Stan Lee Presents Captain America Battles Baron Blood – a Marvel Illustrated Book


By Roger Stern, John Byrne & Josef Rubinstein (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-939766-08-6

Captain America was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby at the end of 1940, and launched in his own Timely Comics’ (Marvel’s earliest iteration) title. Captain America Comics #1 was cover-dated March 1941 and was a monster smash-hit. Cap was the absolute and undisputed star of Timely’s “Big Three” – the other two being the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner – and one of very the first to fall from popularity at the end of the Golden Age.

When the Korean War and Communist aggression dominated the American psyche in the early 1950s Cap was briefly revived – as were his two fellow superstars – in 1953 before they all sank once more into obscurity until a resurgent Marvel Comics once more needed them. When the Stars and Stripes Centurion finally reappeared he finally managed to find a devoted following who stuck with him through thick and thin.

After taking over the Avengers he won his own series and, eventually, title. Cap waxed and waned through the most turbulent period of social change in American history but always struggled to find an ideological place and stable footing in the modern world, plagued by the trauma of his greatest failure: the death of his boy partner Bucky.

After years of just ticking along a brief resurgence came about when creators Roger Stern & John Byrne crafted a mini-renaissance of well-conceived and perfectly executed yarns which brought back all the fervour and pizzazz of the character in his glory days.

This wonderful black and white mass-market digest paperback was part of Marvel’s ongoing campaign to escape the ghettoes of news-stands and find relative legitimacy in “proper” bookstores and opens with one of the most impressive tales of the comicbook’s lengthy run originally seen in Captain America #253-254 (January-February 1981).

A grave peril from the past resurfaced in ‘Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot’ when Cap was called to England and the imminent deathbed of old comrade Lord Falsworth who had battled Nazis as the legendary Union Jack in the WWII Allied superteam The Invaders. The picturesque village was undergoing a series of brutal serial murders and the aging patriarch suspected the worst. Of course nobody would take the senile and ailing old duffer seriously…

Steve found a brooding menace, family turmoil, an undying supernatural horror and breathtaking action in the concluding ‘Blood on the Moors’, which saw the return and dispatch of vampiric villain Baron Blood, the birth of a new patriotic hero and the glorious Last Hurrah of a beloved character: to this day still one of the very best handled “Heroic Death” stories in comics history.

That sinister saga is followed by ‘Cap for President’ from #250 (October 1980) as the unbelieving and unwilling Sentinel of Liberty found himself pressed on all sides to run for the highest office in the land. This truly uplifting yarn is still a wonderful antidote for sleaze and politicking whilst confirming the honesty and idealism of the decent person within us all.

If you’ve not read these tales before then there are certainly better places to do so (such as Captain America: War and Remembrance) but these are still fine super-hero tales with beautiful art that will never stale or wither, and for us backward looking Baby-boomers these nostalgic pocket tomes have an incomprehensible allure that logic just can’t fight or spoil…

© 1980, 1981, 1982 Marvel Comics Group, a division of Cadence Industries Corporation. All rights reserved.