain America's triangular heater shield resembled The Shield's chest symbol. MLJ complained. Goodman directed Simon and Kirby to change the design beginning with Captain America Comics #2, and the round shield that replaced it became iconic.

  The idea of throwing the shield like a discus first appeared in a short prose story in Captain America Comics #3. It was written by Stan Lee in his professional debut as a writer. The shield carries a white star on a blue circle, surrounded by red and white rings. In the stories it is made from an alloy of vibranium and adamantium, two fictional metals. Thrown, it can ricochet off several surfaces and return to the thrower.

  Simon designed the costume himself, basing it on the flag. He likened the result to "a modern-day crusader," adding chain mail armor and a helmet with wings that nod to the Roman god Mercury. When Rogers later took other identities, his clothing changed. As Nomad he wears a domino mask and a black and gold suit cut to expose his bare chest and stomach. As The Captain he wears a red, white and black version of the standard suit.

  The serum sharpened his strength, speed, agility, endurance, reflexes, reaction time and natural healing. Rogers is also a master tactician and field commander, trained in boxing, judo and a unique acrobatic fighting style. His exact limits vary from story to story. In the early 1970s, writer Steve Englehart was told by editors to make him superhumanly strong, but the change soon faded from the series.

  Before he joined the military, Rogers worked as a commercial illustrator. Several storylines show him working as a freelance artist.

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• 5. Gone and Back Again

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  Captain America Comics #42, dated October 1944, sent the hero after gangsters instead of wartime enemies. Superhero comics were losing readers after the war, and Timely kept trying new angles. In issue #59, from August 1946, Rogers became a high school teacher. That same autumn he joined the All-Winners Squad, Timely's first superhero team, in All Winners Comics #19. Sales kept shrinking, and the series ended with its 75th issue in February 1950. Horror comics were then ascendant, so the last two issues ran under the title Captain America's Weird Tales.

  Atlas Comics, Timely's corporate successor, brought him back in Young Men #24 in 1953, beside the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner. A 1954 revival drawn mainly by John Romita billed him as "Captain America, Commie Smasher" and set him against enemies tied to the Soviet Union. It was cancelled after three issues. Romita blamed the changing political climate, especially public opposition to the Korean War. He remembered that "for a while, 'Captain America' was a dirty word." The character then stayed out of active publication for nearly a decade.

  Strange Tales #114, from November 1963, was published by Marvel Comics, successor to Atlas. In an 18-page story by Lee and Kirby, Captain America seems to return after years of retirement. He turns out to be an impostor, beaten by the Human Torch of the Fantastic Four. A caption in the final panel called the story a "test." Readers answered with enthusiasm, and The Avengers #4, from March 1964, formally brought him back.

  That issue established that he had fallen into the Atlantic Ocean in the final days of World War II. He then spent decades frozen in ice, in suspended animation. Solo stories by Lee and Kirby began in Tales of Suspense in November 1964, sharing the title with Iron Man. The self-titled series restarted in April 1968, with Lee writing and Kirby penciling. A three-issue run by Jim Steranko in 1969 reestablished the character's secret identity and brought a more experimental art style.

  In 1966, Joe Simon sued Marvel, claiming he was entitled to renew the copyright when the original 28-year term expired. The two sides settled out of court. Simon agreed to a statement that the character had been created under terms of employment, making him work for hire owned by the company.

  In 1999, Simon tried again. He filed a claim under a provision of the Copyright Act of 1976 that lets original creators reclaim works after the original 56-year term. Marvel argued that his 1966 settlement made the character ineligible. They settled out of court in 2003, in a deal that paid Simon royalties for merchandising and licensing.

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• 6. Conscience of America

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  Stan Lee wrote in a 1971 editorial that an informal poll showed most readers did not want Captain America involved in Vietnam. Lee said the hero "simply doesn't lend himself to the John Wayne-type character he once was." He also said he could not "see any of our characters taking on a role of super-patriotism in the world as it is today." Readers had debated the question in the letters pages, while the stories themselves rarely touched the war.

  Captain America #117, from September 1969, introduced the Falcon, the first African-American superhero in mainstream comic books. From February 1971 the series carried the cover title Captain America and the Falcon, and it kept that name for seven and a half years. Stories of the 1970s turned toward poverty, racism, pollution and political corruption.

  Steve Englehart and artist Sal Buscema joined in 1972. In a 1974 storyline inspired by the Watergate scandal, a fascistic group called the Secret Empire frames Captain America for murder. Its leader is finally revealed to be the president of the United States. A disillusioned Rogers drops the name and becomes Nomad, "the man without a country." He later vowed to "reclaim the ideals of America, which its leaders have trampled upon." The run was highly acclaimed and lifted the title from one of Marvel's lowest sellers to its top seller.

  From 1980 to 1981, editor Roger Stern and artist John Byrne had Captain America decline an offer to run for president. From 1981 to 1984, J.M. DeMatteis and Mike Zeck told a year-long story of a crisis of confidence, against what DeMatteis described as "Reagan Cold War rhetoric." They planned to end it in issue #300 with the hero renouncing violence and becoming a pacifist. Editor-in-chief Jim Shooter rejected that ending, and DeMatteis resigned in protest.

  In 1987, Mark Gruenwald's storyline "The Choice" had the government order Rogers to work directly under its control. He gave up the identity and briefly became simply "The Captain." Gruenwald's "Streets of Poison" in the 1990s addressed anxieties about the drug trade and debates over the war on drugs.

  After the September 11 attacks, writer John Ney Rieber and artist John Cassaday produced a Marvel Knights series from 2002 to 2003. It drew criticism for showing the hero fight terrorists modelled after Al-Qaeda. Cassaday said it aimed to show "the emotions this hero was going through" and the "guilt and anger a man in his position would feel." The 2006 storyline "Civil War," by Mark Millar, set Rogers against fellow Avenger Iron Man over government efforts to regulate superheroes. Many readers took it as an allegory for the Patriot Act and the debate over national security and civil liberties.

  Media scholar J. Richard Stevens says the hero's attitudes can shift while his mythology insists he himself never changes. Stevens argues that the character's "patriotism is more focused on the universal rights of man as expressed through the American Dream" rather than "a position championing the specific cultural or political goals of the United States." Culture scholar Robert G. Weiner agrees that he "embodies what America strives to be, not what it sometimes is."

  Scholar Dittmer adds a harder edge. He notes the hero's absence from the Vietnam and Iraq wars. His inconsistent position on deadly force, Dittmer argues, "is perhaps a tacit acknowledgment of the violence, or the threat of violence, at the heart of American hegemony."

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• 7. Partners and Rivals

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  Bucky Barnes appeared in Captain America Comics #1 as the teenaged mascot of Steve Rogers' regiment. He became the hero's partner in that same issue after discovering the secret identity by accident. Joe Simon said Captain America needed "someone to talk to" and that "Bucky was brought in as a way of eliminating too many thought balloons."

  Bucky was later established as having died in the accident that froze Captain America. Unlike most comic book deaths, this one lasted for many decades. He returned in 2005 as the Winter Soldier, a brainwashed assassin and enemy of Rogers. His memories and personality were later restored, and he became an ally again.

  Robert G. Weiner reads the guilt Rogers carries over Bucky as a mirror of survivor guilt and post-traumatic stress among war veterans. Batman and Spider-Man became heroes because of a traumatic incident. Rogers, Weiner argues, carries on as a hero in spite of one, which reinforces his nobility. After the 1960s, many stories also showed him as a "man out of time," brooding over a "good war" morality that the post-war era complicated.

  Sam Wilson debuted as the Falcon in 1969 and later became Rogers' sidekick. Together they formed the first interracial superhero duo in American comic books. Wilson can communicate with birds, and he first appears as a former social worker in Harlem. That history is later revealed to be memories implanted by the Red Skull. The superhero Black Panther gives him a winged suit that lets him fly. Other sidekicks have included Rick Jones, Golden Girl, Demolition Man, Jack Flag and Free Spirit.

  The Red Skull, an apprentice to Adolf Hitler, is the primary archenemy. Many other villains stand for ideologies. The Serpent Society arguably represents labor unionism, and Flag-Smasher represents anti-nationalism. In the 1950s the hero fought enemies linked to communism, and by the mid-1960s he was back to fighting Nazis.

  Betsy Ross, a member of the Women's Army Corps who later became the hero Golden Girl, was Rogers' first love interest. Peggy Carter, an American in the French Resistance, was added in 1960s comics as another wartime romance. Her younger sister Sharon Carter, a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, became his on-again off-again partner. Sharon was later redefined as Peggy's grandniece to fit Marvel's floating timeline. In the 1980s, Rogers became engaged to his neighbor Bernie Rosenthal, and they parted amicably when she left New York for law school. In the 1990s he became entangled with Diamondback of the Serpent Society.

  Several others have held the title of Captain America, including William Naslund, Jeffrey Mace and William Burnside. John Walker, also called U.S. Agent, was introduced in 1988 as a villainous Captain America. Isaiah Bradley, a Black man who gained powers as a test subject for the serum, was established in the 2003 limited series Truth: Red, White & Black. Barnes took the title in 2008, and Wilson took it during the Marvel Now rebranding. In 2016, writer Nick Spencer replaced Rogers with a version loyal to Hydra, later known as "Hydra Supreme," ending in the 2017 crossover Secret Empire.

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• 8. An Enduring Icon

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  Only three months after the debut, Timely published a statement that "there is only one Captain America." It warned that the company would take legal action against rivals who copied him. The warning was needed because imitators had multiplied, including the American Crusader, the Spirit of '76, Yank & Doodle, Captain Flag and Captain Courageous. None matched his commercial success.

  In 1954, after leaving Timely, Simon and Kirby created a new patriotic hero, the Fighting American, for Prize Comics. In the 1990s, Rob Liefeld tried to revive that character after leaving Marvel, and Marvel sued.

  In 2007, in Ed Brubaker's storyline "The Death of Captain America," Rogers surrendered voluntarily after the Civil War clash and was shot dead at his trial. Sharon Carter fired the shot, her actions manipulated by Dr. Faustus. Captain America #25, which contains the death, was the best-selling comic of 2007, and Brubaker had won the Harvey Award for Best Writer for the series in 2006. Rogers had actually been displaced in space and time, and he returned in the 2009 limited series Captain America: Reborn.

  The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times eulogized the hero in 2007, and the former called him a "national hero." In 2011, IGN placed him sixth on its "Top 100 Comic Book Heroes of All Time." In 2015, Gizmodo ranked him first among the Avengers, and Entertainment Weekly ranked him second. Empire placed him 21st among the greatest comic book characters of all time.

  The 1944 movie serial Captain America made him the first Marvel character to appear outside comic books. The Marvel Super Heroes, a 1966 animated series from Grantray-Lawrence Animation, brought him to television. Two made-for-TV films followed in 1979, and a feature-length film in 1990. Chris Evans played him in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, starting with Captain America: The First Avenger in 2011. The Winter Soldier followed in 2014 and Civil War in 2016. He also appeared in the ensemble films The Avengers, Age of Ultron, Infinity War and Endgame.

  Print adaptations include Ted White's 1968 novel Captain America: The Great Gold Steal. A year earlier he had appeared in The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker, by Otto Binder.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote the series from 2018 to 2021, and J. Michael Straczynski from September 2023 to December 2024. A new volume by Chip Zdarsky began in July 2025, so the story that started in 1940 is still being written.

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