The last things that came in the SUPERHERO GIFT PACK that I was given for Christmas in 1978 was two consecutive issues of CAPTAIN AMERICAN AND THE FALCON, of which this was the first. While the series had returned to its middle-of-the-road Marvel house style approach in recent months, these earlier issues written and drawn by the character’s co-creator Jack Kirby were another thing entirely. Their approach to storytelling and narrative was very different from what I was used to, and so I found them somehow harsh and shrill and even difficult to get through. At the same time, Kirby’s dramatics and visual stylings were so strong that I couldn’t look away either. I came to appreciate this run an awful lot more in later years, but at the point when I got these comics, it was just weird, and I didn’t love it.
It was also an issue steeped in ideas that interested Jack Kirby and which grew from his own experiences. I didn’t have any particularly good insight into who the Nazis were (except cartoonish villains in INVADERS and other WWII-set comics) so the idea that Adolf Hitler’s brain had been saved and crazy geneticist Arnim Zola wanted to put it into Captain America’s body was just a plot to me. I didn’t really understand the symbolic implications, nor the deep-felt and long-standing enmity not only between Cap and Hitler but between his creator and Hitler.
Cap and Zola engage in a bit of verbal sparring, and Zola reminds Cap that he’s trapped in this castle, which is itself a living thing dedicated to his containment. But it’s Cap’s companion Donna Maria who takes action. She hurls a tube of chemicals at Zola, incapacitating him long enough for she and Cap to make a break for it. Elsewhere, having discovered that the millionaire who has been backing the project is actually the Red Skull in disguise, Cap’s longtime love interest Sharon Carter has compelled him at gunpoint to convey her to where Cap is. The Skull is respectful of Sharon, but he goes along with this whole thing perhaps a bit too willingly. It must be said that Kirby’s Red Skull had a certain sense of style to him, and was cool under pressure. Plus, with the Comics Code relaxed, Kirby could go all-out on his skull-like mask in a way he hadn’t been in the 1960s.
Elsewhere, Cap and Donna Maria are running the gauntlet of Zola’s living castle, and Donna Maria is delighted when Cap tells her, uncharacteristically, “I love you, baby!” after she secures their liberation from Zola’s immediate presence. But this is just empty rhetoric on Cap’s part, and he quickly gets back to business as poor Donna Maria tries to press the point. Reaching the outer courtyard, the pair are set upon by two of Zola’s bio-manufactured guard creatures, horrible things that are stronger and more savage than Cap. The Star-Spangled Avenger tries his best to hold them off, but he’s overwhelmed and in danger of being killed. Once again, Donna Maria comes to his aid, hurling the last vial of chemicals that she’s been running along with at the monster that has cornered her, immolating it, before trying to assist Cap.
Unfortunately, Donna Maria is no match for the creature that is mauling Cap either. Fortunately, it’s at this moment that Sharon and the Red Skull arrive. Sharon blasts the thing with her SHIELD-issue sidearm, which shatters the vial of chemicals the creature is holding, causing it to be disintegrated in a fiery blast. Cap is saved, but he’s been horribly injured in the attack. The monster has raked his eyes, leaving him sightless, a situation telegraphed on the very cool cover to this issue.
Cap indicates that the situation isn’t as bad as it seems, and that his vision should come back after his scratches heal. But Sharon and Donna Maria are desperate to get him to medical attention. The Red Skull, though, is delighted at this turn of events, and even though Zola’s sanctuary begins to detonate, indicating that his financed plan to restore Hitler and re-establish a Fourth Reich has gone belly-up, he’s still satisfied with the outcome. And about Zola’s castle, it does indeed begin to explode violently, and cap is separated from the girls in the blast as they attempt to race to safety. He’s found by the Red Skull, who intends to take this moment where he’s got the upper hand to finish off his eternal foe.
But Cap gets a lucky break as a falling piece of wall separates him from the Skull, who is lost in the blaze (though nobody in this story even for a second assumes that he’s dead.) Sightless, Cap is able to stumble to Sharon and Donna Maria, who help to get him clear of the carnage. At this point, a battalion of SHIELD troops show up to secure the area, having followed Sharon’s concealed homing beacon. So the Skull’s plot is shattered, Arnim Zola and his would-be creation appear to be dead (though both would return later) and the only lasting casualty seems to be Cap’s eyesight. And that’s where this issue is To Be Continued.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
While I’m not that wild about Kirby’s run, the title would enter a deep funk after he left that wouldn’t end until Stern and Byrne take over with #247.
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I have none of the nostalgia for the Madbomb arc (or the rest of it) that some people do, but yes to the funk. Roy Thomas having Cap suddenly angst about how he can’t even remember his past, then Don Glut’s retcon on Steve going into the ice…
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I bought the trade paperback with the Madbombs – Royalist Forces Of America arc ( I love Kirby tech ): Dr. Jonas Harrow [ The Amazing Spider-Man#206 ( July 1980 ) used similar technology ( Madness Inducing Variator Beam ) ] and so did 2 Timely Comics scientists – Doctor Ross Ekker [ Marvel Mystery Comics#41 ( March 1943 ) Vision story — Supersonic Sound Machine ] & Dr. Wilton Wilkes [ Young Allies Comics#14 ( Winter 1944 ) Young Allies 4th story — he worked with Imperial Japanese soldiers ]. I came late in enjoying Jack Kirby’s work and the way his mind ( especially his creativity ) worked.
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A rare Thomas misfire. Angsty Cap was played out by the time Tales of Suspense became Captain America.
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I did not read this run at the time it came out — I probably would have been like Tom, and just thought it was weird. But coming across these issues decades later as an adult, I really like them. They are definitely out of step with most of what was being done at Marvel at the time, but taken on their own, they’re pretty great (and I think they flow pretty naturally from the end of Kirby’s earlier run on Cap). Everyone else was chasing Neal Adams-ish realism, but Kirby just kept getting more metaphorical and iconic.
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I agree, Kirby takes a bit of maturity to enjoy him fully. As a kid, I kind of liked some of the comics he did. But it was weird to me and often very ugly, but a lot of power and action. During the “jump on Neal’s cape era”, I gave up on Kirby. Didn’t really like his stuff at all, because there were “so many better artists out there!”. Them one day as a young adult, I happened to see his unfinished pencils on some stuff and it really clicked how great (and fast!) an artist he truly was.
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I still have this issue as I bought most of the Kirby run on CA but hadn’t followed most of the preceding stories though even I realised that this Capt seemed a very different character to the previously established one. Kirby seemed to be undoing a lot of that . Then I have to remind myself that he co created the character – so should he be entitled to do what he wants with it or did he have any responsibility to not make such a jarring about turn .(as he did later with the Black Panther title) Anyway that was his style and he didn’t care and at the time neither did my 14 year old self . I was reading and collecting Capt America when normally I wouldn’t have been.
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Tim Pendergast totally agree. I enjoyed Kirby’s run for what it was–and didn’t think about Englehart’s superb run–the best of the series up until then, and for a long time afterward. I stopped buying 1991-92, and no one had topped SE by then.
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Tim Pendergast totally agree. I enjoyed Kirby’s run for what it was–and didn’t think about Englehart’s superb run–the best of the series up until then, and for a long time afterward. I stopped buying 1991-92, and no one had topped SE by then.
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I know DC Comics Fandom claims Dabney Donovan appears in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen#142 ( October 1971 ) but I can’t find him ( Unless he is the unnamed scientist seen in the second story -“Hairie” Secrets Revealed!” page 1 panel 5 ): I bring this up because I wonder had Jack Kirby stayed with DC Comics would Dabney Donovan have ended up looking like Arnim Zola?
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I missed Kirby’s first Marvel years and New Gods so he was not a super-hero artist to me. I frankly didn’t care much for his art at all but Kamandi, the Demon, OMAC, and Eternals were series I very much enjoyed. I stepped of Cap as soon as he took over and didn’t return until he left and have never read any of these books. I also skipped Black Panther but that’s also because I could no longer suspend belief that a ruling monarch could also be a costumed adventurer. You’d have to be shit at both.
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The Steve Englehart run on Cap left a huge impression on pre-teen me but I was also a big fan of Kirby and enjoyed his return to the character just as much. I realized it was miles away from the mainstream Marvel universe, but his ideas were so out there I found them just as irresistible as his DC work. Plus he wrote the Falcon as every bit the equal to Captain America, while Englehart disappointed me with his “Snap Wilson” retcon.
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You had quite the score in that bag! I don’t think I’ve actually read Kirby’s return to Cap, but this is really making me want to!
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I liked the MadBomb story in the 1970s (when it came out) But it really struck me in the mid-1990s,
Kirby had predicted The “Militia Movement” of the mid-190s in broad strokes. just as he had Virtual Reality in OMAC about a year before.
At the time, I also was impressed with how Kirby handled the Brigadier General (“BG”) who commands the Task Force that supports CA&F in their search for the Bomb in the second or third issue of that run,
It was a very perceptive and realistic handling of someone like that at that stage in their career..
Kirby had served in the Ardennes Campaign in WWII as a PFC. It had been a seminal event in his life. But his very realistic take on the BG made me wonder if his Company Commander (who assigned him to a Scout Platoon because he could draw) or Platoon Leader had become a General Officer and Kirby had stayed in touch with the guy.
Kirby’s dialogue could be stilted, but he often created realistic and vivid supporting despite that: Turpin in “The Death Wish of the Terrible Turpin,; the poetess in the next issue, who Orion asks to sit in judgement over him after his final battle; and the pathetic Gorilla in Kamandi # 3.
Things like: Mother Delilah in Boys Ranch; The Pact; The Death Wish of the Terrible Turpin; and Himon are among the best things done in the Medium,
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