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The first time I ever laid eyes on Captain America was on the cover of Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #13. It’s a tribute to the character, and the man who drew that cover, Cap's co-creator Jack Kirby, that the image has remained lodged in my memory and imagination ever since. The Marvel covers of the era were—in contrast to their streamlined and sedate DC counterparts—gaudy and garish, crammed full of copy: simultaneously cheap, raw and incredibly vital. Cap’s costume—the stars and stripes, the fat A on his forehead—was equally garish, even by super hero standards; and the look in his eyes...well, the guy seemed a little crazy.
I had no idea who Captain America was. Despite the fact that the cover copy proclaimed Cap and his young partner, Bucky, “the overwhelming stars of the Golden Age of Comics,” I’d never heard of them. Even the phrase “Golden Age” was new to me. To my ten year old mind, any comics that existed before I was born were as ancient and unfathomable as an Egyptian tomb. Which, of course, made the character seem bizarre and appealing. Add in that dynamic Kirby artwork, with Cap—in an impossible, but somehow believable, pose—dominating the scene, and I just had to read that story. Read it? I devoured it.
Flash forward fifteen or so years. I’m brand new to the comic book business, having written a number of stories for the DC anthology titles, and just getting my foot in the door at Marvel Comics—where editor-in-chief Jim Shooter hands me an assignment. “There’s a new Captain America TV movie coming out,” he says, “and we want to do a tie in. Come up with a story.” I’d seen the first Cap TV movie—let’s just say it was disappointing and leave it at that—but I dutifully set to work, weaving Cap, his long-time enemy, the Red Skull, and real life actor Reb Brown into a story that, I hoped, was more than just a cheesy TV cash-in. By the time I’d finished the plot outline, someone at Marvel came to his senses and Reb Brown was removed from the story, along with all references to the movie. I was told to rework the story as a three-parter for the monthly Cap comic, which I did: it finally saw print in Captain America #s 261—263.
The story wasn’t a classic by any stretch of the imagination—in fact, the opening sequence, which featured Steve Rogers getting a little drunk with his buddies, was a major blunder—but it did get me a regular gig writing Cap’s adventures. (You can read this early effort, warts and all, in the Captain America vs. The Red Skull
collection.) Working primarily with Mike Zeck—the starting point of a fruitful collaboration that would reach its peak seven years later with our Spider-Man saga Kraven’s Last Hunt
—and British superstar Paul Neary (with some terrific fill-in work from the amazing Sal Buscema), I got to spend the next three years exploring the life, times and psyche of one of the great American icons. I’d been a loyal Captain America reader, of course—with a special fondness for the Lee-Kirby, Englehart, Gerber and Stern-Byrne eras—but I can’t say that Cap was a major god in my comic book pantheon: I enjoyed the stories immensely, but, to my mind, Cap was no Silver Surfer, Superman or Doctor Strange. Of course reading about a character and writing that character are two very different experiences—and the deeper I submerged myself in Steve Rogers’ world, the more I appreciated Captain America: not so much the icon as the man. In costume, Rogers was larger-than-life: “the whole country—squeezed into one pair of pants.” (That line, spoken about theater legend George M. Cohan, is from Yankee Doodle Dandy
—one of the great movie musicals—and it describes Cap The Icon better than I ever could.) I was more intrigued by the person behind the mask. Rogers—to dip into movie lore once more—was the George Bailey of super heroes: a simple, honest man of inherent decency, who always struggled to do the right thing—no matter how difficult it was. He wasn’t concerned with ideologies or the politics of the moment. He was concerned with the American Dream. He believed, to the core of his being, in what America could be. Rogers was certainly well aware of the many times the United States had failed to live up to its own ideals—and those failures disheartened him—but he never gave up believing because his faith and hope weren’t invested in any elected official or political party. They were invested in the spiritual core of America: something deep and true and unchanging that lay beneath world affairs and shifting political currents.To my mind, Captain America’s greatest power wasn’t the strength he gained from the super-soldier formula: it was the depth of his compassion, his caring. His belief in the revolutionary power of simple human decency.
The nature of the character dictated that the stories I wrote explored issues larger than the latest hero-villain slugfest. The canvas had to be huge—encompassing action, psychology and broader political, spiritual and philosophical issues. Some of my attempts failed spectacularly, some succeeded—but I thought I’d finally hit my stride during my last year on the book: an ongoing saga involving Captain America’s final battle with the Red Skull that was to reach its turning point with a double-sized Captain America #300 in which the Skull dies and Cap, after (at the time) forty-plus years of solving problems with his fists, begins to wonder if there’s another way to live his ideals and change the world. (Despite my love of the super hero genre, the inherent—and often mindless—violence in super hero comics has always disturbed me. This story was my way of attacking the issue head on.) In the proposal I presented to my editor—the late, great Mark Gruenwald—Cap was, ultimately, going to disavow violence as a tool for change—essentially rejecting the fundamental super hero mindset—and start working for world peace. (Keep in mind that this was at the height of the Reagan “evil empire”/cold war period, so it was a pretty radical idea for its day.) There was much more to the story—including Steve Rogers’ apparent assassination by his then-partner, Nomad, and the emergence of a new Captain America, a Native American named Jesse Black Crow—and I was eager to spend the next year exploring these challenging issues.
Gruenwald approved my proposal, I wrote the double-sized Cap #300 then went ahead and plotted the next two or three stories in the arc; but Jim Shooter, hearing what we were planning, shot the idea down. Jim thought my idea violated Cap’s character, that Steve Rogers would never do the things I was suggesting. Captain America #300 was then cut down to a normal-sized issue and substantially rewritten, I think by Jim himself—or perhaps Gruenwald under Jim’s direction. (Which is why I used a fake name in the credits and immediately quit the book.) At the time I was angry but, in retrospect, I totally understand Shooter’s POV. Jim—a brilliant editor who really helped me along in the early days of my career—was the custodian of the Marvel Universe: he had to protect the characters as he understood them. Me? I think my Cap saga would have been an emotional and thought-provoking piece of pop fiction.
(This idea—a long-time super hero finally realizing that violence is a dead end—obsessed me, in various forms, from the moment I conceived it in l983. The concept evolved considerably over the years and finally saw print in 2009 as The Life and Times of Savior 28
: for my money the best superhero story I've ever written.)
My journey with Captain America ended then—but the character remains as fascinating as he seemed when I first glimpsed him on that Sgt. Fury cover more than forty years ago. Some people view Cap as an anachronism, a throwback to another era. Worse, some see him as a symbol of American Imperialism. They miss the point. Captain America, the costumed hero, is the embodiment of all that’s best and brightest in the concept of America: a concept that transcends the nation that birthed it. Steve Rogers, the man, represents everyone who seeks a better world for himself and his neighbors; who strives to live a decent, compassionate life. That makes him one of us—all of us, no matter our country of origin—and insures that the character will still be with us, in all his gaudy, vibrant glory, for decades to come.
©copyright 2016 J.M. DeMatteis
(This idea—a long-time super hero finally realizing that violence is a dead end—obsessed me, in various forms, from the moment I conceived it in l983. The concept evolved considerably over the years and finally saw print in 2009 as The Life and Times of Savior 28
: for my money the best superhero story I've ever written.)My journey with Captain America ended then—but the character remains as fascinating as he seemed when I first glimpsed him on that Sgt. Fury cover more than forty years ago. Some people view Cap as an anachronism, a throwback to another era. Worse, some see him as a symbol of American Imperialism. They miss the point. Captain America, the costumed hero, is the embodiment of all that’s best and brightest in the concept of America: a concept that transcends the nation that birthed it. Steve Rogers, the man, represents everyone who seeks a better world for himself and his neighbors; who strives to live a decent, compassionate life. That makes him one of us—all of us, no matter our country of origin—and insures that the character will still be with us, in all his gaudy, vibrant glory, for decades to come.
©copyright 2016 J.M. DeMatteis
