Captain America Book Cover Analysis

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For a character first created as a propaganda piece for the second World War, the question of Steve Rogers’ place in the 21st century is a common one. Seen on surface value as a conservative quintessential American male stuck in the grasps of old-fashioned sentimentality, Captain America is seemingly a symbol gone past it’s use by date in a time where the trend for cynical superheroes and moral ambiguity in our protagonists is at an all time high. In actual fact, however, the man who grew up in a 1940’s queer Brooklyn neighbourhood could have just as much relevance and importance now to when he did back when creator Jack Kirby first put pen to paper.

The first cover and issue (published on March 10th 1941, eight months before America officially joined the war effort) of Captain America featured him punching Adolf Hilter square in the jaw. Created by two jewish men, drawn by Jack Kirby and edited by Joe Simon, the cover was a call out to America for refusing to join the fight. For the majority of the early comics, showing Steve in acts of violence against various Nazi figures and Hitler himself was a centerpiece of the comics and of the character. In an interview with Leonard Pitts Jr. published in Conversations With The Comic Book Creators, Jack Kirby states “Captain America was myself. Captain America was my own anger coming to the surface.”[1] Evidently, the vexation in which the comic embodied didn’t just relate to the authors. With Captain America #1 sold
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Two issues were published in 1949 and 1950 in a series titled Captain America's Weird Tales as an attempt to revamp the war hero’s image. In an era of comics neck deep in espionage and western adventures, the star spangled soldier was left to dust in a country that no longer needed him. These issues would be the last appearances of Steve for four

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