Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
(Part 2)
Once things had settled down a bit for the good Captain within the Marvel Universe, however -- all of the mandatory head-konkings with other heroes attended to, and the requisite Marvel "man-out-of-time" angst sub-plots moved in along with the sofa and the stereo -- he quickly established a nice little residence for himself within the pages of TALES OF SUSPENSE.
Given that his chief "decorator" was none other than the illustrious Jack "King" Kirby -- the original co-creator of Captain America (along with Joe Simon) back in the Golden Age of comics -- said residence turned out to be one of the ritzier "must-see" establishments in the Marvel neighborhood.
To say that the re-marriage of Jack Kirby with his single greatest character accomplishment (I don't want any arguments on this one, either) was a bountiful one, creatively, is rather on the order of confidently declaring that water is wet. While it may well be his 100-issue artistic tenure on THE FANTASTIC FOUR for which the man is, ultimately, best and most fondly remembered, in the hearts and minds of the fandom rank-and-file... the simple fact remains (and the accompanying covers prove) that the man was never more inspired than when detailing the continuing adventures of the Star-Spangled Sentinel.
Kirby and Co. wasted precious little time in establishing (or -- in some instances -- re-establishing) a rogues gallery for the Captain which rivaled that of any Marvel hero's this side of the Amazing Spider-Man for longevity and creative ooomph. One particularly well-received example of the day was the return of the Baron Helmut Zemo [see Avengers cover, above]: the Nazi villain responsible for the untimely death of Captain America's young WWII sidekick, "Bucky." The final, no-holds-barred showdown between these two -- at the end of which, the Baron had paid for his crimes in fullest and final measure -- remains one of the keystone issues of any Marvel title.
Another fascinating character was the androidtabula rasa known as the Super-Adaptoid: an artificial life-form bequeathed with the ability to absorb, internalize and manifest the powers and skills of any opponent in battle. The Captain found himself in the unenviable position, at one point in the initial narrative, of having to square off against a foeman with the combined might of the entire roster of Avengers -- not the sort of thing even the doughtiest of adventurers would want to make a steady diet of, surely.
However: of all the variegated and fascinating combatants against whom the Captain found himself repeatedly at odds... none were more terrible and implacable than his most recurrent bete noire: the Red Skull.
As the legend most often had it (and I qualify this only because the Skull's tellings and re-tellings of his own origins have differed on more than once occasion, over the years. Contemptible enough to be a Nazi, surely... but a fibber, as well...?), the Red Skull was a young non-entity hand-picked -- at random -- by none other than Adolf Hitler himself, in order to prove to his war council that he [Hitler] could pluck any groundling from the herd and mold him into a more credible and horrifying Nazi weapon than any of his own generals. This, he most assuredly did accomplish...
... and the end result of said training was a brilliant, sadistic and fanatical follower of the Nazi "Aryan" precepts; one whom -- in the end -- even his erstwhile creator, Hitler, feared and avoided.
"MORE COMIC BOOKS," YOU SAY...?
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