Captain America in the 1980s
Since his revival in the 1960s, Captain America had always been portrayed as a man out of time. He was someone who was trying to find his place in a world that was so vastly different from the one he knew during the war. He was supposed to be the symbol of America, but he wondered if he still represented the same values or if he was the remnant of an outdated concept.
The 1980s finally solidified what Captain America represented. He was the embodiment of the American Dream, something that transcends politics. This would be something that would test Steve Rogers and his role as Captain America for the entire decade as he would find himself at odds with the politics of the time and a rapidly changing society.
But before we got into that, the decade started off with a bunch of filler issues as editor Roger Stern transitioned into the role of writer alongside fan favorite artist John Byrne.
The 80s started off with a bang (literally) with issue #241, which featured Captain America clashing with the Punisher. The gritty anti-hero vigilante, best known for killing criminals, was just starting to become a popular character in the Marvel Universe and this story, by Mike Barr and artist Frank Springer, tried its best to dive into the contrasts between the two. Both were war veterans who became crime fighters, but their methods were vastly different. It’s a decent attempt what with the Comic Code limitations of the time, doing its best to paint the idea that Captain America and the Punisher were not all that different other up to a point. This would be a theme that would be examined for years. It also made a hard point of putting Captain America as the polar opposite to the Punisher and his being totally against his methods. Looking back on this story today, this story is still very much relevant, moreso considering the fact that both the Punisher and Captain America’s imagery have been co-opted by far-right groups in the most tone-deaf and misunderstood ways possible. Captain America would never support a movement that uses the Punisher’s logo — such as the Blue Lives Matter movement — or the targeted systemic racism that has been all consuming today’s society. Likewise, he probably would not agree with his own likeness being used in such a way. The closest we get to this however, is Marvel denouncing these uses in stories and a vocal condemnation from Jack Kirby’s son, co-creator of Captain America. You’d think the Disney legal machine would be eager to shut down the unauthorized use of their characters, but it doesn’t seem like any such motion would be forthcoming. While is disappointing you can kind of see why Disney Corporate doesn’t want to wade into that public relations nightmare since alienating a potential customer base would have an effect their bottom line. That’s just Disney being Disney, but I digress.
Back on topic: people misinterpreting Captain America and what he stands for is not a new thing. In fact, a letter written by a fan during this early period was lambasted by Roger Stern a few issues later in Captain America #246.
Matt Kaufman of Urbana, Illinois, wrote in commending the writers for taking Captain America “back to his old self”. In his letter, Kaufman had identified Captain America as a staunch conservative. It has all sorts of right leaning nonsense like how “change is not progress” and other such buzzwords that would feel really at home in the modern discourse about politics we are having today. Stern wrote a response that filled up the entire letter page for that issue shooting Kaufman’s view down and painfully explaining how he does not understand who Captain America is and what he actually represents. I’m not doing it any justice so let me just post the entire page here:
Ya Burnt!
Stern says with full certainty that Captain America is a centrist and that he represents the American Dream and that is something vastly different than the American Way. Indeed, Captain America as a character has always about fighting injustice and bringing peace and liberty to all. He’s the embodiment of the dream where every single person lives in peace and have every opportunity to succeed. He supports the idea of America, not the current reality. This is something that is always lost upon those who try to pigeon hole Cap into left or right leaning politics.
The letter above is a demonstration of the fact that many readers have mischaracterized Captain America for years. There have always been periods where people don’t get Captain America. After 9/11 and the title pivoted to stories about the War on Terror, readers accused Marvel of turning Captain America into right-wing propaganda, while in more recent times, it’s the opposite. For example, the more recent United States of Captain America, which features a diverse cast of characters inspired to be like Captain America has been decried as leftist propaganda. Neither side gets it. It’s a never ending thing. Fuck, there are even people today that argue against the iconic image of Captain America punching Hitler in the face from Captain America Comics #1. What a fucking time to be alive is all I’m saying. Look, I am by no means an expert on American politics since, you know, I’m not American, but one things I can understand for sure is that who and what Captain America is transcends the politics of the day. If you can’t read the character without inserting your own politics into it and getting upset that this fictional character doesn’t staunchly adhere to your myopic worldview then you don’t get who Steven Rogers is and I don’t think you ever will. So please don’t flood my inbox with your nonsense rebuttals to the above, I’m just going to delete them. I don’t care about your shitty take on the world so please do us a favor and go die under a porch. Thanks.
Where was I… Oh right…
Roger Stern and John Byrne would take over on the title starting with issue #247 through 255. It was a short run, but one that promised to clean up shop and set the tone for Captain America for the remainder of the decade. Issue #247-249 was a trio of issues that did some much needed house cleaning as there were a number of plot threads from earlier decades that needed to be figured out because they conflicted with continuity. One was explaining how Baron Strucker was alive to appear in Captain America #130-131 when he was supposed to be dead following the events of Strange Tales #158. The solution was that the Strucker that appeared post death was a robot created by the Machinesmith for…. reasons? It’s not the best explanation, but the whole point of the Machinesmith was to explain where all the robotic impostors of characters that kept popping up where coming from.
More importantly, this story served to straighten out the changes that Steve Gerber made to Steve Roger’s backstory back in Captain America #225. For those late to the party, Gerber changed Cap’s history to have him be the son of a diplomat who went into Project: Rebirth because his brother was killed during Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. This sudden change deeply conflicted with Cap’s origins since the character had been around since 1940, a good year before Pearl Harbor even happened. The fact that Cap went from a scrawny poor kid from Brooklyn to the son of a diplomat also diminished the every-man aspect of Captain America’s origins. Not sure what Gerber was thinking when he wrote this, but the change was monumentally stupid because it fundamentally changed who the character was, and not in a good way. Captain America could be sympathetic to all walks of life being a kid who grew up poor during the Great Depression, making him a diplomat’s son — a person born into privilege — makes his empathy toward individuals less fortunate seem tone deaf or even condescending.
Stern and Byrne explained these conflicting memories were caused by memory implants put in his mind back during the war in the event that Captain America was ever captured and interrogated. It’s about as flimsy as the robo-Strucker thing, but it was a necessary thing to just get this out of the way since writers have been dancing around an explanation for almost two years.
Getting back to politics and who Captain America is, issue #250 took Roger Stern’s take down of Matt Kaufman and put it into practice. The plot to the story was actually conceived by Roger McKenzie and Don Perlin, who were working on fill-in issues before Stern’s tenure. Their idea was to have Captain America run for President and win. Stern vetoed the idea because it wasn’t grounded in reality.. which is kind of a weird flex when you consider how not grounded in reality comic books are what with your spider men and your mutants and your whatever. I would argue that a story where Steve Rogers becomes President opens up a lot of story telling potential that could really get into how his representation of the dream would clash with the politics of the reality. I suppose that was a little too deep for the writers of the time and admittedly the subject matter is a mine field that even I am not brave enough to venture into. It would take a special writer to pull a story off like that and I’m struggling to think of anyone current writing comics today that could adequately handle the challenge.
While pitching ideas to then editors Ralph Macchio and Jim Shooter, they mentioned McKenzie and Perlin’s idea. It was pointed out to them that the story was still viable but only if Cap decided not to run. Realizing that this was a brilliant idea, the pair got to work on issue #250. It was a landmark issue where Captain America is courted by New Populist Party, a third party running in the upcoming presidential election. In this story, a lot of people have a lot of ideas about Captain America running for president.
Note that these answers are in all caps, just like modern political discourse! The more things change the more they stay the same!
Suddenly both the Democrats and the Republicans want Captain America to run for their parties as well and this leads to a lot of speculation on if he will run for president or not. After doing a lot of soul searching, Steve ultimately decides not to run and the story ends with Cap giving an impassioned speech about who he is and what he represents and what he fights for. To become the President would greatly limit the good that he already does, upholding the American Dream, and that is something he cannot do.
During these handful of issues, Stern and Byrne also have a b-plot where a seemingly important letter from the government arrives for Steve Rogers. It was played up like it was something important only for Steve to discover that it was a questionnaire in issue #350 and it’s forgotten…. Until issue #312. That it was ever mentioned again is the testament to Mark Gruenwald’s attention to continuity, but we’ll get into that a little later on.
This poignant tale was then followed by a two parter where Cap fights Batroc the Leaper and Mister Hyde, and another that sees the return of his wartime foe Baron Blood allowing them to look back on former members of the Invaders.
Issue #255 would be the last issue that Stern and Byrne would do on the title. Just in time for Captain America’s anniversary, this story was yet another retelling of Captain America’s origins. This had been done quite a lot when creative teams changed or people were stuck on what to tell next. Re-telling Captain America’s origin had been done multiple times since he the character was revived in the 60s. While I assume this was usually done to turn out a story on a tight deadline, this time the retelling of Captain America’s origins was a necessity.
The problems with the various retellings is that they all had inconsistencies here and there. The basic plot beats were more or less the same but there were tiny details that were different in each telling. Was the scientist who invented the super soldier formula named Reinstein or Erskine? Did Steve Rogers get injected with the formula? Or was it a pill, vita-rays, or a potion he drank? Rather choosing any one version of events, Stern and Byrne combined them all. The scientist was Abraham Erskine, but he operated under the code name Joseph Reinstein. Rather than one method being used to give Steve his powers he under went a battery of tests that pumped him full of the serum in various different ways.
The story also took the time to explain why Captain America’s costume and shield underwent changes. Something that was not really explained when Cap underwent design revisions between Captain America Comics #1 and 2. I mean, there were legal reasons why those changes were made (such as his similarity to the Shield, a patriotic superhero created by the precursor to Archie Comics who predated Cap by a year) but this story would finally give an in universe reason.
Unfortunately, Stern and Byrne’s attempt at unifying the conflicting origin stories of Captain America was not taken to heart when later writers would delve into Captain America’s early days and create even more conflicting tales, particularly later tales that delve into where Captain America’s trademark shield came from and why. That’s a subject for another time, but needless to say I think a lot of writers need to look at this as a gold standard whenever they go back to retell a character’s origins (looking at you writers who keep retelling the Black Panther’s origins). Making fundamental changes to a characters origin story is not necessarily a bad thing but if writers could take the time to explain why their origin story differs with past interpretations it would make for a less of mess to continuity. The old excuse is that they don’t want to alienate new readers when we’re living in a day and age where someone can access a vast trove of back issue on Marvel Unlimited is just absurd. Older comics are not so hard to come by and this excuse is not longer a convenient one in my opinion, but I digress.
Another thing that Stern and Byrne did for the title was cement a supporting cast for Captain America that were outside his usual circles within the Avengers and SHIELD. Captain America needed a supporting cast of normal people to keep him grounded in reality. Granted, many of these characters were being phased in earlier while Stern was editor, it was the issues that he wrote that gave them much needed characterization so that readers would care about who they were and what they did. They also introduced Captain America’s new love interest, Bernie Rosenthal, who would remain Cap’s girlfriend for a better part of the decade. Also grounded in reality, she was the normal love interest he needed after how poorly his romance with Sharon Carter was covered.
Roger and John’s run on Captain America ended all too soon as they pair went off to focus on other titles. Stern went on to do an iconic run on Amazing Spider-Man while Byrne went on to his own iconic run on Fantastic Four.
This led to another string of fill-in issues until J.M. DeMatteis took over as writer starting with Captain America #261. He started off his run with a three part story featuring the Ameriadroid as the primary antagonist, one of the most idiotic Captain America foes to come out of the 1970s.
Look guys, if you’ve read any of my previous primers you’ll note that I am not a fan of DeMatteis as a writer. This is because he only seems to excel at two different tones: Deeply depressing and being painfully unfunny when trying to be light hearted. Luckily, artist Mike Zeck became the regular artist on the book and his work — already pretty great to begin with — only improved with time. The only time it ever lacked was when they had Vince Colletta ink a story because, well, it’s Vince Colletta. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Google him.
Still, I have to say that as far as DeMatteis goes, these stories were a lot less depressing than his usual fare. Rather than focusing on the deep rooted psychological problems of characters (usually unresolved daddy issues) DeMatteis instead focused on the disparity between the ideals Captain America stood for and the American reality where many people lived in poverty (Captain America #267). Still kind of depressing, but not as depressing. His material also dug into the hypocrisy of organizations that want to go back to the “traditional values” of the past (Captain America #264, 268 and 280). Adding to the mix is the usual brand of bigotry and racism in the form of Neo-Nazi groups and Holocaust deniers (Captain America #275). All of these themes are, sadly, still very relevant today. However, DeMatties continues to circle around these themes without really examining them to the point beyond Captain America giving one of his trademark speeches about brotherhood and helping each other. About the third or fourth time it seems redundant and the stories appear to be circling around the drain.
Let’s take a pause from politics for a moment to talk about Captain America #268. While this story is a generic team-up with the Defenders, the cover boasts having a review by Captain America about a “of a smash movie”. They are obviously talking about the then-recently released Raiders of the Lost Arc. I’m really wondering who the hell they were trying to appeal to by putting this on the cover. Like who goes to buy a comic thinking “super-hero comic books are okay, but what I really want is their opinion on the latest Hollywood blockbusters!” The correct answer is absolutely nobody. Why was this even in a comic? Well… for those not in the know, DeMatteis used to write music reviews but had quit after writing a negative review on a Grateful Dead album for Rolling Stone. The irony that I am critiquing his own work here is not lost on me.
Anyway, in between these decent stories were some dreck and filler stories. Such as issue #269, where Captain America teams up with Team America (FUCK YEAH!). Team America for those who don’t know was a line of toys created Ideal Toys. Back in the late 70s, the company made their money off toys based on motorcycle daredevil Evil Knievel. However, after it got out that Knievel liked to back hand his wife and abuse drugs, Ideal dumped him as a client. This left them with a bunch of motorcycle toys that they made and so they quickly whipped together the Team America thing and then licensed to concept to Marvel to create comic books about the characters. I’m not going to mince words: Team America fucking sucks. They are such bland, boring characters and after their back door pilot in the pages of Captain America a limited series was put out and flopped. The characters would then shuffled around, appearing in random books under different names when the Team America license expired. They were apparently mutants or some such nonsense and then they just faded into obscurity like many other poorly conceived ideas from this era.
Another odd choice was issue #271, a filler story David Kraft with art by Alan Kupperberg, where Captain America gets involved in capturing a wrestler who murdered his opponent in the ring. The story is fucking ludicrous and makes no sense what so ever.
Issues #273-274 featured a reunion with the Howling Commandos where Fury and his old army unit team up with Captain America to stop Hydra which is being led by yet another Baron Strucker robot, because once wasn’t enough apparently. The two parter also promised that a member of the Commandos was going to die and it turned out to be their old commanding officer, Sam Sawyer a character that only existed to give Fury and his boys a hard time back in the Sgt. Fury days. This was another David Kraft story and while he tries to make Sawyer’s death a noble sacrifice that moves everyone, I don’t think readers really gave a shit about Sawyer to start with so his death seems kind of pointless.
This was followed up by the 6th Captain America annual. In that story, Mister Budda — aka the Contemplator — gathers all the past Captain Americas to liberate a parallel world conquered by an android called Adam II. This was all so Jeff Mace — aka the Patriot, and the third Captain America — could find out if he was worthy of the Captain America name after he was diagnosed with cancer. This story is viewed by people as “iconic” but it’s also terrible story. The art is horrendous, with Ron Wilson’s uninspiring work made ever so much worse by Vince Colletta’s inking. The other problem with this story is that by this point two of the four previous Captain Americas had not had their real names revealed. This, the terrible narrative and bad art makes it difficult to follow which Captain America is which. Wilson does not even bother adding flourishes or slight differences between the four Captain Americas. They all look the same. Also, hearing William Burnside refer to himself as the Captain America of the 1950s over and over is just god damn tedious. Did you know they didn’t give this motherfucker an actual name until 2010? If I had to keep writing stories and calling this asshole “the 50’s Captain America” over and over I would have lost it and hit somebody. Give this piece of shit a god damn name Pre-2010 Captain America writers! I will say this, DeMatteis gets some credit for changing Mister Budda’s name to something less problematic and a reasonable backstory.
Getting back to the filler stories for a minute… what is annoying about them is how they interrupted the flow of the story that DeMatetis was building up in issues #270, 272, and 275-279. This story introduces Arnie Roth an boyhood friend of Steve Rogers. It’s a story that would be utterly impossible now because of the Sliding Timescale but an important one none the less (as a sidenote: I have a theory about how Arnie could be alive in spite of the Sliding Timescale. See my summary for issue #270 for my thoughts on that) Arnie is important not only because of his past connection to Steve Rogers, but also because he was one of the first openly gay characters to appear in a Marvel Comic book. Homosexuality was something that was more or less banned from comics since the formation of the Comics Code Authority (not that there were any prior to the Code, just the fear that Batman and Wonder Woman might make kids gay) While the 1980s saw a lot of the Code restrictions changing with the times, publishers were still reluctant to have gay characters because of the social stigma attached to them — I mean, this was the start of the AIDS crisis and all that, people were irrationally afraid of homosexuality for some incredibly stupid reasons — so if a writer wanted to create a gay character the issue was usually skirted around.
People will famously point to Alpha Flight #8-9 where John Byrne wanted to reveal that the character Northstar was gay and was forced to change the narrative where it was heavily implied rather than outright stated. The character would remain in the closet until Alpha Flight #106, one of the monumentally tone-deaf milestones for gay characters in comics, but I digress.
However, things were different with Arnie Roth. When Arnie and his boyfriend Michael were first introduced in issue #270, Arnie only refers to him as a “good friend” and a “roommate”, but by the end of that issue the pair hug after Cap rescues Michael. The implied romantic connection between the two convinces Steve to go all in with his own relationship with Bernie Rosenthal. By the time issue #292 rolls around, after Michael tragically dies, DeMatteis has done away with all the implied meaning and flat out has Arnie say that he and Michel were a couple. I think the reason J.M. was able to get away with this, given the time this story was published, was probably because Arnie was supporting cast member and not a super-hero. I guess the thinking of the time was that gay characters were okay, just as long as they weren’t heroes. It was that shitty mentality that gave us characters like Extrano.
Anyway, this story arc also has the distinction for having Helmut Zemo (who previously appeared as Phoenix back in Captain America #168) return and take up his father’s mantle and become the new Baron Zemo. This would set the tone for the character for the decades that followed. I have to give it to DeMatetis for not taking the lazy route and have the original Zemo cheat death, instead making it a legacy identity. A legacy character such as Baron Zemo has not had much success in the Marvel Universe and that sort of thing is usually more DC’s bailiwick and one that I wish Marvel would do a little better with.
The series also introduces the character Vermin, which will be a villain that is pulled into any run that JM DeMatteis does from here on out. Vermin becomes yet another character for DeMatteis to give daddy issues as he grinds through the same circular “Am I good enough?” plot lines. Who hurt you, John Marc?
This story also features Captain America getting in the middle of a fight between Neo-Nazi rally and counter-protesters, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, this story is also still depressingly relevant to day. Still, Steve/Captain America make a very weird flex in this story, saying that the Neo-Nazis should have the right to spew their hate because free speech is protected under the constitution. He says this to a fucking Holocaust survivor and she doesn’t even challenge him. When he makes his speech again as Captain America he once again extols freedom of speech and then calls out the predominantly Jewish counter protestors for getting violent saying that they are reducing themselves to the Neo-Nazis level by starting a fight.
This speech is incredibly tone deaf, hypocritical, and like many of idiots on conservative Twitter, gets freedom of speech wrong. Steve finds the idea of Neo-Nazis repugnant but defends their right to free speech. He speaks down to a Holocaust survivor and a group of Jewish counter protestors. This is a pretty high and mighty attitude for a guy whose first issue featured him literally punching Hitler in the face, not to mention that Cap saw — first hand — the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. This is all an incredibly tone deaf and I think DeMatteis could have focused a little more on Captain America’s messaging. “Because the First Amendment” isn’t really a good argument here because that only protects speech from being silenced by the government. As racist Karens all over America have been learning over the last couple of years, free speech doesn’t protect you from the general public deciding your ideas are shitty and hold you accountable for them.
Now, I don’t really remember how bad Neo-Nazis were back in the 1980s in terms of violence, I mean there were beatings, murders, vandalism by these assholes back then but I’m struggling to recall if it was as brazen as what is happening in today’s world. I mean they were all over trashy daytime television talk shows, that much I remember, but also cut me some slack I was still in elementary school when this comic was published. Regardless, reading this in the 2020s, Captain America’s speeches in these stories come off as condescending and out of touch with the people who are often victimized by bigots and his pontificating to a god damn Holocaust survivor — one that he actually saved and saw the conditions in which she lived in — comes off hollow.
And yeah, there is some very flowery speeches about freedom of speech in this story, but I can tell you Americans out there that making hate speech a crime is not the death of free speech in your country. Hate speech laws exist in my native Canada and all over Europe and we’re still free democracies. The only people being held accountable are racist pieces of garbage and having them arrested is a good thing. I’d say that perhaps instead of jailing them, we should focus on de-radicalizing their bigoted ideas, but I digress. Anyway, enough soap boxing, let’s get back into this decade’s Captain America stories.
Issue #280 is another commentary piece about the hypocrisy of people who want to bring back “traditional” American values. This story features the Scarecrow who — up until this point — was your garden variety super-villain. DeMatteis decided to change things up by making the Scarecrow become a homicidal maniac murdering said hypocrites in grisly fashions reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. I can’t help but think this was being derivative of the DC Comics Scarecrow who was also becoming grittier at the time, but damned if I can be bothered to go through a bunch of Pre-Crisis Batman comics to confirm my preconception, but I’m thinking it’s probably a correct assertion. Anyway, the story ends with Captain America also pointing out the Scarecrow’s hypocrisy in the typical DeMatteis fashion of having Captain America flipping the commentary around to… point out how both sides are wrong? Equally ridiculous? It’s not overly clear.
Issue #281 sees the return of Jack Munroe the Bucky from the 1950s, who we learn was not killed when the 50’s Cap was turned into a Nazi-esque dictator. Other than giving Jack and actual name (since he was always only ever called Bucky) this story doesn’t do much. It’s just adding yet another “man-out-of-time” character and I assume this was to give Captain America a new sidekick. I don’t know if fans were clamoring for Bucky to make a come back or not, but this came at a time when editorial mandate was that Bucky would remain forever dead. If that was the case, I think this was DeMatteis attempt to skirt around that mandate.
Issues #282-283 feature Viper — aka Madam Hydra — making a return. This gives DeMatteis another excuse to write a story around the concept of Nihilism and… not really going anywhere? This story is not very interesting and only serves as a means of disavowing Viper’s alleged familial relationship to Spider-Woman and making Jack Monroe the new Nomad. Jack’s tenure as the new Nomad would carry on for years as he transformed from a doofus with mini-discs that he could toss, to a gritty biker WITH A GUN in the 90s, and to being dead in the 2000s, which to be honest has been his best role yet. Nomad sucks.
Captain America #286-289 was a lengthy epic that wrapped up the long abandoned Deathlok story arc. See, back in the 1970s, Rich Buckler and Doug Moenich created Deathlok for Marvel’s anthology book Astonishing Tales, which was one of many, many, many “try-out” titles where Marvel creators came up with new characters or story arcs to see if these characters could generate enough popularity to support their own series. Not many of them did. Anyway, Deathlok was one of those characters coming from the dystopian future (snicker) 1991! Super-heroes are all dead, society has crumbled, corporations rule, and Deathlok is a futuristic cyborg trying to avenge being cyborged. Anyway, for a time this was supposed to be the future of the Marvel Universe. However, Deathlok was plucked from the future to the mainstream Marvel Universe where he made a few appearances before he was seemingly destroyed and forgotten. This also left a lot of loose ends with the story that was being told at the time and this handful of Captain America issues seeks to tie up those loose ends as well as prevent that nightmare year (bah-ha-ha-ha) of 1991 from coming to pass!
Needless to say, this story is probably taking a page from the popular Days of Future Past arc from the X-Men but I can tell you one thing, it’s no Days of Future Past. Cap goes to the future helps Deathlok liberate his people then goes back to his own time and prevents the nightmare future all in time to visit his girlfriend’s parents. The final issue isn’t even a full story, with half of the page count being devoted to that year’s “Assistant Editor’s Month” gag event that saw Bernie Rosenthal imagine what it would be like to be Captain America herself. However, she calls herself Bernie America for… reasons? This story tries to be meta in a fashion that became popular years later in the pages of Sensational She-Hulk, only without any of John Byrne’s signature humor that was actually, you know, funny.
We are now winding into the final handful of issues in the DeMatteis run. Issue #290 starts off the beginning of a “final conflict” between the Red Skull and Captain America. I say final in quotations because, as you should now, this is not the last fight between the two. After being interrupted by an awful fill-in issue by Bill Mantlo and Herb Trimpe that introduces a new Tumbler, the Red Skull arc continues on through issue #300. Taking over as regular artist in during this arc is Paul Neary who, I’m guessing, was trying to go for kind of a vintage 40’s era Captain America art style? Maybe? All I know is whatever he is doing, I am not a fan and that’s all I’ll say.
Anyway, this arc features a mish-mash of new characters. You got the Black Crow, a Native American character who transforms into the avenging warrior of America’s past and future in between spending his days confined toa wheelchair. DeMatteis tries to create a clash between Black Crow and Captain America, setting them up as Old America (meaning pre-colonial) versus the current post-colonial America. However, any sort of commentary about America’s colonial past is rendered pointless when Black Crow just accepts Captain America and considers him a brother. The Black Crow would mostly only appear in DeMatteis stories and be mostly forgotten by other writers. Mostly because Black Crow was an uninspired character created by a white guy clumsily trying to find some kind of social commentary. After a handful of lackluster appearances, the Black Crow made a brief cameo appearance Marvel’s Voices: Indigenous Voices #1. Regardless of this, Black Crow is a walking stereotype who could only be redeemable if re-imagined by the indigenous people who he’s supposed to represent.
Anyway, in this arc the Red Skull is starting to rapidly age and will die. So he sets up all sorts of trails and tribulations to try and break Captain America. He does this by brainwashing Steve’s pacifist buddy Dave Cox to attack him, which is an excuse to put someone new in the Devil-Slayer costume for… reasons? Then Captain America is defeated brought in to the Red Skull’s secret hideout — SKULL HOUSE! — where he has to fight Red Skull’s daughter, Baron Zemo, and the Sisters of Sin. On top of all that, his friends are prisoner, Cap has also been rapidly aging and also poisoned to boot. There is also a belabored issue where Cap is forced to relive the moment when the original Bucky “died” only with Jack Monroe standing in for James Barnes. An entire issue is also devoted to the Red Skull telling his “true” origin to Captain America and finally revealing his face (more on this in a second).
This entire story line — nine god damn issues — is a labor to read. It is just page, after page, after page, of characters going into lengthy monologues about their mommy and daddy issues. Already a common thread in a DeMatteis story, here it is used almost to the point where you just want to tear the pages out and light them on fire. I don’t know what this J.M.’s hang ups where in the 1980s, but using comic book plots as a means of therapy probably wasn’t very helpful because DeMatteis still, to this very fucking day, writes stories like this.
This story arc is another one of those “final swan songs” by a writer who has had a decent run on a book doing one last epic battle that pits the title hero against his greatest enemy. It promises to shake up the status quo and assures you — absolutely — that this is their final battle, only for the next creative team to undo all the “final battle” in later runs.
So yeah, the story ends with the Red Skull appearing to die, which is undone a few years later during Mark Gruenwald’s run on the book, but I’ll get into that later. Captain America’s rapid aging is reversed in the very next issue, and basically the status quo is restored. Also the other big thing: Steve Rogers and Bernie Rosenthal getting married fizzles out after a while for whatever reasons.
Then there’s the issue of the Red Skull’s revealed origins. It expands upon the original story that was told by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby back in the Tales of Suspense days so the whole Red Skull was a bellhop taken under the wing of Hitler plot point remain intact. DeMatteis expands upon this but it is even more of his usual “mommy and daddy issue” stuff, which at this juncture is fucking tripe. When Greg Pak went back in 2011 and retold the Red Skull’s origins in the Red Skull limited series, he thankfully wrote out a lot of DeMatteis’ usual tropes and fleshed out a more believable character. Pak would take great pains to research history to make the Red Skull’s origins as historically accurate as possible.
The title then goes through a handful of issues written Michael Carlen. There’s not much to talk about here, other than issues #302-304 which introduces Batroc’s Brigade and finally reveals the secret composition of Captain America’s indestructible shield. This short run ends with issue #305-306 with Cap teaming up with Captain Britain for the first time in an American publication (the pair teamed up before in the Marvel UK Captain Britain series) It is also the first American appearance of Captain Britain’s new costume which, at that point, had only been previously seen in books published exclusively by Marvel UK.
From there, things were on the upswing because Mark Gruenwald took over as writer on the book. If you’ve read past primers, you’ll know that I agree with the majority of the comic book world that nobody could compare to Mark Gruenwald. The man had an attention to continuity that was staggering and his iconic run on Captain America would be remembered for being consistently good. He wrote the title almost for the better part of a decade. Sure not all of his stuff has aged very well, but the man was consistent and had a nose for continuity. Something that is something of a lost art in this day and age.
It is a run that is still widely regarded even though it sometimes suffers from some of the problems that fell upon the comic book industry in the 1990s. The first few issues include the introduction of some new foes such as Madcap (issues #307 and 309) and an obligatory Secret Wars II crossover that introduces the Armadillo (issue #308). These stories are okay and only really serve as ending the partnership between Captain America and Nomad. Not sure what their big plans for Nomad were at the time, but he went on to do a whole lot of nothing. The villains introduced here would be fleshed out more elsewhere, particularly Madcap who would later go on to be strangely associated with Deadpool due to their very similar natures.
Issues #310 to 315 sees the formation of a new Serpent Society, the first unionized team of super-villains. It was an interesting concept wherein villains band together for their mutual benefit to get rich and keep out of jail. It was a very interesting idea and pairing a team of snake themed character (of which there was an abundance already) was interesting. While the team consisted of some bottom hitters, they soon proved themselves a team to be reckoned with when they are hired to kill MODOK and succeed (at least for a little while, like many characters in the Marvel Universe, MODOK cheated death and would return) The Serpent Society would become a recurring threat to Captain America during Gruenwald’s run as its members became part of the recurring cast of characters.
During this arc we also see Captain America decide to start a hotline for regular Americans to call him for help. A plot device brilliantly executed by Gruenwald — always a steel trap of continuity — remembered the long forgotten letter from the military that Steve Rogers received back in issue #350. It this level of attention and care for continuity that makes Gruenwald one of the greatest people to ever work in comics. Details aren’t forgotten with Gruenwald. Under Gruenwald, if someone was going to be retconned every conceivable ramification and contradiction is considered and an explanation is given that left zero questions behind. If only other writers and editors could be as thorough as Gruenwald. While others have tried to fill his shoes, none have never equaled his devotion, in my opinion. Even his most ardent fans in the industry fail to meet his level. Which is sad. People often think that this level of detail alienates new readers. However, Gruenwald proved that you could still be continuity heavy and be entertaining to even the most casual of readers. If you can’t do what he did, then you’re not trying hard enough and need to do better, but I digress.
Issues #314 is an outlier in the middle of the first Serpent Society arc. It is a crossover issue with the Squadron Supreme. At the time, Gruenwald — who for years dreamed of working on Justice League of America for years — got tired of never being offered the job and decided to write his dream story using the Squadron Supreme — a pastiche of the JLA created as antagonists for the Avengers. While this Captain America issue isn’t essential reading for the twelve issue Squadron Supreme series that he was writing concurrently with Captain America, it is an interesting read since it seems to capture that goofy Silver Age DC Comics flair by having Captain America fight with some Squadron villains in a warehouse with giant props and stuff. It’s the kind of goofy shit you’d see in a 60s era Batman story.
This was the other thing about Gruenwald’s work. Not all of his stories were winners, but sometimes they were just fun. He also had a penchant for doing silly things. Like the Captain America hotline, or a giant armadillo for a bad guy. Gruenwald could write serious stories that fit the tone of the era, but he never forgot the silly, anything goes, silliness that was the bedrock of modern comic books. A team of supervillains who were also professional wrestlers sounds stupid on paper, but Gruenwald found a way to make it fun to read.
Case in point, the Flag-Smasher, who was a silly villain going around literally smashing flags and defacing embassies because he was an anti-nationalist. He sees Captain America as his opposite and tries to kill Cap to make a point that political borders and national identities are an outdated concept that is impeding the progress of a global society. This story is another attempt at making a distinction between the politics of the day and what Captain America represents. It’s still very relevant in these days and the so-called culture war that is going on. This is where Captain America as a centrist really shines and Gruenwald does an excellent job at presenting complex ideas where his predecessors failed.
RELEVANT!
I think that people today could really take some notes from this particular Captain America story. It makes a point of saying that there is nothing wrong with being patriotic, but also underlines that it is the cultural diversity of America that makes it great. Be proud of who you are and where you came from, but at the same time don’t forget that individuals come from all sorts of different backgrounds. Failing acceptance, tolerance and understanding that everyone is a human being is what’s important. Forgetting the humanity of others is something that our modern day discourse seems to forget when we’re engaging in screaming matches on Twitter.
Gruenwald’s next big Captain America story arc was something that had been building up in other books for months. A serial killer called the Scourge of the Underworld had been murdering random villains in various Marvel books. These were your bottom tier villains who hadn’t aged quite as gracefully. It all came to a head in Captain America #318-320, which saw Captain America trying to hunt down and stop the Scourge and his murder spree. It sees Captain America compromising some of hsis morals, such as planting a fake story in the media in order to lure Scourge into a trap. He is reluctant to tamper with the free press and their ability to tell the truth, even if it means catching a deadly killer.
Like many things from this era, this commentary is even more relevant today.
Issues #321-322 sees the return of Flag-Smasher, this time with his own full-blown terrorist organization called ULTIMATUM. This story is interesting because it puts Captain America in the ultimate no win situation. With ULTIMATUM about to murder a bunch of hostages, Captain America chokes under the pressure and uses a gun to kill one of the terrorists. This shakes Captain America to the core of what he stands for. Since being revived in the present he made a vow to never take a life and here he having to take a life in order to save others. Something that he instantly regrets and tries to make up for by saving Flag-Smasher when the pair end up being stranded in the middle of the Swiss Alps when he could have just as easily left his foe to freeze to death.
Captain America’s decision to take a life sends Steve Rogers spiraling into Gruenwald’s first epic storyline, which sees Steve Rogers replaced by Captain America. The stage is set in issue #323 which introduces a new hero called Super-Patriot, aka John Walker. A fame seeking character who boasts that he is more of a patriot than Captain America and is striving to replace him as America’s hero. At his core, John Walker is the embodiment of everyone who misinterprets who Captain America is and what he stands for. John Walker is the embodiment of everything wrong about the current political climate. He’s seeking fame, he sees his own brand of patriotism as something that makes him superior to others. He is also a moralist bigot that did not have a single ounce of empathy for those he considered less than him. This character was very much a representation of the political climate during the Reagan administration but his characterizations would still be relevant in this post-Donald Trump world.
In front of the cameras, John Walker says all the right things. He knows how to fire people up and get them on his side. However, everything he says and does is just for show. He is a fraud who is only looking out for his own self-interest. His desire to become Captain America’s replacement sets him up to be manipulated by bad actors and by the end of this story arc he ends up eating a pretty big shit sandwich of his own making.
It’s interesting to talk about this story arc, which was Steve Rogers being replaced by John Walker, it’s a perfect example of how comic book fans have short memories and are the worst. When this plot was first revealed a lot of people reacted negatively to the move and flooded Marvel Comics with angry letters. Like any big change of this nature, the status quo was eventually restored. Fans didn’t seem to remember when Steve previously gave up his identity in the 70s during his brief stint as Nomad. Comics have been doing these “big changes” only to shuffle back to the status quo for decades, yet time and again fans react with anger and upset because they think the change is permanent. Case in point, when Falcon and the Winter Soldier was released on Disney+ — a story that borrowed heavily from the John Walker run from Captain America #333-350 — Fans reacted angrily at Wyatt Russell taking on the role of John Walker. They thought that Marvel Studios was permanently replacing Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers with this character. It’s a text book example how you idiots have no sense of history, shit memory, and gullible as fuck. You’re being dumb asses and need to stop.
Speaking of other things that garbage fans get wrong and complain about, let’s get back onto the subject of politics in comics. Another complaint of the dipshit man-child fanboys out there is that current comic book creators ArE bEiNg ToO PoLiTiCaL. The idea being that comics weren’t overtly political in the past. All I have to say is that you have to be monumentally stupid not to see how older comics were dripping with political commentary.
Case in point: Captain America #344 published in 1988. The story features Viper tainting the water supply in Washington, DC with a serum that turns people into violent snake people. Chief among those infected are the Commander-In-Chief himself. At the time this story was published, the President was none other than Ronald Reagan, who was by no means a popular President for a bevy of reasons I’m not going to go into detail here, I’m not fucking Wikipedia. This leads to a scene where Steve Rogers has to fight the President as a snake monster. However, Mark Gruenwald’s opinion of the Reagan administration is pretty straight forward because it’s right on the god damn cover. Here, let me zoom it in for you:
Tell me again how older comics weren’t political?
If that wasn’t direct enough for you. If you’re dismissing this as political commentary because it just talking about the plot point where the President is turned into a snake monster, flip to the very last page of the story. At the end, Reagan is giving a public address after the crisis has passed and everyone has, apparently been returned to normal. Reagan spends the entire speech downplaying the severity of the situation and assuring everyone that everything is back to normal. However, artist Kieron Dwyer draws Reagan with serpent fangs.
I see what you did there.
If you need me to spell it out for you, the message is pretty clear. In the opinion of Mark Gruenwald, Reagan was always a snake. This is blatant political commentary and was quite common in Captain America stories. From punching Hitler in the face to having Richard Nixon blow his brains out in the Oval Office, these commentaries were always there and pretty plain to see. The only difference, as Scott Niswander has pointed out in his video essay about Captain America Comics #1, the only probably difference between then and now is the reader’s ability to understand these commentaries. When you were a kid, this shit would go right over your head. As Niswander puts it, when people say they want comics to go back to “how they were”, you’re not longing for stories bereft of political commentary, you’re asking for the ignorance of youth so you don’t have to put too much thought into the complex ideas behind the stories.
During this run of stories, Mark Gruenwald teamed up with artist Kieron Dwyer, who renders a stark contrast between how Steve Rogers and John Walker look in the Captain America costume. Walker’s massive frame barely fits in the costume while Rogers retains his usual proportions. It’s an unsubtle visual cue to how much more extreme John Walker is to Captain America. More prone to using his fists to solver a problem over anything else. He also quickly discovers that being Captain America — a role he wanted from the beginning — was a much larger undertaking than he imagined. By issue #350, Walker has made a plethora of mistakes, granted a lot of them were part of the Red Skull’s machinations, but we see how someone can fail spectacularly at trying to be like Captain America. The recurring theme here is that Steve Rogers represents the American ideal and not the mandates of the government currently in power. Walker finds himself tested frequently and he fails every step of the way. His past comes to bite him in the ass a lot.
This is a really great story arc and its point — to tell the story that Steve Rogers is irreplicable as Captain America — is very much on display.
Conversely, Steve Rogers is placed in a situation where he doesn’t have the advantage of being America’s greatest hero. Gruenwald’s arc expands on something Steve Englehart touched on a decade earlier. Here we have a Steve Rogers who doesn’t have the notoriety of being Captain America. The usual carte blanche he used to get from the authorities are now gone. In a lot of these stories, Steve is pushed to the limits of his morality, particularly since he is goaded to bend or break the rules by his ally, Nomad. Steve often finds himself wondering how far he is willing to go just accomplish his goals. Despite the monumental temptations to compromise his beliefs, Rogers remains unwavering to his core ideals. Just because he wasn’t Captain America, didn’t mean he should give up acting like Captain America. The type of hero he was wasn’t determined by his costume and shield, it was who he is as a human being.
A low point in Gruenwald’s run at this time was the he decided to break Steve away from his supporting cast of ordinary people and replace them with other costumed vigilantes. During his time as simply “the Captain”, Steve pals around with the Falcon, Nomad, and newcomers Demolition Man and Vagabond. Unfortunately, there isn’t much going on with the interpersonal relationships between these characters. Other than the friction between Nomad and D-Man — particularly Nomad’s jealousy over the attention Vagabond gets from Demo — are the only real characterizations that are made. Nomad comes off as an arrogant prick and a womanizer — AT BEST — while D-Man is a well meaning idiot with a lot of money and a very uninspired choice in costumes. It seems as though Gruenwald was trying to go somewhere with the characters and when that didn’t work he quickly shuffled them out of the book in one way or the other and instead focuses entirely on Steve Rogers going back to being a solo crime fighter or focusing on his duties as an Avenger.
Another big change to the title is the eventual departure of Bernie Rosenthal. Who leaves Steve to study law out of state. After a few minor appearances here and there, she disappears from the book entirely for a while as Gruenwald begins developing a new romantic interest in the Serpent Society member known as Diamondback, aka Rachel Leighton. This sets up an almost Batman/Catwoman style romance between Cap and Diamondback. Playing off the impetus that she wants to go straight so she can pursue a romance with Cap. Steve is, at first, uncomfortable with the way that Rachel openly talks about her physical attraction to him. It’s kind of amusing to see a boy scout like Steve Rogers sweat it out when a woman throws herself at him, but that amusement quickly dies. However, this romance wouldn’t advance much until the 90s, so we’ll get into that in more detail when I explore that era of the book.
We also see an evolution of the Red Skull. When he reappears in issue #350, he has cheated death by having his mind transferred into a clone body of Steve Rogers. Now seeing himself as his enemy’s equal, the Skull abandons his previous Nazi ideals and full embraces the darker parts of American exceptionalism. He works from behind the shadows manipulating the vulnerabilities in contemporary democracy for his own ends. The Skull decides to use the very ideals that Captain America fights for to achieve his own evil goals. For a time, the Skull would give up on his usual schemes of world domination for more down to Earth methods. He wasn’t popping up with a Cosmic Cube or a new Sleeper robot every few months, he was not operating behind the scenes in order to pervert the American way. This was a Red Skull more in line with the excesses of the 1980s and early 90s. The change in his motivations and methods was something that the Skull needed to become a better villain in a ever changing storytelling landscape. Transcending him from a one note Nazi to something more threatening to the modern world.
This brings us to the end of the decade and after such a long running story arc, Mark Gruenwald gives readers a break and tells a series of stories that are less heavy than the Super-Patriot story arc. This was also the period of time when Marvel was putting out some of their titles twice a month. As a result, Gruenwald’s Captain America stories ended up being divided into two tales. The first would focus on Captain America himself and the second being a back-up story featuring the supporting cast members who weren’t directly involved with him. This was an interesting and fun way to keep tabs on characters who have dropped off from the on-going plot. Before the end of the decade, Gruenwald gave us the Bloodstone Hunt, a six part story arc that saw Captain America and Baron Zemo scouring the world looking for the fragments of the Bloodstone. It’s a fun story that doesn’t do much heavy lifting, but revisit some obscure Marvel lore by revisiting Ulysses Bloodstone and the Living Mummy, two characters you’d never expect to be involved in a Captain America story.
These last few stories also introduced Crossbones a new foe who will have a greater role in the life of Captain America and his supporting cast in the future. We also see the start of a romance between Cap and the villain Diamondback. However, these are all topics to touch on next time.
Until then, if there is any take away you can have from this little essay it’s this: Anyone who says that comic books from “back then” didn’t get political they are full of shit and a moron, ‘Nuff Said.
