This issue of MARVEL SUPER ACTION was, I believe, my first real encounter with the work of Jim Steranko. He had done earlier pieces that I had seen–the cover to the Olshevsky FANTASTIC FOUR index for one, and of course his two volumes of THE STERANKO HISTORY OF COMICS. But this was the first comic book work I’d ever experienced under his pen. And to be honest, while I liked it, I didn’t really mark it as anything special. My appreciation of it would grow as my knowledge and experience with the field grew. Still, either way, this was a pretty excellent comic book. I seem to think that I picked it up at a venue that wasn’t a typical stop for me, which makes sense–if my 7-11 had been getting MARVEL SUPER ACTION regularly, I would have sampled it long before now.
This opening splash page is a textbook example of what Steranko brought to comics. He approaches this opening like a film, with a montage of images to set the stage and environment and establish the tone. Nobody was approaching the work with this sort of perspective before Steranko–his pages emphasized design and graphics, and he approached each page as a singular unit, rather than a straightforward storytelling vehicle. If his pages don’t strike with the same impact today, that’s because all of the tricks and approached that Steranko innovated in comics have long since been absorbed and adopted into the common lexicon. But in 1969 when this story first saw print, it was akin to seeing color television for the first time, when you were used to black and white.
Story-wise, the plot for this issue is on the thin side, but Steranko makes up for that through his graphic excellence. The story opens with Captain America, who last issue had battled the hordes of Hydra including their new femme fatale leader Madame Hydra, being lured into an ambush at a local carnival. Steve came in response to a summons from Nick Fury, but that turns out to have been a ruse to pull him into the trap, and he finds himself surrounded by enemy gunsels and gimmicked-up carnival attractions. being Captain America, he’s able to fight his way through all of this, but his quarry, Madame Hydra herself, remains elusive.
Meanwhile, on the home front, last issue Cap finally gave in to the entreaties to allow Rick Jones to assume the role of his lost partner, Bucky Barnes. But Rick screwed up on their mission, allowing Madame Hydra to escape, and he’s been kicking himself over it ever since. A workout with Cap and some glowing words from his mentor isn’t enough to break Rick out of his funk. After Cap leaves, Rick discovers a note has been slid under his door, and he opens it–only to expose himself to a hallucinogenic gas.
And so Rick goes on a bad LSD trip, in which all of his fears come to life to haunt him–the most pronounced of which is is fear that he will never be able to step outside of the shadow cast by the late Bucky. This trip leaves Rick incapacitated, and so a bunch of Hydra operatives are able to snatch up his unconscious form, intending to use him as bait in another trap for Cap. Unfortunately for them, Cap is returning to Rick’s at just that moment, and he’s able to engage with them before they make their escape. But he isn’t able to prevent the bad guys from getting away with Rick. Steve Rogers realizes that giving up his secret identity, as he did a number of issues earlier, has made him and those around him too vulnerable to attack from his enemies.
Cap decides to return to the scene of the issue’s opening ambush, the arcade, where he hopes to be able to find a clue to Hydra’s whereabouts. But he isn’t inside the place for two seconds before a bear trap springs closed on his foot–thanks to the Comics Code, the trap doesn’t have teeth, so he isn’t injured and his foot isn’t severed–and jumped by a Hydra Mankiller android. Meanwhile, having come to his senses, Rick Jones is able to escape his captors and he heads out to try to warn Cap of the situation, not realizing that his partner is currently in deadly peril.
Cap is, of course, able to outfight the Mankiller, but their clash carries him to the roof of the arcade. Having seen rick below and realized that the kid had proven he had what it takes, Cap feels a moment of pride–before leaping off of the rooftop and into a barrage of Hydra gunfire, his body splashing down into the waters below. As Hydra scatters, having seemingly wiped out their greatest enemy, police begin to dredge the river for any sign of Cap’s body. But all that they find his his helmet and shirt, all riddled with bullets–and one other thing: a lifelike facemask of Steve Rogers’ features. This leads those gathered to conclude that Steve Rogers was a false identity, and that Captain America was really somebody else. But Who? That’s the question this issue goes out on–but obviously this climax was intended as a way to put Cap’s secret identity back in the box. Years later, so implausible would the resolution to this set-up be–wouldn’t people, upon meeting Steve Rogers, still ask him about having been Captain America?–that later on Steve Englehart would reveal in an AVENGERS story that the Space Phantom used his abilities to entrance the population and make this wacky ruse work.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
You would have thought the Editor would have stopped the writer from exposing his secret Identity in the first place ( If it was the pre-Crisis DC universe, Batman would have impersonated Clark Kent or Robin would have impersonated Bruce Wayne like he did in the WB Batman cartoon ) so that they wouldn’t need to come up with an impossible out ( not without having both Steve Rogers and Captain America standing side to side and some how explaining why endanger Steve Roger’s life ). This story is Captain America in a spy thriller.
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In this case the editor and the scripter were the same person, Stan Lee, so if he and Jack Kirby wanted to reveal Cap’s identity, there was nobody else who was going to say no to them.
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True, but I get the impression that there wasn’t any long term game plan involved. It’s not like Steve Rogers in those days had any sort of ensemble of friends and relatives to be endangered. There was one story that played off it, by having a guy named The Sniper stalk Steve at his apartment, and after that– I remember no consequences.
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Well, Stan Lee was both the writer and the editor on the story where (late in the run of Tales of Suspense or early in the run of CPT America’s own book) where Steve Rogers reveals his secret identity.
This is sort of like how Roy Thomas had to be his own Nelson Bridwall when he selected reprints for the Giant Sized Marvel books as Marvel EIC in the 1970s..
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Well I guess Stan Lee couldn’t remember everything, as Tom’s comments on Fantastic Four#100 ( July 1970 ) reprint in Marvel’s Greatest Comics#81 ( January 1979 ) pointed out where the Puppet Master gets turned into the Android/Robot maker and not the Thinker who is also in that issue.
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My Jim Steranko reprint story ( Where & When I first saw his name ) was Amazing Adventures vol.2#12 ( November 1980 )/Strange Tales#168 ( May 1968 ) Nick Fury story — “Today Earth Died!” — with the cool alien Vaengr. At first I was going to say that story reminded me of a Twilight Zone original series story but then I remembered an old movie that I had to look up — Invaders from Mars ( 1953 film — little boy at the end wakes up from a nightmare only to see out his window a flying saucer landing in the same spot as in his dream ( In Nick Fury’s case hearing a report about a UFO ).
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Question, am I the only one to notice the Hydra & SPECTRE ( James Bond ) Logos are similar? 1 to 3 years ago I was motivated to look up that James Bond organization for a reason that escapes me but as soon as I saw the SPECTRE logo I thought of Hydra’s.
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With all the facsimile editions flying around I’m surprised there isn’t a regular reprint book from both of the Big Two.
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I’d guess it is about price points for the formats.
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Steranko’s three issue run on CPT America is haunted by the art Simon & Kirby did on the first 10 issues of CPT America in 1940-;41.
However, Steranko took that real and visceral influence into generally new and interesting places.
Like people such as Toth and Krigstein, Steranko created new ways of telling stories but this work linked this innovative storytelling to the long established iconography of this character and superhero comics in general. After 55 years this is still very fresh vibrant work.
Steranko has spoken on Twitter/X about how much he appreciated the late Rich Buckler’s work particularly the dynamism of Buckler/Sinnott’s Giant Sized Fantastic Four # 5. Many Fans and professionals hesitate to praise Buckler’s work because of how derivative of Kirby and Adams Buckler’s work could seem.
However, I think Steranko, who was so deeply influenced by people like Kirby & Simon and Wood, could fully appreciate the power of influence in creating something new by putting existing things in new ways,.
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I came on the scene a little after Steranko’s very very brief stint but have since seen all of his Marvel output. Cluttered panels and unattractive figures were all I got. I also wondered why he was revered for such a small body of work compared to the artists who were there for years building the industry.
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I think it had to do with the fact he had a Kirby influence. so his early stuff was accessible to Marvel fans. Within about a year, he is starting to do what Neal Adams called in one of his Deadman stories in Strange Adventures, “Wow another Steranko effect!” (as the effect) so it was doing hip, “Peter Max-type” visuals like readers were seeing on posters and album covers.
On top of that Shield sold well in Strange Tales but he didn’t wear out his welcome on Nick Fury, he did this short Cap run and did a weird tale and a romance story (that are seen as best of breed) in 1970 and then he did some good covers in the Fall of 1972 and January 1973 and launched FOOM (where he did not stay),.
AL through this, he is doing mostly advertising and movie poster and paperback cover design, where he makes his money. People who have worked with Steranko tend to say he is brilliant but does not think to one thing. ,
He did not tend to stay anywhere. He was brilliant, but bored easily. Although his career has been much longer, he is in some sense the “”Jim Morrison of Comics, the brilliant guy who quickly shot thorough the medium.”
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These reprints come from an era when Marvel’s page counts were lower and reprint titles would cut two pages of story to make them fit. So these Steranko stories were in an odd position in that the cut pages were his double-page spreads. On one level, it was a serious gyp, because those were the money shots, but on the other hand, their loss really didn’t affect the story at all…
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I’ve always found these issues visually incoherent.
Gorgeous, but incoherent. I read them, and by the time I’m done I don’t remember what happened in them. And it’s not like a whole lot happens in them. It’s just happens in an amazingly overcaffeinated, crazed manner.
It’d be interesting to try to re-dialogue them in a way that’d play off the frenetic visuals rather than surrendering to them.
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“[S}urrendering” is an apt (and telling) choice of words.
In one sense, there is so much there that the art batters you into submission.
In another sense there are so many references to other comics, movies and paintings, that you want to be persuaded that this Steranko guy has done his homework and I ought to be convinced he is doing something profound . . . .
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I get what you say here. While visually both innovative and yet derivative (ie borrowing from other art/film genres) in an inventive way I do wonder how successful it is at actually story telling, You admire the art and the layouts impress but in doing so it distances you from the narrative in some ways.
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But, the fact this is art means you can’t factor out the reader’s reaction. especially where the artist is trying to evoke existing works that may produce different feelings in the eraser.
Steranko thought about this kind of thing more than many of his contemporaries might have. . . . but all of it is subjective,
A lot of art can be summed up in the Question: :Does it work for me?” (And commercial art in: “Does it sell?:
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I didn’t learn about Steranko till much, much later. I still have only read a few odd pages here and there. It’s something I would like to read at one point though, as I’ve always been intrigued by it.
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