Captain America Chosen

Posted in Uncategorized by admin on June 5, 2010

Captain America Chosen
Who was the first villain created for Captain America? Why did the creators choose him to be the villan?

Unless you count the spy who shot the Professor who gave Steve Rogers the treatment which turned him into Captain America, or the other nameless spies who appear in the eight page origin story, Captain America faced a spy who pretended to have a psychic mute partner as part of an entertainment act, but it turned out Sando and Omar were Nazi agents attempting undermine American war morale, and they appeared in a story titled "Case Number Two." Assuming the Captain America origin qualified as Case Number Two, and Captain America's battle with Herr Kameleon was Case Number Three, the Red Skull would be the fourth villain Captain America faced. Since nameless spies, spies with a gimmick, and even a master of disguise are rather pedestrian menaces, I would say that the Red Skull is the first significant villain that was created to face Captain America. Certainly the Red Skull was the most memorable menace Captain America fought, and one of the very few villains who fought Captain America who appeared in more than one story. Simon and Kirby, who created Captain America and produced the first ten issues of his book, must have realised they had something special with the Red Skull because they brought him back just a few months after his "death" in the first issue of Captain America. Simon and Kirby also used the Red Skull as the main menace in the first issue of "Young Allies" (a team of boys which included Bucky and Toro among the membership). After Simon and Kirby left, other writers and artist also made use of the Red Skull.

The Red Skull could have easily passed for something that had stepped out of an editorial cartoon shortly before America finally joined World War II (Captain America first appeared nearly a year before Pearl Harbor was bombed). With his skull mask and the swastika on his fatigues, the Skull was visual shorthand for German Republic and its National Socialist leaders, and graphically showed Nazi philosopy as a death threat for the rest of the world. Arguably, the Red Skull may be the greatest villain of the golden age of comics, certainly he's still the villain most closely associated with Captain America.