Captain America

Captain America #180 (December, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Last month we took a look at Captain America #179, in which Steve Rogers’ former Avengers teammate Hawkeye — after spending most of the issue disguised as the presumably villainous Golden Archer — managed to convince him that just because he no longer wanted to wear the colors and bear the name of his country, that was no reason he couldn’t still live the life of a costumed hero.  Via the final page’s “next issue” blurb, we even got the name of Steve’s new secret identity-to-be: Nomad!

Now, thanks to issue #180’s cover (pencilled by Gil Kane, and inked by Mike Esposito and/or Frank Giacoia), we get our first glimpse of Nomad in costume — albeit in the form of a quasi-symbolic image that allows the artists to provide a shot of Steve in his more familiar red-white-and-blue togs as well.  Read More

Giant-Size Avengers #2 (November, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

For the most part, the comics that came out as part of Marvel’s “Giant-Size” line in 1974 and 1975 featured stories that, while generally understood to be in continuity with those in the regular-size titles, didn’t directly lead into and/or out of those books.  Such had been the case with Giant-Size Avengers #1 (Aug., 1974), a standalone that was written by Marvel’s editor-in-chief (and former Avengers scribe) Roy Thomas, rather than by the man who’d been authoring the monthly adventures of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes since August, 1972, Steve Englehart.  But with the second issue of the Avengers’ new quarterly vehicle, Englehart was given the reins — and he decided to treat the book as an extra, if plus-sized, issue of the monthly title.

Of course, that didn’t mean that the contents of the “Giant-Size” version of the series shouldn’t be special.  And with Giant-Size Avengers #2, Englehart and his artistic collaborators definitely delivered on that idea, giving readers a twenty-nine page epic that stands to this day as one of the all-time Avengers classics — perhaps even, as writer Kurt Busiek (author of more than a few great Avengers yarns of his own) said in 2014, “the uncontested, anyone-who-says-otherwise-is-sadly-mistaken best single issue of AVENGERS”.  Read More

Captain America #179 (November, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Cover art by John Romita.

Cover art by Ron Wilson, Frank Giacoia, and John Romita (?).

At the conclusion of the last issue of Captain America we looked at on this blog, the classic #176, our star-spangled hero, reeling from the revelations about the United States government that had emerged in the wake of the Watergate scandal downfall of the Secret Empire, decided to renounce his costumed identity — “forever!”  As we discussed briefly in the closing paragraphs of our post about that comic, Steve Rogers’ decision held firm throughout the next two issues, as his former partner, Sam Wilson (aka the Falcon), was forced to go up alone against Lucifer — a relatively obscure antagonist of the X-Men who’d upped his game by splitting himself in two.  The Falcon ultimately triumphed over the villain(s), though not without a sudden, spur-of-the-last-moment intervention from Steve, who went into action wearing a ski-mask and slinging a garbage-can lid in lieu of a shield — an action that Sam, having been earlier rebuffed by Steve when he asked him to reconsider his decision to give up being Captain America, wasn’t thrilled about…  Read More

Avengers #127 (September, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Following their close-shave victory over the mad Titan Thanos in Avengers #125 and Captain Marvel #33, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes barely got a breather before they were beset by the newly teamed super-villains Klaw and Solarr in Avengers #126.  This was a one-off story, and frankly not one of the Assemblers’ most memorable adventures — although it did mark a couple of significant changes in the team’s active roster worth noting before we proceed to the main topic of today’s post.

The most obvious and expected one of these was the departure of Captain America, who, after all, had just renounced his costumed identity over in issue #176 of his own series — a series which, like Avengers, was written by Steve Englehart.  But the leave-taking of the Black Panther was arguably just as necessary, and probably overdue.  Ever since the second installment of T’Challa’s new solo feature, published in Jungle Action #6 almost a year earlier, writer Don McGregor and his artistic collaborators (primarily Rich Buckler, Gil Kane, and Billy Graham) had been chronicling a dense, ambitious, multi-part epic, “Panther’s Rage”, which took place entirely within the hero’s African kingdom of Wakanda.  After a time, it simply stretched reader credulity to the breaking point to have the Panther continue to appear every month with the New York-based Avengers — especially since it seemed unlikely that McGregor’s storyline was going to be wrapping up any time soon.  (For the record, the final full chapter of the epic would see print just over a year later, in Jungle Action #17, with an “Epilogue” following two months later in #18; alas, your humble blogger didn’t have the good sense to pick up this run of comics back in the day, so you won’t be reading too much more about “Panther’s Rage” on this blog, regretfully.)  Read More

Captain America #176 (August, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In his 2016 introduction to Marvel Masterworks — Captain America, Vol. 9, Steve Englehart refers to the cover John Romita produced for the subject of today’s post as “iconic”.  That’s become a rather overused word in today’s culture, I grant you; all the same, I find it hard to disagree with him.  For this grizzled old fan, it’s virtually impossible to think about this particular era of Captain America comics without the image shown above leaping immediately to mind — and that’s close enough to iconic for the word to fit, at least in my book.  Read More

Avengers #125 (July, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

I suppose that Ron Wilson and John Romita’s cover for this issue of Avengers might be taken as misleading by some readers, since, as we’ll soon see, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes never directly confront Thanos himself anywhere within its pages (indeed, the Mad Titan only puts in a personal appearance on a couple of them).  I’m pretty sure, however, that that fact didn’t bother my sixteen-year-old self very much (if at all) when I first read this comic back in April, 1974; after all, the story is unquestionably a part of the “Thanos War” saga that had been being told by artist-writer Jim Starlin and others for the last year and a half, mostly (though not entirely) in the pages of Captain Marvel.  If you took Avengers #125’s cover as “symbolic” of our heroes’ struggle against that epic’s Big Bad, as I was happy to do, you’d have to admit it was pretty much on the money.  Read More

Captain America #174 (June, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

When we last saw Captain America and the Falcon, near the end of last month’s post about CA #173, our heroes had seemingly been successful in their subterfuge against the sinister Secret Empire — the clandestine organization behind both Cap’s recent woes (which include first having his reputation smeared by an ad campaign, then being framed for murder) and the mysterious disappearance of multiple mutants, including several members of Cap and Falc’s newfound allies, the X-Men.  We rejoin them here on page one of issue #174, as they make their descent into the proverbial belly of the beast…  Read More

Captain America #173 (May, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In February, 1974, the X-Men hadn’t appeared in a new story in their own title in over four years — but while gone, they were hardly forgotten.  (Actually, they weren’t even gone, since their book had been resurrected as a reprint title by Marvel’s then-publisher, Martin Goodman, eight months after he’d cancelled the series with issue #66.  But you know what I mean.)  That’s because a number of people working for Marvel just plain liked the characters, regardless of their allegedly limited commercial viability; and, as writer Steve Englehart puts it in his 2009 preface to Marvel Masterworks — The X-Men, Vol. 8, “the Marvel Universe was a coherent entity, so the X-Men continued to exist in it even if they had no comic to call their own.”  Read More

Captain America #172 (April, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

The ostensible main topic of today’s post, Captain America #172, is the first issue of the series in which writer Steve Englehart and artist Sal Buscema’s “Secret Empire” saga has the center stage completely to itself.  But the storyline may be said to have properly started three issues before this, in #169; and its earliest seeds show up a full six issues before that, in #163.  Read More