When Marvel revived Captain America in the 1950's, it sparked a bit of creativity by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby too. They thought they could do it better and they did when the concocted a Cold War warrior named Fighting America. With an origin which felt somewhat like a cross between Captain Marvel and Frankenstein, they have a physically superior hero with the mind of his brother fighting against the Commie threat. Whereas the original Captain America stories were perhaps horror, these are spectacles of satire.
Here's a recreation of the original Kirby-Simon page from the origin story in which the two brothers are bonded by science.
And here's the artwork put to service by Simon for his humor magazine Sick. Love it!
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Bought the Marvel collected edition a number of years back (as well as the later softcover Titan edition), but it failed to grab me. Perhaps one had to be there at the time. There's an interesting idea in there, that of the mind of one brother inhabiting the body of another, and nowadays the psychological ramifications of such a situation would be explored in more detail. I felt that when the strip veered into 'satire' it was less than successful and the stories less interesting. It was almost as if Simon & Kirby had become half-hearted in their approach, and it wasn't one of their better products I'd have to say. Nice art (in the main) though.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy those stories more than you do apparently. I didn't the sense that they were half-hearted but maybe just trying for a different tone. I'm noticing a Eisneresque quallity to Boy Commando stories I'm reading now and and FA seems to fall into that vein.
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