Jenny the ZRC Art and Technical Director has a way of finding internet oddities, and so she pointed me to this website hosting one very old (and very, very Stupid) comic from Captain America’s days as a World War II propagandist/Timely Comics superhero.

In this story, ‘The Case of the Hollow Men’, Cap finds himself guarding lend-lease shipments at the docks in his civilian persona only for said docks to be approached by a group of Zombie Americans, who he then orders US soldiers to open fire upon:

(Captain America: War Criminal?)

This massacre doesn’t work as well as he’d expected, so Captain America puts on his superhero tights and decides to use his fists to vent his frustration at being, well, wholly inadequate either as a soldier or as a superhero:

(Captain America: Super-sadist)

Unfortunately, these depraved actions lead to a open hostilities with the Zombie Community, who I think we can all agree had legitimate grievances with the costumed vigilante wearing America’s colors. These particular Zombies were themselves completely blameless victims, being controlled by a sinister technologically powered Necromancer/goofball in a cloak who styled himself as ‘The Lord of Death’:

When his fists once again prove inadequate, Captain America resorts to the reckless use of high explosives in the heart of civilian territory, and his carelessness leads to the massive destruction of public property and loss of life and Unlife alike:

(Oh the humanity…)

After this, no doubt in a rush to avoid blame for the catastrophe, Captain America and Bucky finally decide to track down the necromancer responsible, who naturally turns out to be working for Hitler. Directly.

(Man, Hitler was a busy guy in World War II.)

Not to be overly pedantic here, but this particular comic was found in a Timely Comics anthology called ‘All Winners Comics #1″ which was apparently published in Summer 1941, months before the United States would enter World War II in the wake of Pearl Harbor.

So Captain America is about as careful with his international relations as he is about throwing bombs around on bridges. Nice job respecting the chain of command, civilian governance and the Constitution there, Cap. Any other admittedly evil world leaders you’d like to poke with a stick? No need to clear it with the State Department or the President.

In the course of one short comic we are thus exposed to the disturbing truths of Captain America’s seedy origin. Rather than being the exemplar of American righteousness he is a symbol of our reckless self-regard and callous violence, mowing down civilians because of the color of their skin, picking fights he can’t win and then resolving conflict with extreme and gratuitous violence, only pausing to try and start yet war unilaterally in an attempt to preempt our democratically-elected and civilian led government in favor of some sort of crude, lawless military dictatorship. With snazzy uniforms.

Did Captain America really hate Hitler, or simply envy him for getting an early start on the brutal abuse of power? This really puts their rivalry in an all-new light, doesn’t it?

Tags: Comics, Social Justice

This entry was posted by John Sears on Wednesday, February 9th, 2011 at 11:17 am and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.