Captain America

Marvel Treasury Special Featuring Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles #1 (1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

If you weren’t around in 1976 (or were, but were too young then to remember much now), it might be hard to appreciate just how big a deal the United States Bicentennial was — not just in the key anniversary month of July, but also for a goodly number of months leading up to it.  But please, take an old geezer’s word for it; it really was everywhere in American popular culture for what seemed like quite a long while — and the nation’s comics publishers definitely did their share of celebratory flag-waving.  Read More

Invaders #8 (September, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As longtime readers of this blog well know — actually, as anyone who just started reading it three posts back has likely already sussed out — your humble blogger was very partial to superhero team books back in the day.  In the particular period we’re currently dealing with (i.e., in and around 1976), either Marvel or DC Comics could drop a new team title (or revive an old one) and it was all but a sure thing that I’d sample at least one issue.  There were a couple of exceptions, both on the DC side (the new Freedom Fighters and the revived Teen Titans, for the record); but, generally speaking, you could throw a bunch of costumed characters together, slap a group name on them, and my younger self would feel compelled to take a look — even in cases where the team seemed to have no real reason to exist (yeah, I’m looking at you, Champions).  Read More

Avengers #150 (August, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Welcome to the third of our posts commemorating May, 1976 as “Marvel Milestone Month“.  Following our looks at Captain America #200 and Thor #250, this time around we’re taking on the “Spectacular 150th Anniversary Special” issue of Avengers… although we’ll actually be spending more time on the following month’s issue, #151, since the “official” milestone issue turned out to be a disappointing misfire… unless, of course, you really were jonesing back then for an incomplete reprint of Avengers #16 (May, 1965) fronted by a mere six pages of new material from writer Steve Englehart and artist George Pérez.  Read More

Captain America #200 (August, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Welcome, all, to the first of four blog posts in which we’ll be commemorating May, 1976 as “Marvel Milestone Month” — a month in which, in a manner both unprecedented and (to the best of my knowledge), never repeated, four major Marvel Comics titles all celebrated a significant numerical milestone (“significant” being defined for our purposes as “a multiple of 50”) within a couple of weeks of each other.  Read More

Avengers #148 (June, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Last month we took a look at Avengers #147, the cover of which we noted found its penciller, Rich Buckler, operating in “full Kirby mode”.  By contrast, the cover of today’s fifty-year-old comic happens to have been pencilled by Jack Kirby himself… and may I just say, ain’t nothin’ like the real King, baby.  (For the record, Mike Esposito inked this piece.)  Read More

Avengers #147 (May, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Cover to Avengers #145 (Mar., 1976). Art by Gil Kane and Dan Adkins.

Cover to Avengers #146 (Apr., 1976). Art by Gil Kane and Al Milgrom.

Back in November, we looked at Avengers #144, featuring the latest (as of Nov., 1975) installment in writer Steve Englehart and artist George Pérez’s “Serpent Crown Saga”.  As readers of that post will recall, despite the comic’s final-page “Next” blurb’s promise that the following month’s issue would present the next chapter in the still-ongoing storyline, when Avengers #145 arrived on stands in December its pages were instead filled by the first half of a completely unrelated, out-of-sequence story scripted by Tony Isabella and drawn by Don Heck.  That issue, together with the fill-in yarn’s second part in the next month’s Avengers #146, pushed the continuation of Englehart and Pérez’s epic out to February, 1976.

According to later reports, both halves of this story had originally been intended for publication in Giant-Size Avengers #5 — a plan that was up-ended by Marvel Comics’ mid-1975 decision to phase out their whole line of mostly-new-material-filled giant-sized comics.  (While GSA #5 was indeed published in September, it was an all-reprint book.)  Given that 30-plus pages of Isabella-Heck material had already been both produced and paid for, it’s certainly understandable that Marvel would want to get it into print sooner or later.  But smack-dab in the middle of a complex, multi-issue story arc?  That hardly seems like an optimal solution. Read More

Captain America #197 (May, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Last October, at the end of our post concerning Captain America #193 (Jan., 1976) — a comic which, you’ll remember, featured the return of artist/writer/editor Jack “King” Kirby to the star-spangled hero he’d co-created with Joe Simon back in 1940 — your humble blogger invited you all to return in May, 2026 to see how the eight-issue, Bicentennial-themed storyline that had kicked off therein would turn out.  Four months later, however, I’ve come to the realization that trying to cover seven chapters’ worth of Kirby’s epic in a single go would likely result in a post of such length as to try the patience of even the most indulgent followers of this blog — and so, I’ve decided to break up the remainder of our “Madbomb” coverage into two posts, the first of which is presented here.  (Of course, given that this piece is still aiming to hit the high points of four individual comics, it’s still likely to be a pretty long read… though not quite as much of an imposition on your time as our originally planned Captain America #200 mega-post would have been, so at least there’s that.)  Read More

Avengers #144 (February, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As regular readers of this blog may have noticed, I tend not to talk very much about the covers of the half-century-old comics we discuss here; unless they’re really strikingly good, my tendency is simply to note who drew them — to the extent that that’s known, anyway — and then move on.  (And just this week, in writing about Defenders #32, I forgot to do even that much; my thanks to reader Ben Herman for stepping into the breach.)  But I’m going to make an exception this time, simply to express my disappointment with this particular job by Gil Kane and Frank Giacoia.  While there are aspects of the composition that work well, the central figure of Hellcat — a significant new character (OK, technically a new combination of two pre-existing characters) whom readers are seeing here for the very first time — is almost painfully awkward, at least to my eyes.  Kane was a great talent, but among the very many (probably too many) covers he cranked out for Marvel in the 1970s, it stands to reason that there’d be at least a few clunkers; and for me, this is one of them.  (Naturally, your mileage may vary.)  Read More

Avengers #143 (January, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

The cover of this issue, pencilled by Gil Kane and inked by Frank Giacoia (and maybe Mike Esposito), might fairly be called a bit misleading.  Sure, the Avengers fight a big scaly monster inside, but not these Avengers — Captain America, Iron Man, the Beast, the Vision, and the Scarlet Witch — who, setting aside the whole monster business, show up for only two of the story’s nineteen pages, besides.  On the other hand, the promises made by the cover’s blurbs are right on the money: these five Avengers do indeed “break loose” from the confinement we saw them trapped in back in Avengers #142; plus, this issue also features “the final battle against the power of Kang!” — or, at least, a final battle, since, then as now, nothing lasts forever in Marvel superhero comics.  Read More

Captain America #193 (January, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In July, 1975, Marvel Comics readers who turned to the Bullpen Bulletins page running in that month’s books were greeted by the following banner headline:

Assuming you weren’t a Marvelite of especially recent vintage, “‘Nuff said!” was pretty much on the money, at least in regards to the identity of “The King”.  In the context of Marvel comics — and maybe of American comics, period — there was only one person that phrase could possibly be referring to.  Still, if any confirmation was needed, it was immediately forthcoming via the latest edition of publisher Stan Lee’s monthly column:  Read More