Captain America: Live Action Star of the Small Screen

IT'S PROBABLY hard for younger fans to understand just how slim the pickings were for those of us who followed comic book superheroes back in the 1960s. As early as 1966, Marvel publisher Martin Goodman had licensed the rights to his Marvel characters to television.

The Marvel Superheroes cartoon show was made in colour, though no one had colour televisions back in 1966. And, yes, we really did sit that close to the tv set back then. The screens were so small you couldn't see anything unless you were no more than three feet away. Pretty sure all those cathode rays fried my brain ...

Even Goodman didn't realise what he had, and seemed content to let the producers of the Marvel Superheroes cartoon show do pretty much what they wanted in return for almost no money. The big return would come, reasoned Marty, when the cartoons propelled the sales of his comic books into the stratosphere, just the way the Batman tv show had done for DC's Batman and Detective Comics. But it didn't work out that way ...

In comic books, there is a point to sound effects. However, in an animated cartoon, you have a sound track. The viewers can hear the sound effects. So why in the world would you draw them onto the animation art as well? Unless, of course, you were copying the Batman television show ...

The cartoons, produced by Grantray-Lawrence were pretty poor, even by 1966 standards. Essentially, the production company took stats of the comic book artwork, then enlarged panels, to which they'd add limited - very limited - animation. Viewers would see Captain America standing rigidly still (even during fight scenes) while his animated mouth delivered lengthy monologues.

But that's not to say these cartoon don't retain a certain nostalgic charm ... not much, but some. And the latter half of the thirteen episode series did use more contemporary Marvel Comics as their source material.

The Enchantress' original modus operandi was to beguile and charm others into doing her bidding. This works pretty well for her in the case of Erik Josten, who she seduces (off-camera) and then easily persuades to undergo the Power Man treatment in order to battle The Avengers.

Episode 9 took the plot and art of Avengers 21 and 22 as its starting point, in which The Enchantress finds a human stooge, Erik Josten, and uses Baron Zemo's "Power Man" machine (from Avengers 9) to turn him into ... Power Man.

The Commissar first appeared in Avengers 18, luring the team to south east asia so he can defeat them before the world to demonstrate how communism is superior to "the freedom-loving western democracies". You'd think there's be an easier way ...

The tenth episode jumped back a few issues and presented the Avengers tale from issue 18, where the quartet of Cap, Hawkeye, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch take on an evil commie foe, The Commissar, in a propaganda version of the Cold War. One by one they're beaten until Wanda is the last Avenger standing ...

This one has Captain America battle the Red Skull's doomsday machines, The Sleepers. It's a pretty good yarn and has the first instance on the current Marvel continuity of Cap jumping out of a plane without a parachute.

Episode 11 takes us back to Captain America solo stories from Tales of Suspense, adapting the Sleeper saga that ran across ToS 72-74. This story acted as a bridge between the World War II exploits of Cap and his contemporary adventures set in the 1960s. Within the context of the comic books it made sense, but here, out of sequence, the viewer is left uncertain as to when this story is taking place.

Okay, this is where it all gets a bit weird. You see, Cap's in love with a feisty World War II resistance fighter called Peggy Carter, aka Agent 13. Then, twenty years later, he runs into her younger sister, Sharon, also designated Agent 13. And falls in love with her. Marvel later tried to make it less creepy by ret-conning Sharon to be Peggy's niece but that, if anything, was worse ...

Episode 12 retells the story from Tales of Suspense 75-77, where Cap battles the ridiculously accented Batroc ("Zee Leapair") master of le Savate. He also runs into a new Agent 13, Sharon Carter, who turns out to be the younger sister of the original Agent 13, Peggy (currently enjoying a pretty good tv series of her own).

The Red Skull gets hold of The Cosmic Cube, a device that can convert his every thought into a reality. Not the sort of ability you want to see conferred on the most evil character in history. There's no way Cap can win this one, is there?

The final episode the the Captain America cartoon series adapts one of my favourite stories from the original Suspense run, in which the Red Skull turns out to be still alive in 1966 and manages to wrest possession of The Cosmic Cube from the hands of A.I.M. It doesn't really capture the doom-laden atmosphere of the original tale, but then the cartoon production people would probably have thought that aspect of the tale a bit dark for younger viewers. Shame, really ... I remember being quite unsettled by the original comic tale when I first read in back in 1966.

Admittedly, viewed today, these cartoons do seem a bit ... well, dire. But if I had seen them at the time, in 1966, I think I would have preferred them to the Batman tv show, my opinions of which can be found elsewhere on this blog. As bad as the animation was, at least the producers treated the characters with respect. The only real lapse - a kind of sop to the "camp" brigade - was the odd hand-lettered sound effects superimposed on top of the picture. And the actual sound effects were a bit over-comical, appearing to have been lifted from old episodes of Huckleberry Hound. Maybe cartoon studios all just used the same sound effects record.

What was more unforgivable was the contempt with which publisher Marty Goodman treated his own intellectual properties. OK, I know there is quite a legal and moral dispute around whether Goodman actually did own Captain America and the other more modern properties, but my point is he at least believed he owned them at this point. And for him to allow others free rein to do a less-than-brilliant job of exploiting the characters in another medium is definitely what I'd categorise as contempt.

But sadly, things would get worse before they got better. Eleven years later, Captain America would return to tv screens in live-action form.

JUST WHO IS REB BROWN?

So, The Incredible Hulk tv series (1977) had been a big success for Universal-MCA. By 1978, Hulk fever was everywhere. Marvel in the US responded with a magazine-size comic, Rampaging Hulk, which tried to set the dial back to the early Lee-Kirby style of the early Sixties' Incredible Hulk comics. Marvel UK tackled the other end of the readership demographic and released a weekly title, Hulk Comic (1979) aimed at the younger reader.

Marvel launched two titles to capitalise on the success of the Incredible Hulk tv series - a black and white mag for the US market and a weekly kids' comic for the UK.

Universal, who'd bought a package of characters from Marvel, also made a feature-length pilot for a Dr Strange tv series, which cast Peter Hooten in the lead role. It wasn't bad, by any means, but as it was originally aired against Roots in the US, it didn't get the viewing figures it needed, so the planned tv series went nowhere.

Peter Hooten looked every bit the part as Marvel's Dr Strange (1978). Anne-Marie Martin made a fetching Clea, though in this she wasn't from an alien dimension.

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that Universal had also licensed the rights to The Sub-Mariner at the same time, though I don't believe any attempt was made to produce a pilot. That Universal claims to this day to be the rights holder to Prince Namor seems to bear this out.

Reb Brown as Captain America. There were a couple of small changes to the uniform between Captain America and Captain America: Death Too Soon.

They gave it a third (and final, as it turned out) roll of the dice with Captain America, which featured Reb Brown as a heavily reconceptualised Steve Rogers.

The first of the two pilots, Captain America (1978), was all over the place. Reb Brown was criminally miscast as Steve Rogers, a slab-of-meat surfer type who's just got out of the army and wants to be an artist. He is on his way to see an old friend of his father's when he's invited to a meeting with a covert government agency, led by Dr Simon Mills (Len Birman). Mills wants him to help with a line of experiments to enhance human capabilities that Rogers' father had been working on. Though attracted to Mills assistant, Dr Wendy Day (Heather Menzies), Rogers doesn't want to be following orders any time soon, and turns down the offer. From there he's embroiled in a plot to detonate a neutron bomb on American soil and is severely wounded by the henchmen of the plotter, industrialist Lou Brackett (Steve Forrest). In a desperate bid to save Rogers' life, Dr Mills injects him with the FLAG serum Dr Rogers had developed, enhancing Steve's strength and senses to about ten times normal human levels. Dr Mills gives Steve Rogers a flash motor cycle and a uniform, and Captain America takes on the baddies and foils the nuclear threat.

The film seems very slow moving ... the sequence with Steve Rogers trying out his new motorcycle, and the subsequent scenes of him trying to outrun a helicopter seems impossibly extended, at over seven minutes. Just pruning this section might have made the film seem less flabby.

Its other liabilities include really bad acting from the lead, a rather flimsy-looking plastic shield and the fact that Captain America isn't shown in uniform until over an hour into the movie. Oddly, the first film also sets up Dr Wendy as a love interest for Steve Rogers (contrary to other reports, the two do share a kiss on the beach), at a time when tv heroes didn't have regular girlfriends. And the tv origin doesn't start with a puny Steve Rogers ... though, in all fairness, this would have been very difficult to pull off with 1978 special effects technology.

It certainly looks from this that the producers intended for Steve Rogers and Dr Wendy Day to be an item. And in the extended motorcycle chase sequence, Rogers (not Captain America at this point in the movie) leaps from a motorcycle to a helicopter.

The second attempt at a pilot seemed marginally better. It's ten minutes shorter, which really helps ... and it seems to veer more towards Incredible Hulk territory, with a wandering Steve Rogers, still working for Dr Simon Mills' clandestine government agency, but out interacting with real people in a small community in danger from the plot of a dangerous international terrorist.

In the second pilot, Dr Wendy is now played by Connie Sellecca, and is no longer romantically tied to Steve Rogers. Just as well, as Rogers gets entangled with a young widow whose town he's trying to save. The terrorist Miguel is played in typical humorless style by Christopher Lee and has the villain running a nearby prison as his base of operations by posing as the warden. The plot has Miguel in possession of an ageing chemical with which he's dosed a couple of nearby towns. Unless Captain America can defeat the baddies and acquire the antidote, hundred of thousands of US citizens will age 38 days every hour.

Christopher Lee makes another bad choice of roles, here as European terrorist Miguel. And Dr Wendy Day has now changed from blonde Heather Menzies to brunette Connie Sellecca and is no longer romantically interested in Steve Rogers.

Both films use the old Six Million Dollar Man trick of slow motion for the super-power scenes, accompanied by that all-too-familiar "zziinnggg!" sound effect. And I think that's indicative of its in-built problems. The producers couldn't make up their minds whether they were trying to follow The Incredible Hulk or the Six Million Dollar Man. Giving Captain America super-strength just seemed wrong. I'd have thought the character would have been far more credible to a tv audience if he was simply a normal human boosted to the absolute peak of physical perfection, as in the comic book. All the twenty foot leaps and bending prison bars with his bare hands just seemed ridiculous on television.

So, unsurprisingly, the almost unprecedented two feature-length pilots didn't lead to a full tv series and Captain America slipped back into the comic book ghetto from whence he'd come. And I think if it had, I wouldn't have watched it. Once again, Hollywood producers seemed completely indifferent to the concepts that had led a comic character to endure for almost forty years and had dispensed with the very Unique Selling Point that had made Captain America great.

Next time I want to get back to silver age comics and look at the original run of six issues to feature The Hulk, back in the early 1960s.

Next: Hulk not smash yet

Captain America: Cartoon Star of the Small Screen

BACK WHEN I was a kid, very few television or movie producers would have dreamed of looking to comic books for source material. Certainly, the old poverty row studios, poor in ideas and budgets, might have occasionally turned to comic book and comic strip characters, but that was about it.

For obvious reasons, comic strip characters made it onto the screen first. Original comic book characters didn't really kick off in a big way until Superman showed just how viable heroes created specifically for comic books could be.

The earliest live-action comic strip movie I have is Tarzan the Ape Man (1932). I know Tarzan wasn't originally a comic strip character, but I'd argue that the success of the Hal Foster daily comic strip running in hundreds of newspapers in the USA from January 1929 was almost certainly what caught the attention of the the great MGM Studios.

Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) was a major movie from a Hollywood's biggest and most successful studio MGM. Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller was cast in the lead and the production revelled in presenting the star's perfect physique. Hal Foster's art on the newspaper strip was every bit as beautiful as the production values of the movie version.

Other strip characters would soon follow, notably Palooka (1934), an adaptation of Ham Fisher's boxing strip Joe Palooka, and Blondie (1938) based on the Chic Young comedy strip. But it was in the weekly movie serials where comic characters would really come into their own.

In rapid succession, comic strip characters paraded across the screen in low-budget serial chapterplays: Flash Gordon (1936), Dick Tracy (1937), Jungle Jim (1937), Secret Agent X-9 (1937), Buck Rogers (1939), Mandrake the Magician (1939), Terry and the Pirates (1940) and The Phantom (1943).

DC Comics were a bit prima donna-ish about allowing Hollywood to film their star character Superman, so many other companies' superheroes appeared on screen first, like Fawcett Comics' Captain Midnight (1942).

Pretty soon, they were joined by bona-fide comic book characters: Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941), Captain Midnight (1942), Spy Smasher (1942), Batman (1943), Vigilante (1947), Superman (1948), Congo Bill (1948), Blackhawk (1952) and Captain America (1944).

Even back in the 1940s, movie studios seemed to have nothing but contempt for the characters they licensed from the comic book companies. How many errors can you spot here in the appearance of the serial Captain America compared to the comic book version?

Sadly, Republic's serial version of Captain America bore very little resemblance to the dynamic artwork of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby that appeared in Timely's Captain America Comics. I think once the character was licensed to the movie studio, then the producers would just do whatever they wanted. Much as I enjoyed seeing the Captain America serial at Saturday morning pictures all those decades ago it was evident, even to my ten year old sensibilities, that the character on the screen didn't have much to do with the Lee and Kirby Marvel Comics I was reading.

For a start, this Captain America didn't have a shield. That's right, serial producer William O'Sullivan decided to ignore the character's unique selling point. Then he changed Cap's civilian identity from Steve Rogers to Grant Gardner, District Attorney. Finally, to pile insult on top of injury, he gave Cap a gun with which to shoot the bad guys. I hardly even noticed the missing wings on the sides of Cap's mask ...

That said, I still think this is still one of the great serials. The action is non-stop and the stunt players put everything they have into the many, many fight scenes. I won't dwell on it further here, but I wrote a review of this serial a while back for IMDB. So follow the link if you want see what I said.

After that, Captain America wouldn't appear on screen for another 22 years, and when he did, it wasn't a great deal better.

"MARVEL SUPERHEROES ON TV!"

Towards the end of 1966, Stan Lee started running teasers at the foot of random pages in the various Marvel titles promising that Marvel Heroes were going to be on television.

These little banners started showing up in assorted Marvel titles towards the end of 1966.

Then the following month, full-page ads started appearing. It seemed that Marvel had licensed some of their top characters for tv cartoons. Even as an ever-optimistic twelve year old, I had no illusions that we'd ever see these shows on UK television. I was still reeling from the outrage that was 20th Century-Fox's abominable Batman tv show.

Pretty quickly, full page ads started showing up revealing the line-up of the Marvel Super-Heroes cartoon show. Front and centre was Captain America.

It didn't occur to me at the time, but it was apparent that Marvel had sold the rights to the heroes appearing in their anthology titles to tv. Thor was the star of Journey into Mystery. The Sub-Mariner and The Hulk were sharing Tales to Astonish and Captain America and Iron Man were appearing in Tales of Suspense. For whatever reason, the television people didn't seem interested in S.H.I.E.L.D. and Dr Strange from Strange Tales. And my guess is that Marvel publisher Marty Goodman was holding back his big guns - Spider-Man and Fantastic Four - until he saw how the cartoon folks handled the B-team characters.

As it turns out, I wouldn't see any of these cartoons until many years later. Fifty years later to be precise - when I finally got round to buying DVDs of the Marvel Super-Heroes cartoon shows last year. 

The title card of the very first Captain America cartoon, a fairly literal transcription of the origin story from Tales of Suspense 63.

The first cartoon in the Captain America series was a panel-by-panel adaptation of the WWII-set Lee/Kirby story from Tales of Suspense 63, "The Origin of Captain America". 

Produced using very limited animation by Grantray-Lawrence the cartoons relied very heavily on artworks from the actual Marvel comics. In fact, so similar are the cartoon frames to the comic book art that I'd say that it's perfectly possible that the animators worked with stats of the original art.

Here's a comparison of the art from the key transformation scene, showing how close to the original artwork the cartoon is. There's some degradation in the detail, suggesting that the animators worked from stats or tracings of the original art.

But still, despite the tale being pretty dramatic, the animators seemed incapable of treating it that way, and dubbed in a glut of comedy sound effects that might be more appropriate in a Three Stooges short. Even stranger, the producers also thought it'd be a great idea to have on-screen lettered sound effects as well, probably believing that that was reason for the success of the Batman tv show. Add in the over-the-top delivery by the show's voice actors and it makes for an odd mixture. Judge for yourself ... you can see some of the cartoons here.

The storyline from Tales of Suspense 64 forms the mid-section of Episode One.

Episode One marches briskly through the remainder of the origin story, including the foiling of the Nazi saboteurs and the destruction of the German submarine, though the producers change the enemy from Nazis to some unnamed military foe. 

This is an inexplicable decision on the part of the show's producers. Why would anyone think that it would be a problem to depict Nazis as the bad guys in a kids' cartoon? Especially given that Cap was created solely for the purpose of fighting the Nazi ideology. Did the producers think that somehow it was a bad idea to show Nazism in a bad light to 1960s children? I guess we'll never know what the agenda was here, but it's a decision I find more than a little weird.

The second half then takes in the Sando and Omar plotline from Tales of Suspense 64, where they too were originally Nazis, then segues into the Red Skull story from ToS65.

Episode Two reveals the origin of The Red Skull from ToS 66, along with the stories from ToS 67 and 68.

Episode Two mixes up the next few Captain America stories from the comics. It kicks off with "The Sentinel and the Spy" (ToS68), then into "The Fantastic Origin of the Red Skull" (ToS66) and "Lest Tyranny Triumph" (ToS67), though in the last part, the Skull's sponsor and benefactor Adolph Hitler is replaced with an unnamed high-ranking military commander.

Episode Three adapts the three-part story from ToS 69 to 71.

Episode Three adapts the "Greymore Castle" three-parter from Tales of Suspense 69-71, which as I explained in an earlier blog entry, was never one of my favourite Captain America stories. Again the Nazis of the original comic book story have been replaced by some generic brutal military types, simply referred to as "The Enemy", though we're given no sense of who they are.

Episode Four takes the Captain America scenes from Avengers 7 and 16 and melds them into a single story that reveals that Bucky's dead, then has Zemo die by his own hand.

Episode Four of the Captain America cartoon then flashes forward in time to the comic stories set in the present day and recounts the Captain America scenes from Avengers 7, with Cap's workout with the wrestlers, then into the plotline where Cap trails Zemo to his South American jungle hideout. Then weirdly, the story jumps forward to resolution of the Zemo storyline from Avengers 15 and finishes with Zemo buried beneath a rockfall because of his own villainy.

The fifth episode of the Captain America cartoon adapts the story from Avengers 4, telling of the revival of the WWII hero and the introduction of the Teen Brigade.

Confusingly, Episode Five then jumps back in the Marvel timeline to Avengers 4 and tells the story of how the Avengers find the frozen form of Captain America floating in the ocean off Newfoundland. Then the episode segues into the Captain America story from Tales of Suspense 59, where Cap, relaxing at the Avengers mansion, thwarts an attack by a bunch of gangsters.

Guest villains The Melter, The Black Knight and the Radioactive Man ally themselves with the mysteriously revived Zemo to tackle The Avengers and Captain America.

The confusion continues when Episode Six has Zemo and his Masters of Evil battling Captain America and the Avengers (from the story in Avengers 6) ... even though Zemo dies in Episode Four. That said, it would have been quite cool if I'd seen this cartoon back in 1966, with the two super-teams fighting in the streets of New York. And the producers also manage to fix a plot glitch from Avengers 6, where Zemo's ship is downed, he is supposedly arrested by the police only to turn up back in his South America jungle lair in Avengers 7. Here, his fleeing ship is sent who-knows-where by Thor's hammer-generated space warp. Not a massive improvement, but at least not a plot hole.

Just like in the comics, The Adaptoid absorbs the abilities of the Avengers - Giant Man, The Wasp, and Hawkeye - to defeat Captain America.

The seventh episode of the cartoon features the Adaptoid, a super-android created by AIM, in a re-telling of the story from Tales of Suspense 82, and features a different lineup of the Avengers, again with no explanation of who the new Giant Man and Hawkeye are. Halfway through the cartoon, the Adaptoid morphs into the Super-Adaptoid, and the story then begins to recount the events of Tales of Suspense 84.

This episode of the Captain America cartoon is a straightforward re-telling of the origin of Hawkeye and how his mentor Swordsman cheats his way into The Avengers.

Episode Eight moves back in the Marvel timeline and adapts Avengers 19 and 20, telling the story of how The Swordsman tries to join the Avengers and how the character was responsible for teaching Hawkeye his archery skills. It's interesting to see how the cartoon style changes from being drawn in the style of Jack Kirby to looking like Don Heck artwork. Hardly surprising given that Heck had taken over the art on The Avengers starting with issue 17.

Next time I'll cover the remaining episodes of the Marvel Super-Heroes Captain America show and look at the three Captain America tv movies in the 1970s and 1990s.

Next: Captain America goes live-action

Captain America: The Sixth Avenger

AROUND 1964 I discovered Marvel Comics and almost immediately abandoned the DC Superman, Green Lantern and Flash books I had been reading up till that point. In early 1965, I came across a copy of Tales of Suspense 64 (Apr 1965), which featured the wartime adventures of Captain America, a character who immediately became my all-time favourite superhero. Around the same time - probably the same month, given the cover dates - I found a copy of Avengers 15 (Apr 1965), which starred Captain America working with his fellow team members in a contemporary setting, looking not a day older. How was this possible? My ten-year-old brain was confused.

Much later, when I'd back-filled my small collection of Marvel Comics a little, I was able to figure out what was going on.

The revived and revised Human Torch appeared in the first issue of Fantastic Four. The Sub-Mariner made his Silver Age debut a few months later in FF4. Martin Goodman also had Stan spin The Human Torch off into his own series in Strange Tales, beginning with issue 101 (Oct 1962).

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had begun the Marvel Age of Superheroes by revamping one of Publisher Martin Goodman's 1940s properties, The Human Torch, and co-starring him with the rest of the Fantastic Four in the first issue of their self-titled magazine in November 1961. A few months later, in Fantastic Four 4 (May 1962), Lee and Kirby revived Prince Namor, The Sub-Mariner, as a villain for the FF to fight. It only remained for Stan to find a way to bring back Captain America and he'd put an end to Goodman's requests to revive all of the major 1940s Timely characters.

Stan was right to be wary. Captain America was very much a character for the time, born on the eve of America's involvement in the Second World War, Cap was depicted on the cover of his debut comic socking Hitler on the jaw. After the war drew to a close in 1945, the nation seemed to lose interest in patriotic superheroes - well, actually in all superheroes - and Captain America's sales declined quite rapidly. So finding a way to bring back a character that the comics-buying public had given up on in the late 1940s and who no longer had a purpose now that Nazi Germany was two decades in the past wasn't going to be easy.

The dying of Timely heroes was a sad affair. Captain America's own title turned into a horror comic that lasted one more issue. His final battle was against The Red Skull in Captain America's Weird Tales 74 (Oct 1949). The Human Torch's last appearance was in Marvel Mystery Comics 92 (Jun 1949), and Sub-Mariner's own title died with issue 32 the same month.

Casting around for somewhere to park Captain America, Stan figured that Strange Tales was the most appropriate place, but hedging his bets, had Jack Kirby draw up a tale for ST114 (Nov 1963) where one of Johnny Storm's old enemies, The Acrobat, disguises himself as Captain America and carries out robberies. Even the Torch is fooled right up till the last moment, when he yanks "Cap's" mask off.

Someone must've messed up, because Captain America is shown throughout the story wearing red panties, just like Superman. And if you look closely at the cover, you can see he was coloured that way there too. Stan must've blown a gasket when the cover proof came in and had someone patch over the erroneous pants on the blue film, resulting in purple pants (solid cyan over solid magenta) ... not quite as bad as red, but still wrong.

The final caption box owns up to the fact that Stan was trying out the character to see what readers thought. Fan reaction must've been positive because, a few months later, Captain America turned up in The Avengers 4 (Mar 1964), as a replacement for the increasingly unstable Hulk. It's actually a pretty good tale, and interestingly, uses the Sub-Mariner as the catalyst for Cap's return.

Behind the iconic cover is an epic 23-page tale that describes how Captain America came to be revived by The Sub-Mariner and inducted into The Avengers, who'd become his family for the next ten years.

Prince Namor escaped The Avengers at the end of issue 3, and now fetches up in the Arctic, where he needlessly bullies a band of Inuits who are minding their own business and worshipping their frozen god. The Sub-Mariner flings the idol into the sea, where it thaws out and is brought on board the pursuing sub of The Avengers. The idol turns out to be famous WWII hero, Captain America ... and he's still alive.

You can tell that Stan hasn't really got the measure of the character yet, as most of his dialogue sounds stilted and unnatural. "I am not lucky enough to forget forever ... to forget that I was once the man the world called ... Captain America!" he says moments after waking up from a coma. Of course, if he'd just woken up from a coma, and had no reason at this point to know that twenty years had passed, then his claim is slightly odd. And then, "I've no need of tricks!" intones Cap. "Test me! Try to conquer me!" He sounds more like a robot than a man of the 1940s.

Cap then reveals that, back in the final days of the war, he and Bucky were trying to stop a saboteur's explosives-laden drone plane taking off. The pair make a daring leap to the plane, but Cap loses his grip and the plane explodes, killing his young sidekick. That must've been some leap, because the heroes start somewhere in the European Theatre of Operations and Cap hits the water off the coast of Newfoundland. But why quibble? Cap sinks into the icy sea and the lowered temperature maintains him in a state of suspended animation until The Avengers fish him out in 1964.

Jack Kirby's action scenes in Avengers 4 are as dynamic as always, but you kind of get the impression that Stan's heart wasn't really in the scripting, or that he hadn't got a handle on the character at this point.

Then, there's a bit of shennanigans with an alien turning the Avengers to stone at the request of Namor, but they're rescued by Cap, and then the new Avengers finally tackle The Submariner who, yep, manages to escape again.

The idea of an alien who turns folks to stone and who has been mistaken for the legendary gorgon, Medusa, is a plot device right out of Lee's earlier fantasy stories - "Call Her ... Medusa" from Journey into Mystery 96 (Sep 1963) is just one example.

Interestingly, Namor doesn't seem to recognise Captain America, though you'd have thought that, given they were 1940s contemporaries, they'd have at least known about each other, even if they'd never met - but weren't they in the All-Winners Squad together (All-Winners Comics 19, Fall 1946)?

Captain America is the undoubted star of Avengers 4 and, as you might expect, he has the lion's share of the action. He's instrumental in figuring out what happened to the "missing" Avengers and in tracking down the sunglasses-wearing character who fired a strange weapon at his team-mates. Once the other Avengers are restored, the team goes after Namor and though each has a moment of combat with the Sub-Mariner, it is Cap who frees hostage Rick Jones moments before an earthquake forces Namor to return to the depths.

The inker's not credited on Avengers 4 ... I'd always assumed it was Paul Reinman, as that's who'd inked the issues on either side which didn't look much different, but the Grand Comicbook Database gives the inker as George Roussos. Either way, I wasn't that keen on the inks, thinking they looked rushed and messy. I'm sure George Roussos had his fans but I wasn't one of them.

Captain America's very next appearance was briefly in Fantastic Four 25 and more fully in FF26, where he and the Avengers found themselves in a scrap with the FF over who had first dibs on The Hulk.

These two comics were heavily advertised in the other Marvels of the day and were both on my "must-get" list. When I did manage to track down copies, I wasn't in the least disappointed.

The tale pretty much carries straight on from Avengers 4, and was probably more about Stan consolidating the Avengers and Captain America as part of the Marvel Universe. Strangely, the first contact between the Avengers and the FF is when The Human Torch and Captain America have the first skirmish on page 13, yet no mention is made of the pair's first "meeting" in Strange Tales 114. It seems odd that Stan missed the opportunity to have Cap speak a line like, "You're up against the real thing, this time, sonny!"

It really is a great Marvel event, featuring 80% of the company's main characters in one adventure. Giving the tale two issues meant that the storytelling felt uncramped and satisfying and it remains to this day one of my all time favourite Marvel tales. There are a couple of minor niggles. Stan still hadn't really found The Hulk's voice yet, and in many panels he talks a bit like The Thing. And the resolution, where Rick Jones drops an "emergency gamma-ray treated capsule which Banner gave me months ago" into the Hulk's mouth and the Hulk, transforming back to Banner, falls into the Hudson River does seem a bit unimaginative - or perhaps too imaginative - and seems like a Jack Kirby plot-point. Inking is once again by George Roussos (as "George Bell") and is, if nothing else, consistent with the previous Avengers issue.

Jack Kirby adds a montage of The Avengers with both The Hulk and Captain America present, even though up to this point they haven't appeared together in the team and it's even debatable whether Bruce Banner would be aware of Cap as an Avenger. But Kirby partially redeems himself with this fabulous two-thirds page panel of the living rock being forced up to the surface world by the Lava people.

Avengers 5 (May 1964), which came out the same month as FF26, continues The Hulk storyline and also brings back Molto the Lava Man and his underground race from the Thor tale in Journey into Mystery 97. The Lava Men are trying to get rid of a weird growing rock which threatens to engulf their subterranean kingdom by forcing it on the surface people. Thor's former enemy Molto counsels against this, but his people refuse to listen. And we all know where that's going to lead.

Iron Man enters the earth below the Living Rock and encounters the Lava People. He tries to reason with them, but they attack him. Thor intervenes and demands to speak to their ruler. But an impasse is reached when the Lava Men explain that Thor striking the Living Rock will only cause more damage. In the meantime another group of Lava Men attack Captain America triggering a further skirmish, with Iron Man and Giant Man getting involved.

Meanwhile, not far away Banner transforms into the Hulk, then comes across the Avengers and attacks them. Thor attempts to halt the Hulk with his hammer, but a sneak attack by the Lava Men's leader with a radioactive weapon causes Thor to transform back into Don Blake ... and now the Avengers no longer have the raw power to destroy the Living Rock. But the team find a way to taunt the Hulk, so that his massive fists strike the Rock in the exact spot to trigger an explosion that destroys it.

The issue also included a new letters column in which future comics artist and inker Alan Weiss writes to say how he prefers "George Bell's" inking over Paul Reinman's. So that shows how much I know.

As Cap bonds with his new team-mates and gets all depressed about the fate of Bucky, we're introduced to the villain responsible for the death of Cap's young partner. Zemo is a man given to walking all over his fellow man (literally) and immature temper tantrums. Already I dislike him.

Avengers 6 (Jul 1964) is a bit of a landmark, for two reasons. It's the first monthly issue, which means sales must have been very good right from the get-go, and it's the first time the Avengers face a team of super-foes. We open with Captain America demonstrating the transistor-powered magnets that Iron Man installed in his shield. This was probably an attempt to bring the character more "up-to-date", but the idea was quickly jettisoned, as revealed last time when I covered Tales of Suspense 62 (Feb 65, just seven months after Avengers 6).

This issue also introduces Baron Zemo and retrospectively adds him to Marvel history as a main foe for Captain America, and in Sgt Fury 8 (Jul 1964) as a wartime adversary for Fury and his Commandos. It's revealed that Zemo is the saboteur responsible for the exploding plane that killed Bucky and now, surviving in exile in the Amazonian jungles, the ex-Nazi is ready to bring the fight to Captain America once more.

Also in Avengers 6, we get the origin of (the masked) Baron Zemo and a return grudge match between Cap and the man responsible for the death of Bucky. The same month, Zemo turned up (twenty years earlier, sort of) in Sgt Fury 8 - without the magenta mask.

So the villain recruits a bunch of second-banana villains to help him battle his way through the Avengers to get to Cap, saying to his henchman, "You must find three people for me, if you value your life!!" though Stan doesn't explain how Zemo's henchman will be able to get them to work together. 

First to show his face is old Giant Man foe The Black Knight, who's flying around the city on his winged steed spraying Zemo's mysterious Adhesive X everywhere, bringing traffic to a halt and causing chaos. Next, defeated Iron Man villain The Melter does pretty much the same, but first melting the guns of any police nearby. Then Thor's old enemy Radioactive Man arrives, also squirting the nasty superglue all around. After a bit of pushing and shoving, The Avengers hit on the idea of asking Paste-Pot Pete for help, reasoning that his expertise in glues and adhesives might also extend to solvents. Pete strikes a deal for an early release and the Teen Brigade are dispatched to switch Zemo's Adhesive X for Pete's super-solvent.

But it's Captain America that comes up with the plan to defeat Zemo's super-powered allies. They'll simply switch foes. So Thor battles The Black Knight, Giant Man and the Wasp tackle Radioactive Man and Iron Man takes on The Melter ... oh, wait a minute ... that wasn't part of Cap's plan. It only remains for Captain America to give Zemo a pounding and the tale can draw to a close.

The inking here was by Chic Stone, one of my own personal Silver Age favourites. Though not quite as inspired as the work he was already doing on the Fantastic Four comic, notably issue 30, which came out the following month - probably because Stone was getting Marvel out of a deadline disaster here - the work is still crisp and fresh and in my opinion far better than the inking work we'd seen so far on this title.

However, Stan seems a lot more confident with Cap's voice in this story, and we already see the guilt-laden side of his personality, blaming himself for the death of Bucky and unable to move on from the trauma, yet motivated by a sense of duty to continue the fight regardless of his own feelings. It's a take on Cap that would continue for the next decade and a half and would be further explored by Roy Thomas in much later Avengers issues.

At the beginning of Avengers 7, the Executioner and The Enchantress get kicked out of Asgard for ganging up on Thor in Journey into Mystery 103. So they seek out their next career move with Baron Zemo, even though he's hardly an equal opportunities employer.

Of course, Zemo was back in Avengers 7 (Aug 1964), along with new allies The Executioner and The Enchantress who'd previously battled Thor in Journey into Mystery 103 four months earlier. Even though Zemo was supposed to have been tear-gassed in his escape craft and picked up by the police at the end of last issue (albeit, off-camera), here he is, back in his South American hideaway, abusing the natives like nothing ever happened.

The driving incident for the plot of this issue is when Thor is hypnotised into drinking a magic mind-control potion by the wiley Enchantress. You'd think Thor would be a little more cautious around that woman after The Last Time. But, no, in he blunders and gulps down the brain-altering brew like it was Vimto or something. With his head suitably re-arranged, Thor now sees his follow Avengers as demons and picks a fight.

After knocking back The Enchantress' Love Potion Number 9, Thor gets all discombobulated and thinks his Avengers pals are scary monsters and super-freaks ...

But though it's full of sound and fury, the battle between the Avengers seems a bit by-the-numbers, compared to the attention Stan and Jack lavish on Captain America this issue. No fewer than six pages - more than a quarter of the story - is taken up with establishing Cap's character and following his feud with Baron Zemo.

Once again, Captain America is driving the storyline of this issue of Avengers. There's a fun sequence at the beginning where Cap hires a bunch of wrestlers as sparring partners, then he has a mope about Bucky and snaps at Rick for trying on Bucky's old costume.

And is it just me, or is the splash page of this issue inked by someone other than Chic Stone? Looks more like Paul Reinman's inking. Of course we know that very often back in the day, Stan would want art re-drawn as it came in, so it's possible that the figure of Cap was redrawn, or even added in by another artist before press-day.

Looking back on this today, this doesn't look like Chic Stone work, particularly Giant Man's face and the inking on Cap's figure. Or maybe someone did a last-minute touch-up.

Avengers 8 (Sep 1964) is a change of pace. Stan and Jack leave Zemo alone for a moment and introduce a new menace, Kang, a diabolical scientific genius from the future who may or may not be either related to Dr Doom or actually be Dr Doom.

It's a little surprising that Stan didn't have this cover re-drawn. You'd think he'd argue that you can't see Kang clearly and The Avengers are crowded into a quarter of the cover. When he shows up inside, Kang looks a tad fey. And, interestingly, it's the Teen Brigade that save the day.

The character first appeared in the guise of Rama-Tut, the time-travelling antagonist from the story in Fantastic Four 19 (Oct 1963), and then turned up in the Fantastic Four Annual 2 (1964) where he rescues Dr Doom, floating in space after his last defeat by the FF. Trying to return to his own time, Kang overshoots by a few centuries and crashlands in a barbaric and desolate future. Quickly tiring of ruling a dying world, he decides to time travel to the 20th Century and conquer Earth ... which is when he runs in to The Avengers.

The team seems a bit chaotic in its battle against Kang. Their powers have little effect against him, then they're all captured, leaving only The Wasp and Rick Jones and his pals to free the others and defeat Kang.

It all seems a bit rushed and I wasn't wild about the Dick Ayers inking here, either. I get that Marvel was running to tight deadlines - goodness knows I've had my own share of producing strips to a deadline on the weekly comic 2000AD - but even so this issue does seem a bit ramshackle. That same month, Kirby had also drawn Fantastic Four 30 (a gorgeous art job with Chic Stone, covered in an earlier blog entry), Journey into Mystery 108, X-Men 7 and 37 pages of story plus five pinups in Fantastic Four Annual 2 (all also Stone, so no wonder he didn't have time for Avengers 8). And Dick Ayers also pencilled the 18-page epic Giant Man/Hulk battle in Tales to Astonish 59, so they were all probably stretched a little thin.

Though Avengers 9 dredged up Zemo once again, his new creation Wonder Man was an interesting, if short-lived, character. The machinery used to give Simon Williams "Wonder" powers would come up again in Marvel legend in the origin of long-time Avengers villain Power Man.

Avengers 9 (Oct 1964) was the first issue to be pencilled by Don Heck, who would go on to have a long association with the title, supplying most of the art up to issue 40. Here we again had Ayers on inks, unfortunately not the best fit for Heck's art. I always enjoyed Don Heck most when he inked his own pencils.

I wouldn't see this issue until quite some time after it was published as it was another of the books caught up in the big Marvel/Thorpe and Porter distribution snafu of late 1964. Zemo returns (again!) as the main villain, only this time, instead of finding allies to join him, he creates one. He offers convicted white collar criminal Simon Williams the opportunity to acquire super-powers and join him to get revenge on Tony Stark's "bodyguard" Iron Man and his Avengers team-mates. The catch is, the process that gives Williams "Powerman" powers will also kill him in days unless an antidote is administered. So, Zemo, Executioner and Enchantress stand by as Wonder Man infiltrates The Avengers and sets them up for betrayal. Of course, Williams has a change of heart at the last moment and sacrifices himself so The Avengers may live.

The Marvel house ad in Avengers 9 showed some of the other Marvel mags we weren't able to get in the UK because of the importers not distributing the October and November titles in the newsagents here.

But once Kirby was no longer supplying the art (and plotting or co-plotting, if indeed he was), then the Avengers stories became fairly routine. Avengers 9 was entertaining because of the unusual concept of Wonder Man as a villain-turned-hero, but otherwise, Jack Kirby was sorely missed.

Avengers 10 (Nov 1964) was also a difficult issue to find in the UK, and when I did finally track down a copy, it turned out to be not one of my favourites. The plot has Zemo (sigh) ally himself with another time-travelling tyrant, Immortus. This new fellow kidnaps Rick Jones and holds that over Captain America to force Cap to bring the other Avengers to him. He then pits them against warriors from different eras of history.

Between Thor's disappearing tights and the hokey ending where The Enchantress cancels the entire shameful episode out of existence, this was one of the weakest instalments of The Avengers of the early era.

The issue does bear the earmarks of having been rushed. Besides the plot not being the best-thought-out story in that run of early Avengers, there seems to be some problems with the colouring, as Thor's blue leggings come and go from page to page, and he's depicted more than a few times with bare legs. The ending is weak, as well ... with her team-mates facing certain defeat, The Enchantress turns back time so that the whole Immortus episode never happened.

Avengers 11 (Dec 1964) brought back Kang as the main villain. Fashioning a robot duplicate of Spider-Man using the technology of his ancestor Dr Doom, Kang sent it back in time to lure the Avengers into a trap. The cover art is misleading on way too many levels. For a start, Iron Man isn't in the story at all - he's busy trying to convince his supporting cast over in the same month's Tales of Suspense 60 that he didn't murder Tony Stark and has requested a leave of absence from The Avengers. And the "Co-starring Spider-Man" line isn't exactly true. The real Spider-Man appears for only a couple of pages at the tail end of the tale.

Avengers 11: Even with the addition of Chic Stone on inks, I didn't think Don Heck had really gotten a grip on the Marvel style of action. He wouldn't really come into his own as the definitive Avengers artist until after Thor, Iron Man and Giant Man left.

And there's definitely something weird going on with the cover art. Over on Nick Caputo's blog, there's a detailed examination of this cover and Nick explains his thinking behind the credits he assigns. But I also have a couple of thoughts to add to Nick's careful dissection. Nick thinks the Spider-Man figure is an addition, pencilled by Steve Ditko inked by Chic Stone, and he is very likely correct as Mr Caputo has a great eye for this kind of thing. To me it's certainly evident that, no matter how much I love Stone's inking, he really doesn't get Spider-Man at all. When you look at the Spider-Man figure in detail, there are many problems with it. The mask is drawn incorrectly. The border round the mask's eyes is left open for colour instead of being solid black, as is the Spider chest-emblem. Often pencillers will leave areas of black as outlines and just mark them with a small "X" to indicate to the inker to fill them in ... maybe the penciller (Ditko) forgot, or thought he would be inking it. But it's quite surprising that Stan's eagle eye didn't catch this snafu. And I'm not mad about the background webbing, either, where Chic Stone inked in the circular pencil guidelines when he should have erased them.

Here, I've taken the liberty of correcting the mistakes on the Spider-Man figure on the cover of Avengers 11. The eye detail on the mask has been blacked in (on the right), along with the chest emblem. And the weird blue highlight on the front of the mask has been recoloured yellow to match the other highlights on the costume. And I've gotten rid of some of the circular guide lines on the webbing in front of Spidey's face that Chic inked instead of erasing (If you look closely, you can see the compass hole in the centre of the webbing).
Click on the image to enlarge it.

The other small niggle is with Stan's scripting. Five month's earlier, in Tales to Astonish 57 Jul 1964), the villain Egghead had engineered a fight between Giant-Man and Spider-Man. In that story, there was quite a bit of dialogue around the idea of wasps and spiders being natural enemies, so Janet Van Dyne was quite hostile towards Spidey. In Avengers 11, there is much the same kind of conversation when "Spidey" shows up, yet no one mentions that Giant-Man and Spider-Man had battled months before, not something you'd think Hank Pym would easily forget. Perhaps this contributed to Stan's decision to remove the "heavy-hitters" from The Avengers ...

But in the end, because the plot basically "cheats" and doesn't really give us "Spider-Man meets The Avengers", what should have been a terrific issue ends up feeling a little bit "meh!". The whole concept of Spider-Man trying to join The Avengers - with this same line-up, even though Iron Man and Thor had been replaced by Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver by that point -  would be done a lot better two years later in Amazing Spider-Man Annual 3 (1966).

Avengers 12 (Jan 1965) gave us a break from the machinations of Kang. The story opens with Giant-Man getting an alert from his ants that there is great danger underground. Giant-Man summons the rest of the Avengers ... but his colleagues seem annoyed to be called in on the say-so of some ants. This is pretty unlikely, as these heroes have been through a lot together and you'd think by now they'd have learned to trust each other. So having Thor flouncing off in a huff because he has "more pressing matters to attend to" doesn't really ring true. I can't think what could be more important as Thor was between adventures, and in his own title that month was battling The Hulk in a flashback to the events of Avengers 3.

Behind the terrific Kirby and Stone cover is another odd tale which looks like Stan still didn't have a handle on how this comic should run. Weirdly, The Red Ghost shows up in the last act of the story for no good reason that I can see. And Thor's own title that month was a flashback to The Hulk battle in Avengers 3.

A few pages later, The Avengers have a change of heart, but before they can set off to find Hank Pym to see if he needs any help, they're attacked by a squad of The Mole Man's subterraneans. Just as The Avengers prevail, the subterraneans vanish in a wisp of smoke, and the Avengers set off to find Giant-Man. They invade the Mole Man's kingdom, free Giant Man and defeat the underground hordes. 

Captain America again had a couple of good scenes. It is he that tries to get Iron Man and Thor to listen to Giant-Man's warning, and it's Cap who prevents a robbery and retrieves vital components for Iron Man's burrowing device. But I'm still not sure what The Red Ghost was doing in there. 

Dick Ayers was back inking Don Heck for this issue, though I have to say, this was a much better job than he did on Avengers 9.

Jack Kirby (with the help of Chic Stone) shows everyone how it should be done, when The Avengers guest-star in X-Men 9 (Jan 1965).

The same month as Avengers 12, the team also make an appearance in X-Men 9, pencilled by Jack Kirby and inked by Chic Stone. Presumably, Stan was trying to goose the sales of the mutant book by including the more successful Avengers as guest stars. It's not much more than a walk-on, really, as The Avengers track some unknown evil to distant Bavaria. It turns out to be X-Men foe Lucifer and after the obligatory skirmish, The Avengers leave Prof Xavier's young heroes to fight their own battle with Lucifer.

The evil Count Nefaria (that's him on the cover, looking like a demented keyboard player) makes America believe The Avengers have turned traitor and soon they're hunted by the US military ...

Dick Ayers would return as inker on Avengers 13 (Feb 1965), an issue which at least gave us a new villain - Count Nefaria - and a new criminal organisation - The Maggia - as antagonists ... which may or may not have been influenced by James Bond's Ernst Stavro Blofeld and SPECTRE. The smooth Count lures the Avengers to his castle under the pretext of a charity event, then produces holographic duplicates of the heroes, which he then sends to the Pentagon to declare war on the US. Now hunted as traitors, it doesn't take The Avengers too long to figure out who's behind the plot. So they take the battle to Nefaria. But in the final skirmish, The Wasp is wounded and the issue, unusually, ends on a cliffhanger, with Janet Van Dyne's life in the balance.

With Avengers 14, Stan brought back Jack Kirby to produce layouts for Don Heck to work over. This would continue for three issues until Stan was happy with the title's level of storytelling. The splash page straightaway looks better for Kirby's input.

I reckon Stan couldn't have been any more pleased with the last few issues of The Avengers than I was. Don Heck is a great artist, but on these early issues, he struggled to deliver his best work. So Stan got Jack Kirby to provide layouts for The Avengers 14 (Mar 1965). And in a bit of a departure, Lee credits himself with the plot, Kirby with layouts (underlining that this isn't a Jack Kirby story) and handed the scripting job off to brother Larry Leiber and the previously unknown "Paul Laiken", obviously a pen-name. There were probably reasons for the alias, but then Stan goes and gives it all away on the letters page by revealing that 14 pages of script were by Larry Leiber and Larry Ivie ... Ivie was perhaps better known as a writer for Jim Warren's Creepy and Eerie, though he contributed scripts to Tower Comics during the latter half of the 1960s as well.

The plot has Thor in a race against time to secure the services of Dr Svenson of Norway who is the only one who can save The Wasp's life. It's the least he can do after how mean he was to Giant-Man just two issues previously. But when Thor grabs the reluctant doctor and flies him back to America, it turns out that Svenson is an alien impersonator. The Avengers' only chance to save The Wasp is to find the rest of the aliens and, hopefully, the real Dr Svenson. Our heroes manage to track the Kallusians to their hidden base in the Arctic. It turns out the aliens are hiding from their enemies on Earth and Dr Svenson is helping them willingly. But The Avengers force the Kallusians to leave Earth and face their hunters in outer space so our planet is not destroyed in the inevitable war when the enemies of Kallu catch up with them. The Wasp is saved ... but we never find out what happened to the Kallusians.

The next few issues of The Avengers I covered in an earlier post. And I'll leave my favourite period of The Avengers - when the lineup changed to Hawkeye, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, lead by Captain America - for another time.

Next month I want to take a look at some of the earliest appearances of Marvel characters on television, starting with ... Captain America.

Next: Marvel Superheroes on TV!