Magazine Review: Captain America--The First 80 Years

This is technically a magazine because it was on the newsstand, but at over 190 thick, slick pages with a stiff cover and selling for $20, you could have put this in the trade paperback section.  The last time I bought a $20 magazine (5-7-21), it was an art magazine that I highly questioned the price of.  This time I felt better about the purchase and didn’t mind the price.  I actually asked my dad for this for my birthday.  This was only to keep him from buying me something useless.  He disregarded my suggestion and bought me a kid’s artbook for the same price.  Sigh. 

Upper left: Cap in drag.  I'm sure that was one of his proudest moments.  Bucky looks equally embarrassing.

Lower left: Cap smoking?

It’s an odd anniversary tribute.  This isn’t promoting the MCU Captain America.  He’s mentioned, along with the 1940’s version from the Republic serial, but this only focuses on the comic book version.  It isn’t like they killed him off or replaced him definitively in the comics to trigger this commemorative edition.  The publisher, Titan, has produced other Marvel books and magazines, which are mostly MCU productions, but nothing else like this.  In other words, I don’t know why they made this. 

Upper left: I owned that issue.  Elsewhere, Cap declines running for president.  Reagan thanks him later.

Upper left: Cap and Falcon confront Kissenger.  Upper right: I think this was the back cover to the treasury-sized Captain America.  I owned that one.

Regardless, it’s really nice.  Maybe it’s a test to see if a specific character comic book tribute would sell before they make a full line of them.  That’d be nice.  It seemed like the Barnes & Noble where I’d bought this had sold some copies when I went back later.  Seeing this on the magazine rack was a bit of a shock.  Am I really seeing this cool thing here?  This is like a comic book fanboy mirage.  I’d only ever had a couple of Captain America comics when I was collecting.  Strangely, two of them are pictured inside this, including the giant 1976 Bicentennial treasury edition. 

Upper left: Cap smoking again?  Across the top: Some great Jim Steranko artwork

The presentation is bright and colorful.  The artwork of the series takes center stage.  There are insets of full pages, full page splash pages, and even double page spread blowups of pages.  The inset pages were barely readable, occasionally not.  I had my readers on for those.  Text notes hit all the highlights of the Captain’s career.  There are sidebars about the various writers and artists.  This is a hardcore historical about the character.

Upper right: Cap quits.

So in concept, I’m thrilled with this purchase.  My review of the actual contents is more mixed in enthusiasm.  I wanted to love this so much, but it wouldn’t let me.  It’s not even the presentation of Captain America’s history that’s the problem half as much as, it’s his history itself.  Cap is an actual man (albeit a fictional character), Steve Rogers, and nobody is going to be able to live up to being a living symbol.  Unfortunately his story is too often, Steve becoming disillusioned with America and quitting the role.  He’ll continue fighting in some other guise and then be forced to retake the mantle.  Honestly, the character seems to have a lot of self-loathing for the part he’s playing. 

    

There’s little sugar-coating that this character is highly political.  He’s very patriotic in the hands of Jack Kirby, but asks some hard questions about the country.  In other hands, he’s punching out Nixon, who was running a secret plot to discredit him as Captain America.  There’s some stuff in the middle, but that leads to stories where Cap is getting turned into a werewolf.  The commentary doesn’t help, as it’s highly slanted towards Captain America rebelling against America (at least when a republican is president). 

In any case, I did learn a lot about the character from reading this.  I didn’t even know about Captain America’s 1950’s career as the “Commie Smasher.”  This forgotten chapter was later explained as a borderline psychopath, who took over the role for the government during that time.  (Of course, both Captain Americas end up fighting each other.)  This also highlights the dichotomy between Steve Rogers and him being something of a government-sponsored superhero.  Steve tries to be independent of the authorities, but the government views Captain America as an exclusive asset.  This leads to the title and costume passing into other hands on occasion. 

Pages from Civil War.  I never read this, but this part is powerful.

Is Steve Rogers Captain America?   Is Captain America Steve Rogers?  Are these relationships exclusive?  You’d think, since it always reverts back to that in the comics (maybe not in the MCU), but it would actually seem to be undecided.  There’s always a tension between the man and the role.       

Bucky dies impressively on these two pages.

This is getting too psychological and political, especially for a superhero comic book.  The unfolding story of Captain America’s career in this magazine is a great read.  Sometimes exciting, sometimes disappointing, sometimes just weird.  Steve’s personal relationships with his various girlfriends are explored.  There’s a whole lot about his superhero partners, Bucky and Falcon, and others, like Rick Jones.  (Boy, has that kid gotten passed around the Marvel Universe.) 

Hail, Hydra

There are villains, too.  The Red Skull gets most of the attention.  Hydra shows up a couple of times.  Then there’s the infamous “Hail Hydra” scene near the end of the magazine, where Cap is suddenly revealed to have been an agent of theirs the whole time.  His fights against the Red Skull where only an internecine battle for control of the organization.  Thankfully, the book doesn’t end on that note and does have an decent explanation for how it happened.  Batroc the Leaper gets a short shrift in this and he’s a seminal Cap villain.  He was even sort of in an MCU movie.  Baron Zemo only gets a passing mention.  Cap is actually part of the guy's villain origin story.

I’d love to do a section by section recap of this whole thing, but it’s big and too detailed for that.  I’m only posting a small sample of the pictures I tagged for scanning.  There were too many.  Buy it and read it yourself for all the details.  I guess this means I’m recommending it, but with some reservations.  You may be disappointed at times, but you won’t be bored reading this.