ISBN: 978-1-3029-0956-7 (HB)
Created by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby in an era of frantic patriotic fervour, Captain America was a dynamic and highly visible response to the horrors of Nazism and the threat of Liberty’s loss.
He quickly lost focus and popularity after hostilities ceased: fading during post-war reconstruction to briefly reappear after the Korean War: a harder, darker sentinel ferreting out monsters, subversives and the “commies†who lurked under every American bed. Then he vanished once more until the burgeoning Marvel Age resurrected him just in time to experience the Land of the Free’s most turbulent and culturally divisive era.
He quickly became a mainstay of the Marvel Revolution during the Swinging Sixties but lost his way somewhat after that, except for a glittering period under scripter Steve Englehart. Eventually however he too moved on and out in the middle of the 1970s.
Meanwhile, after nearly a decade drafting almost all of Marvel’s successes, Jack Kirby had jumped ship to arch-rival DC in 1971, creating a whole new mythology and dynamically inspiring pantheon. Eventually he accepted that even he could never win against any publishing company’s excessive pressure to produce whilst enduring micro-managing editorial interference.
Seeing which way the winds were blowing, Kirby exploded back into the Marvel Universe in 1976 with a signed promise of free rein to concoct another stunning wave of iconic creations – 2001: a Space Odyssey, Machine Man, The Eternals, Devil Dinosaur (and – so nearly – seminal TV paranoia-fest The Prisoner). He was also granted control of two of his previous co-creations – firmly established characters Black Panther and Captain America – to do with as he wished…
His return was much hyped at the time but swiftly became controversial since his intensely personal visions paid little lip service to company continuity: Jack always went his own bombastic way. Whilst those new works quickly found many friends, his tenure on those earlier inventions drastically divided the fan base.
Kirby was never slavishly wedded to tight continuity and preferred, in many ways, to treat his stints on Cap and the Panther as creative “Day Onesâ€. This was never more apparent than in the pages of the Star-Spangled Sentinel of Liberty…
This sterling collection available in hardback and digital formats reprints Captain America and the Falcon #193-200, Marvel Treasury Special: Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles and Captain America Annual #3 (cumulatively spanning January-August 1976) revealing how, when Kirby came aboard as writer, artist and editor, he had big plans for the nation’s premiere comicbook patriotic symbol in the year of its 200th anniversary…
All that is covered with far more attention to detail in Jon B. Cooke’s Introduction before a crucial battle for the nation begins with Captain America and the Falcon #193 offering the opening salvo in an epic storyline leading up the immortal super-soldier’s own Bicentennial issue (sort of).
Gone now was all the soul-searching and breast-beating about what the country was or symbolised: America was in peril and its sentinel was ready to roar into action…
Inked by fellow veteran Frank Giacoia ‘The Madbomb’ exposes a‘Screamer in the Brain!’ as a miniscule new weapon is triggered by unknown terrorists, reducing an entire city block to rubble by driving the populace into a mass psychotic frenzy.
Experiencing the madness at close hand, Cap and the Falcon are swiftly seconded by the US government to ferret out the culprits and locate a full-scale device hidden somewhere in the vast melting pot of America…
‘The Trojan Horde’ introduces plutocratic mastermind William Taurey who intends on correcting history, unmaking the American Revolution and restoring a privilege-ridden aristocracy upon the massed millions of free citizens. Using inestimable wealth, a cabal of similarly disgruntled millionaire elitists, an army of mercenaries, slaves cruelly transformed into genetic freaks and other cutting-edge super-science atrocities, the maniac intends to forever eradicate the Republic and plunder the resources of the planet. Thank every god you know that it couldn’t happen today…
Moreover, when he is finally elevated to what he considers his rightful place, the first thing Taurey intends to do is hunt down the last descendent of Colonial hero Steven Rogers: a rebel who had killed Taurey’s Monarchist ancestor and allowed Washington to win the War of Independence…
Little does he suspect the subject of his wrath has already infiltrated his secret army…
In‘It’s 1984!’ (inked by D. Bruce Berry), Cap and Falcon get a first-hand look at the kind of fascistic world Taurey advocates, battling their way through monsters, mercenaries and a mob fuelled by modern mind-control and pacified by Bread and Circuses, before ultra-spoiled elitist Cheer Chadwick takes the undercover heroes under her bored, effete and patronising wing…
Sadly, even she can’t keep her new pets from being sucked into the bloody, brutal Circus section of the New Society, where American loyalists are forced to fight for their lives in ultra-modern gladiatorial mode in the ‘Kill-Derby’ even as the US army raids the secret base in ‘The Rocks are Burning!’ (Giacoia inks).
Soon, the Patriotic Pair realise it has all been for nought since the colossal full-sized Mad-Bomb is still active: carefully hidden somewhere else in their vast Home of the Brave…
The offbeat ‘Captain America’s Love Story’ then takes a decidedly different and desperate track as the Bastion of Freedom has to romance a sick woman to get to her father – the inventor of the deadly mind-shattering device – after which ‘The Man Who Sold the United States’ accelerates to top speed for all-out action as the hard-pressed heroes race a countdown to disaster with the Madbomb finally triggering by ‘Dawn’s Early Light!’ for a spectacular showdown climax which surpasses all expectation.
Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles was originally released as part of the nationwide celebration of the USA’s two hundredth year in Marvel’s tabloid-sized Treasury Format (80+ pages of 338 x 258mm dimensions), taking the Star-Spangled Avenger on an incredible excursion through key eras and areas of American history.
An expansive, panoramic and iconic celebration of the memory and myth of the nation, this almost abstracted and heavily symbolic 84-page extravaganza perfectly survives reduction to standard comic dimensions, following Captain America as cosmic savant (and retrofitted Elder of the Universe the Contemplator) Mister Buda propels the querulous hero into successively significant segments of history.
Enduring a blistering pace of constant change, Cap encounters lost partner Bucky during WWII, meets Benjamin Franklinin Revolutionary Philadelphia and revisits the mobster-ridden depression era of Steve Roger‘s own childhood as ‘The Lost Super-Hero!’.
In ‘My Fellow Americans’ Cap confronts Geronimo during the Indian Wars and suffers the horrors of a mine cave-in, before ‘Stop Here for Glory!’ finds him surviving a dogfight with a German WWI fighter ace, battling bare-knuckle boxer John L. Sullivan, resisting slavers with abolitionist John Brown, and observing both the detonation of the first Atom Bomb and the Great Chicago Fire…
‘The Face of the Future!’ even sees him slipping into the space colonies of America’s inevitable tomorrows, and segueing into pure emotional fantasy by experiencing the glory days of Hollywood, the simple joys of rural homesteading and the harshest modern ghetto, before drawing strength from the nation’s hopeful children…
Inked by such luminaries as Barry Windsor-Smith, John Romita Sr., Herb Trimpe and Dan Adkins, the book-length bonanza is peppered with a glorious selection of pulsating pin-ups.
After thus exotically absorbing the worth of a nation, the Star-Spangled Avenger abruptly diverts back to business basics as Captain America Annual #3 offers a feature-length science fiction shocker which eschewed convoluted back-story and cultural soul searching and simply pitted the valiant hero against a cosmic vampire in ‘The Thing From the Black Hole Star!’: a riot of rampaging action and end-of-the-world wonderment featuring a fallible but fiercely determined fighting man free of doubt and determined to defend humanity at all costs…
This supremely thrilling collection also has room for a selection of bonus treats beginning with a Kirby tribute page by Bob Budiansky & Duffy Vohland (from F.O.O.M. #10), the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page announcing the King’s return in all October issues, assorted house ads, and extracts and articles from company fanzine F.O.O.M. (#11, September 1975 ) an all-Kirby issue declaring – behind a new Kirby/Joe Sinnott cover – that ‘The King is Here! Long Live the King!’ and that ‘Kirby Speaks!’,
Supplemented by stunning artwork from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alex Boyd’s Appreciation ‘The Once and Future King!’ is balanced by Charley Parker’s ‘The Origin of King Kirby’, ‘Kirby’s Kosmik Konsciousness’ and a caricature from the wonderful Marie Severin.
Also on show are cover roughs and un-inked pencils to delight art fans and aficionados, as well as original page art by Kirby inked by Giacoia & Windsor Smith.
The King’s commitment to wholesome adventure, breakneck action and breathless wonderment, combined with his absolute mastery of the medium and unceasing quest for the Next Big Thrill, always make for a captivating read and this stuff is amongst the most bombastic and captivating material he ever produced. Fast-paced, action-packed, totally engrossing Fights ‘n’ Tights masterpieces no fan should ignore and, above all else, fabulously fun tales of a true American Dream…
© 1975, 1976, 2018 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.