There really was only one hero who was fit to confront the "Red Menace" and that hero was Captain America. When World War II came to an end, so too did the heyday of the superhero which had dominated the comic book landscape for several years. As the 50's loomed, all but a few such as Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman over at DC survived. At Timely all of them faded away as the company which was quite adept at riding new trends abandoned them for monsters and war and romance and arid western locales. But then a not-new menace was raised up in the popular consciousness and the heroes who had clashed with Hitler and Tojo were brought back to battle the "Red Menace" of the U.S.S.R. And at the forefront of that was Cap and Bucky too. It was a delightful revival but a brief one as artist John Romita among others tried to draw the heroes with a touch more realism than had been the norm in the Golden Age. The Atomic Age Cap was still Steve Rogers but he was now a teacher and the never-aging Bucky was his student or ward or something rather vague. They fought the Red Skull, now a stunningly well-named baddie and others from behind the Iron Curtain. All that is captured in Decades - Marvel In The '50s.
When I first learned of this volume, I was immediately disappointed because to my fanboy heart Marvel had missed a bet by not including the story of this 50's Cap and Bucky which was revealed by Steve Englehart and Sal Buscema in the pages of Captain America in the 70's. We learned this wasn't the "real" Cap, and that changed the history of the character for all time. We get a newish story by Howie Chaykin but I'm not that interested in that. Sigh...what might've been. Here are the covers of the comics which hosted the Captain America revial.
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