Captain America: A Fanboy Forth of July Salute to Joe Simon and Jack Kirby
Superman and Batman were both born in the Great Depression and focused on subjects that were popular in that era like fighting crime — however Captain America came about as a direction reaction to World War II by writer Joe Simon and illustrator Jack Kirby. And what’s interesting is that the first issue actually hit the newsstands in December of 1940 which was a full year before the bombing of Pearl Harbor when America entered the war. So it’s fair to say that Captain America was actually a political cartoon above all else, in fact the character was created as a reaction to the opponents of the war who were quite organized at the time.
The first issue (shown above) was a phenomenal success, it almost sold about a million copies. Although not everybody took too kindly to the Captain and Marvel Comics actually got some hate mail. However despite that the book continued to do well and even inspired a fan club called the Sentinels of Liberty. Simon and Kirby worked on the first ten issues of the series, but then moved to DC Comics. Although it’s a tribute to their creativity that almost sixty years later that Captain America is still going strong.
