It’s been some seven months since the blog last checked in with Captain America. As regular readers may recall, at that time we took a look at the storyline that kicked off new writer Steve Englehart’s tenure on the title — a four-issue saga in which our star-spangled Avenger (aka Steve Rogers) learned that during the post-World War II era, while he himself had been frozen in ice, he’d been replaced by another Captain America — the “Commie-busting” Cap whose adventures Atlas (aka Marvel) Comics had published for a few years in the 1950s. That iteration of the hero, along with his partner Bucky, had ultimately gone insane, becoming an avatar of bigotry — and a menace to society whom the real Captain America, along with his partner, the Falcon, and girlfriend, sometime S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Sharon Carter, had to take down before he could permanently damage Cap’s reputation… and a whole lot else, besides.
It was an auspicious beginning for what would prove to be a memorable run on the title by Englehart — a nearly three-year stretch through which he’d be joined for most of the way by artist Sal Buscema, who’d already been the series’ regular artist for several issues when Englehart came on board. That said, the 
next story arc produced by the duo was rather less of an instant classic than their initial outing — perhaps in part because it was driven by the need to wrap up a subplot left over from Steve Rogers’ brief stint as a New York City policeman, a story element that had been introduced back in 1971, well before either Buscema or Englehart’s arrival. But while the “Crime Wave” sequence may not have been one for the ages, it did introduce a memorable new villain named the Viper — an ex-advertising man whose speech was laced with phrases familiar from television commercials. It also introduced what appeared at the time to be a significant power upgrade for Captain America, as he suddenly (and accidentally) gained super-strength — the unanticipated result of a murder attempt by the aforementioned Viper, whose poisons reacted with the residue of the “super-soldier” serum still present in Steve Rogers’ body to give the Living Legend of World War II the ability to rip through solid steel walls with his bare hands.
Such was the state of affairs at the beginning of the storyline that will be our main topic of discussion today… although since it’s a two-parter that actually begins in Captain America #161 (May, 1973), we’ll be spending some time with that issue, first.
“…If He Loseth His Soul!” (brought to you by the team of Englehart, Buscema, and inker John Verpoorten) opens as Captain America — who’s feeling all done in after a full night of prowling over rooftops — decides not to go home and catch a few hours of sleep like a normal person, but rather to drop by Sharon Carter’s place for a cup of coffee…
Um, no, Steve… I’m afraid it’s not a message for the paper boy. Sorry, dude.
We readers had actually seen Sharon post this very note as she exited her apartment, luggage in hand, in the closing panels of the previous issue; otherwise, however, we’re as much in the dark as our hero… who, unsurprisingly, can’t (or won’t) accept Sharon’s words on their face value, and so enters her home (don’t worry, he has his own key) to have a look around. Not finding any clues there, he heads over to S.H.I.E.L.D. — despite the fact that Sharon had recently quit the agency to make him happy (don’t get me started on that one) — but Nick Fury doesn’t know anything either. Cap quickly comes to realize that he knows virtually nothing about Sharon’s background — he has no idea who her family is, for example, or what part of the country she comes from — and thus, he has no clue where she might have gone.
But, as it turns out, at this particular moment Sharon herself doesn’t know where she is. We readers learn this when the narrative takes us to a castle-like structure, somewhere “in the forests of New England“, where we see Sharon lying asleep in a huge bed. Slowly, she begins to stir…
Sharon is overjoyed to see her folks — evidently, it’s been a while — but she quickly realizes what their presence in this medical facility may mean. “Wait,” she says, “if you’re here… does that mean I’m in the same hospital where… she… is?” And her parents confirm that such is indeed the case…
(The phrase “long, black veil” is likely a reference to the country music ballad of that name, originally recorded in 1959 by Lefty Frizzell and covered by lots of other folks since then.)
In March, 1973, my fifteen-year-old self probably only had a vague idea of Doctor Faustus was; he had, after all, only made one prior appearance to this, in Captain America #107 (Nov., 1968), and I hadn’t bought that issue. But fans who had read that debut outing for the villain (as produced by Stan 
Lee, Jack Kirby, and Syd Shores) would remember him as Steve Rogers’ treacherous psychologist, who’d attempted to destroy our hero’s mind through a combination of drugs and staged illusions. (Steve had evidently met the doc when both were guests on a “panel show”; you’d think that the guy’s surname would have been a tip-off, but I guess maybe the dramatic works of Christopher Marlowe weren’t part of the curriculum back when the Living Legend of World War II was in school.) The done-in-one story had ended with Faustus in the custody of S.H.I.E.L.D.; he’s obviously broken out since then, though Englehart doesn’t bother to let us know how.
Returning to our story, Captain America enlists the Falcon to help track down Sharon — though not before taking the time to patch things up with him following a recent falling-out over Sam Wilson’s understandable uneasiness over the sudden power imbalance in their partnership. Together, the two reconciled heroes check out all the possible ways Sharon could have left town, ultimately determining that she rented a car to take her to Derby, CT. They immediately head to that location themselves, traveling by motorcycle — but no sooner have they reached the city limits than a group of armed men swarm out onto the highway from behind a roadside sign for the “Lost Souls Asylum & Rest Home”…
Things seem to be going pretty well for the good guys, until one of the bad guys lobs a grenade that explodes near the Falcon, destroying his bike and sending him flying. Cap immediately turns to deal with the grenade-thrower, only to be knocked unconscious from behind by a pistol-butt wielded by another of their adversaries. “The man now has super-strength,” Pistol Guy reminds Grenade Guy, “but, fortunately for us, he’s not invulnerable.”
Meanwhile, back at Lost Souls, a suspicious Sharon Carter has picked the lock of her room and gone snooping…
Before she can investigate further, Sharon hears approaching footsteps. She recedes into the shadows, and watches as Doctors Faustus (whom she recognizes) and Wolfgang walk by… but then Faustus surprises her by suddenly turning and grabbing her:
That’s it for Captain America #161. And since you’ve already had a look at the cover of #162 (it’s still up there at the top of the post, if you want to refresh your memory), I’ll just note here that it was pencilled by Jim Starlin and inked by Joe Sinnott, and then we’ll go straight to the opening splash:
Cap and co. may not understand what’s happening here, but they assume (rightly) that the “Nazis'” bullets are real enough, and so leap to the attack. As the battle commences, Sharon spares a moment to ask Steve what he’s doing there, seeing as how her note very specifically asked him not to try to follow her. “Your note wasn’t you, honey,” he replies…
At this point the scene abruptly shifts back to the two doctors and their “patient”. “Now, dear lady,” says Faustus, “try to tell me what you remember.”
The Falcon tells Cap that this can’t really be the Red Skull, since the two of them saw him die back in CA #119. Cap’s not so sure, but he figures it doesn’t matter either way — and so he leaps forward, only to find himself and his two companions swallowed whole by the Skull’s suddenly giant maw…
This is actually the second time that Cap has been beset by an apparition of “Agent Axis, the scourge of World War II“, the first having been back in a 1966 issue of Tales of Suspense. In both instances, Cap recognizes this slouch-hatted figure as an old enemy — which is actually kind of funny, since, as we’ve discussed on a previous occasion, he’d never appeared in a Captain America story prior to that ’66 episode; rather, he was an old DC Comics villain that Jack Kirby evidently forgot he’d co-created with Joe Simon for their “Boy Commandos” strip in the 1940s, rather than for their earlier Captain America run.
Beyond that amusing tidbit, one might make the more general observation that this scene is awfully similar to one in this same month’s issue of Daredevil — although “hero tormented by images of his foes” is a common enough trope that what might seem to be imitation of some sort is probably just a coincidence.
The Falcon’s bold action shatters the illusion as well as its hold on his partner. On the far side of the broken glass, our intrepid trio finds…
Doctor Faustus still seems quite confident, though he probably shouldn’t… because in the next moment, Sharon finally remembers Faustus’ remark about the TV cameras he has tucked away all over the asylum. Quickly locating the one that the villain is currently using to watch them, our heroes disable it before leaving the “psycho-pit” behind…
And here my younger self was truly at a loss, since Tales of Suspense #77 (May, 1966) had come out over a year before I’d bought my first Marvel comic, and the Captain America story therein had yet to be reprinted in any format. It would take me years, then, to fill in whatever gaps in the backstory would be left by the exposition by Steve Englehart that directly followed this panel… but, half a century on, there’s no good reason why you should be deprived of this information, faithful reader. And so, we’ll pause our present narrative just long enough for a quick look back to 1966… and, naturally, to 1944 as well…
The woman whom Captain America had loved an lost in World War II was actually first mentioned, and shown, in a single panel of the 75th issue of Tales of Suspense, two months prior to the one footnoted above. In ToS #75’s “30 Minutes to Live!” (scripted by Stan Lee, laid out by Jack Kirby, pencilled by Dick Ayers, and inked by John Tartaglione). Steve Rogers has a reverie about people he knew back during the Big One. First he recalls his (supposedly) deceased partner, Bucky Barnes, followed by his military superior, Sgt. Duffy. And then…
Just one page later, Steve hits the streets for a walk, in hopes of lifting his melancholy mood…
Hardly aware of what he’s doing, Steve turns and follows the young woman… and so, he’s close at hand when she bumps into another man carrying a similar cylinder, causing each to drop their packages. Seeing her subsequently walk away with the “wrong” cylinder, Steve attempts to intervene, unaware that he’s interfering in a covert S.H.I.E.L.D. operation… which eventually leads to this exchange:
Later in the same story, Steve again encounters the mysterious woman again; though this time it’s as Captain America, and he’s coming to her aid when she’s attacked by Batroc the Leaper (or “ze Leapair”, if you prefer). Naturally, it all has to do with the cylinder, which contains enough of a destructive element called “Inferno 42” to level all of Manhattan. As you might expect, this yarn couldn’t be wrapped up within the ten pages then allotted for Cap’s adventures, and thus it continued into ToS #76; there, “The Gladiator, the Girl, and the Glory!” ultimately ends with Batroc defeated and Manhattan saved — but also with the mysterious young woman, who’s been poisoned by exposure to Inferno 42 (for which “there’s no known cure”), being whisked away in an ambulance… and with our hero still knowing nothing about her, other than that she’s an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (art below by John Romita):
Ah, the pathos… which would naturally be enhanced even further in the next issue’s flashback-centric “If a Hostage Should Die!” (scripted by Lee, with art by Kirby, Romita, and Frank Giacoia). Here we learned how, in the summer weeks of 1944 that saw the Allied forces liberate France, a wartime romance had blossomed.
We first meet Cap’s nameless beloved in the aftermath of a skirmish between German soldiers and French Resistance fighters, the latter of which have won the day with the help of a certain shield-slinger…
It seemed pretty clear in ToS #75 that “Sis” had known that Cap’s real name was Steve Rogers… but Lee’s apparently already forgotten that. Oh, well. In any event, despite our hero’s protestations, he and the woman he loves are in fact separated — and immediately after this scene, no less, as their respective orders — his from Allied command, hers from the Resistance — take them in different directions. Not too long afterwards, she’s captured in Paris by the Nazis, and is in fact about to be executed when the location she’s being held is shelled by her fellow partisans. She escapes in the confusion — mere minutes ahead of the arrival of Captain America, and the rest of the Allied forces who’ve come to complete the liberation of Paris. Cap learns of his beloved’s escape from a captured German soldier — but before he can begin searching for her, he’s swept up by a horde of celebrating G.I.s…
But, alas, her memory doesn’t return… at least, not before the incident roughly a year later that results in Captain America being frozen in suspended animation for the next couple of decades.
Panel from Captain America #103 (Jul., 1968). Text by Stan Lee; art by Jack Kirby and Syd Shores.
You have to figure that Lee and Kirby planned to come back to this plotline eventually… after all, they’d already established that Cap’s Lost Love not only survived the war, but also recovered her memory (at least partially), and that she was eventually reunited with her family. But when her sister the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent returned to Cap’s life nearly a year later (miraculously, and inexplicably, recovered from her supposedly incurable poisoning), in Tales of Suspense #85 (Jan., 1967), there was no mention of this tantalizing familial connection (and potential romantic complication) involving Steve Rogers’ past. Steve would ruminate upon the uncanny resemblance between his wartime flame and the woman he’d soon come to know, and even to love, as “Agent 13” (he wouldn’t actually learn her real name until somewhere around Captain America #103 [Jul., 1968], believe it or not) just once, or maybe twice, after that; and then he seemed to put it behind him… probably because first Lee and Kirby, and then their successors, simply forgot about it.
All of their successors until Steve Englehart, that is…
Cap surges down the stairwell, battering and scattering Faustus’ men as he goes, until…
“Bosche”? Yeah, I had to look that one up, too… probably because I didn’t read enough war comics as a lad. It’s “slang, usually disparaging” for German, according to Merriam-Webster.
Without question, there are some significant weak points in Steve Englehart’s plotting for this two-issue storyline, mostly related to its underlying premises. Like, how did Dr. Faustus come to learn about Peggy Carter’s existence — let alone her decades-old connection to Captain America — in the first place? And why is he so convinced that her long-buried memories should hold some special knowledge that will allow him “to devise the perfect psychological death” for his foe? But the core of the story — the long-delayed resolution of the seven-year old mystery of Sharon Carter’s sister, and the introduction of that character to Cap’s regular supporting cast — is compelling enough to cause one to forgive the faults in the mechanics of its telling; or at least it is for this reader, in 2023 as well as in 1973.
As the captions in the story’s closing panels suggest, there was considerable drama involving Peggy Carter yet to come for Steve Rogers and company. And since we’ll doubtlessly be hitting some of those story beats here on the blog in the months and years to come, I won’t get into the specifics of her subsequent character arc — at least not into what would have been its near-future aspect, looking forward from March, 1973. Suffice it to say that over the course of the next four decades, the elder Ms. Carter would accumulate a respectable number of further adventures, both in the present-day Marvel Universe and in its past… even as that Universe’s constantly rolling timeline made it less and less feasible for her to be identified as the sister of the twentysomething Sharon, leading to her being retooled over time to be Sharon’s aunt (and, eventually, her great-aunt, at least implicitly). Eventually, Peggy Carter — whose own youth in the 1940s was foundational to her character, and who didn’t have an ever-expanding stretch of years frozen in ice to serve as an excuse for forever keeping Father Time at bay, as her old beau Steve Rogers did — succumbed to the inevitable effects of time, passing away of natural causes at a ripe old age, and thereafter being laid to rest in her beloved Paris.
And then she got better.
Ironically, Marvel didn’t give Peggy what we all probably assumed would be her final send-off until the very real-world event that ultimately made her too popular a character to be allowed to rest in peace: the inclusion of a version of the character in the 2011film Captain America: The First Avenger. Though the movie itself didn’t reach theaters until July of that year, the major role to be played in it by Hayley Atwell’s Peggy was common knowledge months prior to that; and Marvel acknowledged the moment (or capitalized on it, if you prefer) in a couple of ways, both ahead of and concurrent with the film’s release. First, in March, the publisher brought out Captain America and the First Thirteen #1, featuring a new, previously untold WWII-era exploit of Peggy and Cap (along with a reprint of Tales of Suspense #77’s “If a Hostage Should Die!”). Then, in July, Marvel relaunched the ongoing Captain America series with a new first issue that both kicked off a storyline with a heavy flashback component (in which the young Peggy Carter played a major role), and also featured the funeral of the just-deceased Peggy in present-day Paris.
It’s easy to see how killing off the elderly Peggy Carter (who’d been established as suffering from Alzheimer’s a couple of years previously) while simultaneously spotlighting her vibrant, ass-kicking younger self woul have made sense to Marvel Comics in 2011. As appealing as Ms. Atwell’s performance as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s version of Peggy — reimagined as a British intelligence agent — in the first Captain America film was, there was little reason to think that there was any real future for the character, save perhaps as an opportunity for some scenes of what-might-have-been pathos as the still-youthful Steve Rogers, resurrected sixty-six years too late to make it to his first real date with Peggy, looked up his now-elderly flame.
But it soon became clear that Agent Peggy Carter — the young, ass-kicking iteration, that is — wasn’t going to let a little thing like being tied to the 1940s keep her from being a significant continuing presence in the MCU. First there was the “Marvel One-Shot” short film Agent Carter (packaged with the Iron Man 3 Blu-Ray disc), then a couple of guest appearances on the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. ABC television series, and 
ultimately her own titular series on ABC, which ran for two seasons in 2015-16 (and shoulda run for plenty more, if you ask me). Marvel Comics duly responded with a starring role for Peggy in the 2015 miniseries Operation S.I.N., as well as her own one-shot, Agent Carter: S.H.I.E.L.D. 50th Anniversary #1 (Nov., 2015).
Meanwhile, further cross-media creative pollination occurred courtesy of D3 Publisher’s 2013 game Marvel Puzzle Quest, which introduced a new version of Captain America that had Peggy Carter, rather than Steve Rogers, carrying the shield. This rather inspired concept was quickly ported 
into the Marvel Universe proper (i.e., the comics) via the 2018-19 series Exiles — and then birthed an MCU variant, “Captain Carter”, who has (to date) appeared in the first season of the Marvel Studios animated television series What If…? as well as the 2022 film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
With all that heat, it was probably inevitable that Marvel Comics would find a way to revive the original Peggy Carter in the good ol’ Earth-616 continuity. And so it came to pass that, in the excellent Captain America series produced by writer Ta-Nehesi Coates and various artists from 2018 to 2021, Peggy Carter would return… not only restored to her prime, but also sporting a new costumed identity, the Dryad — the leader of a previously unknown long-lived society of female heroes called the Daughters of Liberty. How could this have happened? “In universe”, it all goes back to the same reality-warping shenanigans of the sentient Cosmic Cube called Kubik that gave us “Hydra Cap” (and the Secret Empire crossover attending him) back in 2017… though, honestly, does it really matter? This is comics, folks… and for all the legitimate criticism regarding how death has lost its meaning in the superhero comics genre, it’s just a revolving door and all that jazz, in the end I’m truly not sure I’d have it any other way.
Panel from Captain America (2018) #19 (Apr., 2020). Text by Ta-Nehesi Coates; art credited to Jason Masters, Bob Quinn, and Lucas Werneck.
Instead, I’ll just say: Welcome back, OG Peggy Carter. I look forward to finding out what you’ve got in store for us next.
Attack of the 50 Year Old Comic Books 
“they’d already established that Cap’s Lost Love not only survived the war, but also recovered her memory (at least partially), and that she was eventually reunited with her family. ”
When was this? Surviving the war was clear from that one story but I don’t recall any further follow-ups.
LikeLike
I was referring to the panel in ToS #75 where Sharon silently recalls “Sis” telling her about “the boy she knew in World War II”. Lee later contradicted himself regarding Sis’ knowing that the boy’s name was Steve Rogers, but I see no reason to jettison the rest of it.
LikeLike
Got it. I’m more inclined to confine that to “ignore, it just doesn’t fit” but that’s not a hill I’d die on.
Given Englehart usually wrote capable women (Valkyrie, Wanda’s power upgrade in Avengers for instance) I’m surprised Sharon isn’t much more than “blonde love interest” during his time on the book. A shame as she’s one of the more interesting love interests from Marvel’s Silver Age.
Trivia note, Gerry Conway gave DC a second Agent Axis, acknowledged as a legacy villain, in WF 250.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I suppose we’d have to imagine that in some untold story Cap revealed his alter ego to Peggy or maybe Peggy was a member of the U.S. spy network that knew all about Steve Rogers and the project that made him Captain America, as per the movie. For Cap’s World War II exploits to make any sense, there had to be people in both the army and federal government who knew Steve Rogers was Captain America to enable him to go “absent without leave” from his cover identity as an army private to under assigned missions for as long as was necessary. It just strikes as too silly to imagine Cap & Bucky were sneaking off base or wherever regularly on their freetime to go out smashing spyrings and always getting back in time for roll call, or in the theater of war somehow disappearing as Steve Rogers and doing his thing as Captain America without getting in trouble for apparent desertion.
I’ll admit I’ve never read the Winter Soldier storyline, but that by itself would have negated nearly every previously published story featuring Cap & Bucky in World War II as it turned out Bucky hadn’t been a “kid” sidekick at all but a fully adult partner. So I’d guess Peggy’s WWII exploits as depicted by Lee, et al, have also been rendered obsolete and that she knew much more about that man under that star-spangled costume than Lee let on.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I was really baffled by one TOS arc which has Steve as an Army Ranger rather than just a GI because that’s a higher-profile, higher-responsibility specialty and hardly the right choice for Captain America’s Clark Kent.
It’s not just previously published stuff that clashes with the Winter Soldier retcon — later retcon stories still portray him as a capable kid, not a deadly adult. And I’ve never thought “We can’t have Captain America seen to do dirty jobs so we’ll have his plucky boy sidekick do them — that certainly won’t tarnish the brand!”
LikeLiked by 2 people
To my point of view, it’d more tarnish Captain America to pretend he was just some sort of colorfully costumed cheerleader during WWII and that as a matter of principle he refused to resort to deadly force in the heat of battle against armed enemy combatants actively attempting to kill him, Allied soldiers or civilians. If that was the case he wouldn’t have been the widely admired “living legend of World War II” but instead the widely derided laughingstock of World War II. I don’t know if that was really the editorial policy during the ’80s at some point, but it was just insanely stupid IMO.
I can see making a point that Cap would never engage in unjustified violence or engage in revenge killing against enemies who had genuinely surrendered (and weren’t just faking in order to catch their foes off guard, as I’ve read many Japanese soldiers did). And certainly in his post-war years, even with that decades-long “nap”, I can understand having him highly reluctant to ever kill again. Then again, if he had a choice between killing the Red Skull or letting the Skull kill more innocent people, and the story had Cap to take the position, “well, better those innocents die rather than I sink to the Skull’s level by killing him to protect them. They’ll have to sacrifice their lives so I can maintain my purity!” I for one would be thoroughly disgusted.
Of course, in reality, the Red Skull will never die for good as long Captain America remains popular enough to sell enough comics. Same with the Joker and Batman, Lex Luthor & Superman and Dr. Doom & the Fantastic Four, etc.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, it was Mark Gruenwald in the 1980s who had Cap declare he’d never killed anyone, despite multiple stories to the contrary (even Bucky’s shown killing people in a few retcon stories).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Of course it’s possible Stan didn’t intend “Sis” to be the woman from WW II, even though that’s the obvious conclusion. Reading the earlier story she seems more of a French resistance member than an American.
LikeLike
I suppose that’s “possible “. But if you read the three TOS stories from #75 through #77 back to back. I think that Lee’s intentions are very clear.
LikeLike
Agreed. Even given how much Stan’s intentions seemed to fluctuate at times, that’s what I’d assume.
LikeLike
Another interesting hole in Englehart’s plotting is, why does he need to find out Cap’s weakness from Peggy when he already has the Primal Drive he used on Cap toward the end of the story, a device that seems more than capable of killing him. Plus, you have to wonder at the logic in having Cap and Falcon attacked by the Lost Souls billboard, when they were already headed in that direction anyway. Beyond satisfying Marvel’s editorial policy of an action set piece every couple of pages, there’s absolutely no reason for it to happen.
The same is true for Sharon’s decision to leave Steve with no explanation. What kind of relationship do they have that Sharon can’t discuss what’s bothering her with Steve? Even if she doesn’t tell him the truth, she can at least break his heart to his face. I guess in modern day she have just texted him. How can she not know he won’t leave well enough alone and follow her? Just more meaningless shock and awe to get us to buy those comics back in the day, that would never fly in the real world.
All that being said, however, I’ve never read this book before and enjoyed finally getting the background on dear Peggy Carter. I really liked the depiction of her WWII self with the loose ponytail. It made for a unique look for Peggy that I don’t remember seeing comic artists use much. Of course, Stan’s heavy-handed use of the love-talk in the back issues you showed from ’66 are a great example of why his writing of romance comics back in the day is largely something best not talked about in polite company. Sheesh!
After all the re-configured background we got on Peggy from the MCU, I don’t think I realized how little I was familiar with her history in the comics. I’m happy to correct some of that today. Thanks, Alan.
LikeLiked by 1 person
As Faustus points out, he’d much sooner destroy Cap psychologically if he could — though as noted above, there’s no reason to assume Peggy’s got the answers he wants.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dr. Faustus has a passion to do things his way, even if they don’t make a lick of sense! The mad psychologist needs a psychologist.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I recall, based on his depiction of Cap in Captain Marvel #28, wanting to see Starlin draw Cap. At that time, I had not recognized Starlin’s work on this cover. Some of Starlin’s early covers are a bit too cluttered to apprciate his draftsmanship (see, e.g., Mrvel Triple Action #7)..
LikeLiked by 1 person
Starlin had gotten quite a bit of practice doing covers for Marvel’s new line of UK weekly reprint titles (google “Mighty World Of Marvel”)…have to admit I never recognised this cover was one of Starlin’s until a couple of years ago, and even then had to be told 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
Ah, this reminds me of the famous Alan Moore quote: ” It’s an imaginary story, aren’t they all?” Well, something like that, anyway. Great post as usual!
LikeLiked by 2 people
This was only the 2nd issues of Captain America I purchased for my growing comics collection 50 years ago, the previous one being #153, and next I got 165 & 166. Only with 169, when the Secret Empire storyline proper started, did I start getting the series regularly. Not that I didn’t like Captain America, but just one of those things with my early collecting and not always being able to find the comics I wanted or being able to afford getting all of them. Anyhow, like 153, provided more information as to Cap’s previous history of which I was still mostly ignorant, such as what exactly happened to Bucky. Once more, showing his credos as a Marvel fan, Englehart is once again clearing up some of the dangling issues of Captain America’s history, this time on the woman of Cap’s WWII past that Lee brought up and then left in an amnesiac haze but tantalizingly referenced in a thought-balloon of Agent 13. I think if Lee had continued writing Captain America for another 10 years or more, he likely would never have introduced Sharon’s family or that long-ago referenced sister. Thomas might have, but as it was Englehart got to it within his first year as a Cap-scribe.
Although I wouldn’t rate this as a significantly great comic, I still rather enjoyed it and it very much stuck in my memory decades after reading it. Reading your post, Alan, it struck me that although Peggy Carter was a rather minor supporting character in the comics, much like Gwen Stacy, the movies essentially brought her back to life as a much more prominent character, with both eventually being transformed into superheroes themselves in ways that no one reading ASM #121 or CA&TF #162 fifty years ago was likely to have imagined. It all also shows how much the culture of Marvel Comics has changed since the 1970s. But then, even in 1973, Marvel was much different than it had been just 10 or even 5 years earlier. The newer writers, while still heavily influenced by what Lee, Kirby, Ditko, Thomas, et al, had done previously, had their own points of view and ideas that would become ever more evident even within the next couple of years, so that they weren’t all just rehashing over and over again what had been done before.
Getting back to this issue, for someone who appears to have been physically inactive for a very long time, as well as psychologically ill, Peggy jumped into action very quickly, significantly helping Cap win the battle against the dastardly Dr. Faustus. All as if her body and mind went back nearly 30 years to when she was fighting Nazis in WWII, making use of whatever make-shift weapons she could find. Making it all the more plausible that a fully recovered Peggy, likely at least 48 years old, would become an active agent of SHIELD (and hey, if male veterans of WWII could become SHIELD agents in the 1960s and ’70s, why not a woman of the same vintage as well?).
Alas, I missed the Peggy Carter tv series — haven’t really watch much tv over the last 15 or so years, except when visiting with friends or family. But Hayley Atwell brought Peggy Carter to life very well on the big screen and is a very captivating and beautiful actress! And it was an immense improvement over the comics to not have her go into a near catatonic state as a consequence of a bomb blast and losing her good Captain, but instead moving onward and upwards with her life, although not forgetting her lost love.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Doesn’t the word MAD on the cover look like the original MAD magazine logo?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Now that you mention it, Fred… yeah, it does!
LikeLiked by 1 person
And I’d guess Starlin did that intentionally, assuming he also did the big lettering on the cover. Particularly in Captain Marvel, Starlin’s art included a lot of unique large lettering, mostly to add greater emphasis to dramatic action scenes. Unique enough to his art that I suspect it was more his doing than that of the regular letterers for those issues.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hmmm I hate to be cynical but I see enough plot holes here to drive a Mac Truck through. First off, this idea that Cap knows nothing about Sharon’s family or even what part of the country she’s from Huh? These people have been a couple for what? At least a year or so, Marvel time. Don’t they ever you know, talk to each other? How could you not know anything about your girlfriend’s life or family?
Secondly this idea of the Carters not telling Cap about Peggy and all. The reasoning for this,”that any mental shock, even a happy one might destroy her mind forever.” I mean come on, that wouldn’t fly on the soapiest of Soap Operas.
But the biggest angle I take umbrage with is this. Let’s assume Sharon is 25 when this adventure happened in “73. She was an agent of Shield and all, so she’s not a kid. And she’s pretty youthful. So I can’t imagine her being older than 25 or so. So she was born in 1948. Let’s assume Peggy was also 25. or perhaps even younger when she met Cap in 1945. So she was born in 1920 and is 28 years old than her sister. Quite a huge gap. Now let’s consider Mama Carter. Let’s say the nice lady had her first at 19, not uncommon early in the 20th century. So that means she was born in 1900. Making her 73 at the time of this adventure. Ok. However it also makes her 48 when they decided, “gee it’s been awhile, lets have another kid!” 48, especially in the era before all the pregnancy advances they’ve made since the 40’s is just I dunno stretching credulity?
Now sure you could tweak this a bit, make Sharon older maybe but that doesn’t fit either. Is she older than Cap’s biological age? He went to WWII barely 18 in my understanding. So he shouldn’t be much above 24 or 25 (Marvel Time) by the time of this adventure.
Anyway,, it was cool to see all this wrapped up.. I’d missed this in my early comic reading days, so thanks for bringing this forward!
LikeLiked by 2 people
All perfectly valid points, Joe!
LikeLike
Still, in real life there have been children of the same biological parents who were 20 to 30 years apart. More often with children of the same father, much less often with those of the same mother, but one of my stepsisters had children 24 years apart, the eldest of whom is a dwarf with abnormally short legs and arms. And while also men rarer than older men romancing much younger women, there are actually young men romancing older women, sometimes as much as 10 or 20 or more years older. So while the Peggy/Cap/Sharon triangle is rather unusual, IMO it’s not completely whackadoodle impossible too insane to accept. At least in the early ’70s it wasn’t completely unlikely for a young woman then to have a sister of the same parents who was already an adult during WWII (but much more likely for them to have the same father but different mothers). By the ’80s, since neither Cap nor Sharon aged at all, it was far more unlikely and pretty much impossible by the 1990s, or whenever Sharon was brought back to life, but only because Cap & Sharon were supposedly still only about 30 years old or so.
And Tony Stark was supposed to have been seriously injured in Vietnam in 1963 and still be only about 40 at most in the 1990s. Yeah, I know, they handwaved that away by making it into another war in a fictional country, and did the same for Reed & Ben’s WWII war exploits. Another oddity of the aging factor in the ’70s was having the original Whizzer show up in the Avengers looking very much an old man, but his contemporaries, Nick Fury, Dumm Dumm Dugan and Gabe Jones all looked nebulously middle-aged. Nick Fury they tried to handwave away with the Infinity Formula story, which didn’t work for me as that didn’t explain his war buddies still looking relatively young for WWII vets still active over 30 years later as SHIELD agents. Maybe Nick just got a big batch of the Infinity Formula and was sharing it with his best buddies. By now, they have to be feeding that to nearly every Marvel character who has been around 20 or more years.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I think the prevailing rationale, not formally stated anywhere, is that the surviving Howlers are LMDs and Nick just blocks out his awareness they’re not the real guys.
I’m more annoyed by Natasha (even though it’s been rationalized by her own immortality formula or something) because making her a WW II survivor rather than going sliding scale never made any sense. A lot of Marvel’s immortals seem to be WW II-linked characters whose survival has to be rationalized.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It was Chris Claremont who once admitted that he would never have tied the origins of so many of his characters to real-world historical events if he’d had any idea that half a century later those characters would still be in continuous publication. I’m sure there’s quite a few other Bronze Age comic book writers who would probably express similar sentiments.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I honestly don’t see any reason for giving Ben and Reed a role in the Sin-Cong War — it’s not as if their WW II experience was a significant part of their character the way it was for Fury or Vietnam for Frank Castle. In general, I dislike that retcon a lot (https://atomicjunkshop.com/one-two-three-four-we-dont-want-your-siancong-war/)
LikeLike
I agree that in 1973 it was still plausible — just barely — for Peggy and Sharon Carter to be sisters. When Gruenwald had Peggy show up in the early 1990s as a member of the Avengers support staff the character now had to be in her late 60s or early 70s, and was written as such, it still wasn’t an issue because Sharon had already been killed off over a decade earlier back in issue #237. It didn’t become a problem until Waid brought Sharon back in the mid-1990s and she was still in her late 20s or early 30s, meaning there was now a half century age difference between the sisters. So I had absolutely no problem with Brubaker retconning Peggy to be Sharon’s aunt. It would have been ridiculous to try to claim in the 21st Century that the two characters were still siblings.
LikeLiked by 3 people
By that point it was either have the Silver Age characters be 40 years older than they were when they were introduced or just put them in a timeless limbo divorced from real world events and create further distance between them and characters who were too distinctly tied to real world events of decades, even over a half-century past or otherwise just quietly drop those characters or kill them off and maybe, just maybe, have them somehow magically “reborn” as much younger and then become part of the timeless limbo brigade of characters.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Love your deep dives into these classic tales. Wish you have some more DC Comics content. I know their content of this era isn’t as revered as Marvel’s but these are still quite a few gems.
LikeLiked by 1 person
There are indeed, n., and while the proportion of Marvel to DC comics covered here going forward is likely to continue to favor the former for the next several years — an unavoidable consequence of my personal buying habits of five decades ago — there will be more DCs coming your way in the (relatively) near future, I promise. And if you’re a DC fan whose interests go back to the Silver Age, be sure and check out the first three years of this blog (2015-2017 in the Archives), where the content is almost *exclusively* DC-based.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I loved it, warts and all. Thanks for bringing the memories, Alan!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Since no one else has brought it up I will. The Carter sisters were a retcon introduced by Lee and Kirby when Cap was resurrected in the 1960’s. In the golden age Timely run Steve Rogers’ romantic interest had been Betty Ross, an FBI operative and Army W.A.A.C.
Later Bucky would be written out and Betty became Cap’s partner as Golden Girl:
https://www.comics.org/issue/6990/cover/4/
LikeLiked by 1 person
As modern Marvel continuity has Cap on ice starting in 1944, Captain America: Patriot hands the Betsy Ross relationship to Jeff Mace, formerly the Patriot. Though she doesn’t get into costume at all.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes. Marvel had to clean up a lot of loose ends when they established that Cap had been in suspended animation since WW2. Still they could have used Betty/Betsy Ross in place of the Peggy Carter character. Like Peggy she was a woman of action and adventure. Sharon Carter could have been Sharon Ross instead.
Perhaps they avoided the Ross name because they already had Betty Ross as a supporting character in their Hulk feature? (Just speculation and conjecture on my part. Do I get a No Prize?)😁
LikeLiked by 2 people