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The Captain America Conundrum: Issues of Patriotism, Race, and Gender in Captain America Comic Books, 1941-2001 by Richard A. Hall A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Auburn, Alabama August 6, 2011 Keywords: Captain America, comic books, patriotism, popular culture Copyright 2011 by Richard A. Hall Approved by Larry Gerber, Chair, Professor Emeritus of History Ruth Crocker, Professor of History David Carter, Associate Professor of History Abstract “The Captain America Conundrum: Issues of Patriotism, Race, and Gender in Captain America Comic Books, 1941-2001” represents a comprehensive examination of Captain America comic books as a primary source for the study of United States history from just prior to World War II to the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Just as Time magazine or the New York Times newspaper could be used as primary sources to examine American society, mores, and culture, it is the argument of this study that comic books – heretofore considered primarily children’s literature – can also be used in this regard. Through the pages of this essentially monthly publication, accepted norms of contemporary American society can be seen, as well as (post-1960) attempts on the part of the writers and artists to influence those norms. Within the zeitgeist of American culture, the character of Captain America has been considered a representation of strong government and ardent conservatism. The reality, however, is that the character has become increasingly just left-of-center politically, promoting strong nationalism and American leadership alongside ideas of racial and gender equality. While the 1940s and ’50s issues portrayed racial and, occasionally, gender stereotypes, as American society became more open to a more egalitarian society, those mores are portrayed – and, many would argue, pushed – in the pages of Captain America. By the end of the 1960s, the comic presented the first ii African-American superhero, The Falcon, and a strong female secret-agent character, Sharon Carter. Aside from the actual text and images within the pages of Captain America, advertisements and printed letters to the editors provide additional windows into these periods of American history. Ads promoting traditional ideas of gender roles and gender image frequent the books throughout the decades; and, beginning in the 1960s, letters from fans of the comic book provide evidence that these comic books were not simply read by children, but high school and college students, professors, lawyers, soldiers, and housewives as well. As American society swung from left to right over the decades, these changes in political climate are repeatedly addressed in the pages of this superhero comic book. After a brief overview of the more important historiography of comic book / superhero studies, the remaining chapters proceed to examine the comic book decade-by- decade. From the hero’s origins just prior to American involvement in World War II, through its brief return during the height of the McCarthy era as “Captain America: Commie Smasher,” to its eventual return in the post-Kennedy 1960s as a “man-out-of- time,” showing how American society had changed since the hero’s inception, the pages of the various titles of the monthly Captain America comic book show America during these decades as they are popularly perceived. From the late ’60s through the remainder of the century, the comic book portrays situations such as: the explosion of representation of African-Americans and the idea of the “New Woman” in the 1970s; ideas for and against the so-called Age of Reagan in the 1980s; the questionable status of the U.S. in a post-Cold War world in the 1990s; and the immediate response to the terrorist attacks of iii 9/11. American history unfolds in the pages of Captain America, reflecting society – as the best of popular culture does – while at the same time attempting to influence the thinking of its readers. iv Acknowledgments There are numerous individuals without which this dissertation could not have come about. First, I am grateful to my committee members, Dr. Larry Gerber, Dr. Ruth Crocker, and Dr. David Carter, for allowing me the opportunity to stretch into areas of historical study that have, for the most part, gone heretofore ignored. Scholarship concerning comic books is an extremely new field, much of it only published within the last ten years. My committee members have been extremely gracious in their advice and assistance in keeping my research on a professional track, and very open-minded toward what has traditionally been considered by scholars as “low-brow” culture. Aside from my committee members, other scholars in the field have been very helpful. Dr. Jason Dittmer of University College London, a geographer who has written perhaps more than any other scholar on Captain America, has been of monumental assistance in maintaining my focus and proper perspective and analysis of the textual material. Likewise, Rob Weiner, history librarian at Texas Tech University and editor of a recent collection of scholarly essays on Captain America has been of considerable assistance in finding copies of the older issues of the comic book. Trina Robbins and Jennifer Stuller, both historians of women’s issues in superhero comic books, were both kind enough to allow me to pick their brains on what I was doing and provide their own input into the ideas presented in this work. v I am also grateful to several members of the Captain America creative teams from over the decades. Mark Waid, noted comic book author and writer of Captain America for two runs in the 1990s has been of invaluable assistance to me both in his personal insights on the character and in putting me in contact with other Cap writers. Other writers that have been kind enough to allow me to interview them on their respective runs on the comic book include Steve Englehart (from the early 1970s), J.M. DeMatteis (from the first half of the 1980s), Marv Wolfman (from the late 1970s), and Dan Jurgens (from the late-1990s and leading up to 9/11). These gentlemen have been such a valuable resource of information on their respective runs on the comic book and their respective decades of creative input into the character. Lastly, I am thankful to my wife and fellow-grad student, Maria Reyes-Hall. Aside from her undaunted patience over the last four years, she has also provided a wonderful soundboard for ideas, and excellent critic on what did and did not belong in the final drafts of each chapter as I submitted them. Her own knowledge of politics and political theory has been a valuable resource in putting together many of the ideas on patriotism presented in the following chapters. I hope that I have been as helpful to her research and studies as she has been to mine. vi Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................. ii Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................ v Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Approaches to the Hero: The Relevance of Captain America ...................... 14 Chapter 2: Birth of the Super Hero and the Super Power: The 1940s and ’50s ............ 30 Chapter 3: The Hero Reborn: Captain America in the 1960s ......................................... 90 Chapter 4: The Relevancy Revolution: Captain America in the 1970s ........................ 137 Chapter 5: Captain America in the Age of Reagan: The 1980s .................................... 201 Chapter 6: Captain America from Cold War to 9/11: 1990-2001 ................................ 281 Conclusion: The Post-9/11 Captain America ............................................................... 326 Bibliography ................................................................................................................ 341 vii INTRODUCTION Comic books from their inception at the height of the Great Depression were a derided medium. Beginning with the first “comic book,” Famous Funnies #1 (1933), they existed primarily as a way for publishers to re-release previous newspaper comic strips, making comic books, in essence, the VHS/DVD of their day. Even when comic book publishers began to turn out original material in the late-1930s, the medium received little respect. While it was considered “glamorous” to be the writer or artist of a newspaper strip, writing and drawing comic books was considered “sub-par,” much the way movies today that are distributed “straight-to-video” are considered of low quality. That slowly began to change with the publication in 1938 of Action Comics #1, which featured the world’s first “superhero,” Superman.1 The booming success of Superman comic books began what historians refer to as the “Golden Age” and led to a flurry of similarly costumed heroes in the years immediately following. The Golden Age lasted until, roughly, 1955.2 Though many of those pre-World War II heroes have long since vanished in American culture, a handful have survived and thrived into the 21st century. Superman, The Batman (1939), Captain 1 Bradford W. Wright, Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001; Second Edition, 2003), 7; Shirrel Rhoades, A Complete History of American Comic Books (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), 9-10; Ron Goulart, Ron Goulart’s Great History of Comic Books, (Chicago: Contemporary Books, Inc., 1986), 7-9; Les Daniels, Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1991), 16-17; Comic Book Confidential Ron Mann, Dir., (Home Vision Entertainment, DVD, 1989); Comic Book Superheroes Unmasked (The History Channel, A&E Television Networks, DVD, 2003). These are, in this author’s opinion, the very best overall histories of the comic book industry. 2 Rhoades, A Complete History of American Comic Books, 6. 1 America (1940), and Wonder Woman (1941) have become mainstays in American popular culture. By 1943, these heroes, along with their contemporaries, were selling a combined total of 25 million copies a month, producing an annual profit of approximately thirty million dollars.3 Mention these characters to most Americans today, even those who have never read a comic book, and they can recount the hero and know his/her origin and even his/her more popular antagonists. Of these four heroes, most have remained fairly loyal to their pre-war origins, simply being “updated” every few years to stay in pace with changing American culture. The exception to that rule is Captain America, whose readers have seen the character witness first-hand the changes of our times, a living “anachronism” of the late-Depression era. In 1940, writer Joe Simon and artist Jack Kirby, working for publisher Timely Comics (later to be known as Marvel Comics), created the hero Captain America. Arriving on newsstands on December 20, 1940, just under a year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that would launch America into World War II, Captain America Comics #1 – the first comic to be named after its headlining hero – sold more than one million copies, competing on an equal level with its contemporary superhero comics.4 The front cover of the issue made its anti-Nazi message plain: the star-spangled hero is shown delivering a right-cross to German Chancellor Adolf Hitler.5 This reflected the serious concerns of most comic book creators, as the medium was dominated almost 3 Wright, Comic Book Nation, 31. 4 A note on the use of Primary Sources: Comic book “publication dates” are problematic. A comic book with a publication date of “November, 1964” would have actually hit newsstands around August of that year. The date shown as the publication date is actually the date that newsstand operators were advised to remove the magazine from their shelves. The process of writing and publishing comics – prior to the 1990s – was rather lengthy, having been drawn, inked, and edited several months earlier, with the story often conceived long before that. Found in Marvel Chronicle, page 9. 5 Mark Evanier, Kirby: King of Comics, (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2008), 50. This is an excellent biography of comic book legend Jack Kirby by a man who worked for, and learned the industry, from Kirby himself, basing his work on first-hand interviews with Kirby. 2 entirely by Jewish-Americans, who already understood the ramifications of a Nazi world while the rest of America sought the security of isolationism. [Image Intro-1: Captain America Comics #1 (March, 1941); Jack Kirby, Artist] 3