Captain America, comic-strip superhero created by writer Joe Simon and artist Jack Kirby for Timely (later Marvel) Comics. The character debuted in March 1941 in Captain America Comics no. 1.
In the early 1960s, with Marvel’s superheroes rediscovering a large and enthusiastic audience, the time seemed right to reintroduce Captain America. In Avengers no. 4 (1964), it was revealed that Steve Rogers had not died in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic. He had been trapped in ice and preserved in a state of suspended animation. The newly formed Avengers find Rogers’s thawing body and revive him. Captain America immediately joins the Avengers and becomes something of an elder statesman among them. Within a year of his revival, he graduated to his own strip in Tales of Suspense, a title he shared with Iron Man, and was well on his way to becoming an icon again.
By the early 1970s Lee and Kirby had left the comic and sales were in decline when young writer Steve Englehart took Captain America into deeper, darker waters. In a lengthy tale that reflects both antiwar sentiment and cynicism born of the Watergate scandal, a conspiracy within the White House is revealed to be the work of the evil “Secret Empire,” and the government’s insidious corruption horrifies Captain America. Sickened at what he sees as the betrayal of his country, Rogers quits in disgust and briefly becomes a character called Nomad before his innate patriotism gets the better of him.
Kirby returned to Captain America as both writer and artist in 1975, and he moved the title away from the social commentary that was typical of Engelhart’s take on the character. A series of writers shepherded Captain America into the 1980s, and in 1985 Mark Gruenwald began a decadelong tenure on the book. Gruenwald’s run focused on superheroics at the expense of Rogers’s civilian persona, and it introduced Diamondback—a sometime villain who evoked shades of Catwoman—as a romantic interest.
Credit : Britannica
Picture Credit : Google
