Captain America

Sterling all tried out a few super hero books in an effort to recapture a small portion of the market that they once had dominated. Significantly, all failed.


No single factor can definitively explain this shift in popular taste, but clearly times had changed. Against the background of the wasteful and inconclusive war in Korea, the vicious theater of McCarthyism, and the ugly response to the first stirrings of the civil rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama, the moral simplicity of the super hero fantasy looked na ve at best and reactionary at worst. Clearly, if super heroes were going to be revived successfully, they would have to be reinvented.




The process began at DC Comics, the only American comic book publisher to have a real stake in the genre at the time, with the return of the Flash in mid-1956. Writer Bob Kanigher revised the concept (which dated back to 1940), adding a self-reflexive element; his hero, Barry Allen, had a nostalgic fondness for old Flash comics. Kanigher thereby acknowledged and incorporated DCÕs earlier Flash stories while simultaneously placing them at an ironic distance-making his own tale seem more authentic and contemporary. The summer of 1959 saw a similar modernization of the Green Lantern. The origin story of the first Lantern, from almost twenty years prior, had been a messy Orientalist hodgepodge; the new version drew on science fiction tropes more suited to the age of the space race. In late 1959, these revitalized heroes joined forces with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman to form a team: the Justice League of America.


The strong sales of the JLA made other publishers sit up and take notice. Among them was Martin Goodman, the owner of the company not yet known as Marvel. Goodman had enjoyed plenty of success with super hero comics in the 1940s and owned the rights to such former hits as Captain America, the Human Torch-somewhat misnamed, as he was act

productive partnerships of the early American comic book industry. The two men co-created comics in every genre-crime, war, horror, science fiction, Western, humor, and romance-for numerous different publishers between 1940 and 1954. Noted characters and series included the Sandman and the Newsboy Legion for DC Comics, Young Romance for Crestwood, and Boys' Ranch for Harvey. Simon also wrote two autobiographies-The Comic Book Makers (1990), coauthored with his son, Jim Simon, and Joe Simon: My Life in Comics (2011)- essential reading for any historian of comic book history and culture.

Stan Lee (Author)
Stan Lee (1922- 2018) and artist Jack Kirby made comic book history in 1961 with The Fantastic Four #1. Lee oversaw the adventures of many super hero creations for over a decade before handing over the editorial reins at Marvel to others. For the remainder of his long life, he continued to serve as a creative figurehead at Marvel and an ambassador for the comics medium.

Jim Steranko (Author)
Jim Steranko rocked the comic book world in the late 1960s with a revolutionary approach to design and narrative, influenced by the contemporary worlds of both commercial and fine art. Ster­anko produced very little comics work after the 1970s, but his illus­trations would grace the covers of numerous science fiction and fantasy novels, as well as film posters and record album sleeves. He has also produced character designs for a number of filmmakers, including George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Cop­pola. His two- volume History of Comics was one of the first modern works of comics scholarship, and his film industry magazine Prevue enjoyed an impressive twenty- five- year run. Steranko was inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame in 2006.

John Romita, Sr. (Author)
John Romita Sr. was born in Brooklyn in 1930 and attended Manhattan's School of Industrial Art before entering the comic book industry in 1949. He drew many comics for Marvel (then known as Timely or Atlas) during the early 1950s before moving to DC Comics in 1958, where he established a reputation as a master of romance comics. In 1965 he returned to Marvel, inking Don Heck's pencils on an issue of the Avengers. After a short stint pen­ciling Daredevil, Romita Sr. was tapped by Stan Lee to take over The Amazing Spider-Man when original artist Steve Ditko left the book. Romita Sr. brought a new emotional warmth to the series, while his slick, clean craftsmanship took the title to even greater commercial heights. His renditions of the title character, as well as supporting cast members such as Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Wat­son, were considered definitive by a generation of fans. In the 1970s, Stan Lee appointed Romita Sr. as art director for the company; while in this position, he helped design numerous characters (in­cluding the Punisher, Wolverine, and Luke Cage). He was inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame in 2002.

Gene Luen Yang (Foreword By)
Gene Luen Yang is the author of the half-million-copy New York Times bestselling graphic novel and National Book Award finalist American Born Chinese, which features the character of Monkey King throughout.

Ben Saunders (Introducer)
Ben Saunders is a professor of English at the University of Ore­gon. He is the author of Desiring Donne: Poetry, Sexuality, Inter­pretation and Do the Gods Wear Capes?: Spirituality, Fantasy, and Superheroes, as well as numerous critical essays on subjects ranging from the writings of Shakespeare to the recordings of Little Richard. He has also curated several museum exhibitions of comics art, in­cluding the record-breaking multimedia touring show Marvel: Uni­verse of Super Heroes-a retrospective exploring the artistic and cultural impact of Marvel Comics from 1939 to the present.