Louis Silberkleit ran a pulp magazine company in the 1930s. Timely publisher Martin Goodman got his start in the pulp business working with Silberkleit, and Goodman and Silberkleit maintained a friendly relationship even after Goodman left to start his own pulp magazine company.
When Joe Simon and Jack Kirby brought Captain America to Martin Goodman, they knew they had something special, so they asked Goodman for a cut of the profits of the comic, and Goodman agreed. There was so much buzz about the character that they skipped the normal step of introducing the character in an anthology and gave him his own title right off the bat.
However, when the folks at MLJ heard the buzz about Captain America, and saw the character, they took issue with the appearance of the character. Captain America carried a triangular shield that looked quite similar to the Shield’s chest plate. Since they were friendly, Silberkleit did not pursue legal action but rather told Goodman that MLJ objected to the design and wanted Timely to change Captain America’s shield. Goodman quickly agreed, and Simon and Kirby quickly designed a new round shield that debuted in the second issue of the series.
The round shield went on to become one of the most notable aspects of the Captain America series, so MLJ ended up doing Timely a favor in asking it to change the shield!
MLJ, by the way, while not having great success with superheroes, debuted a young teenager as a backup humor story in the Shield’s series Pep Comics, Archie Andrews. Archie soon bumped the Shield from the top spot in Pep Comics, and within a year’s time, the entire company was renamed Archie Comics.
WHILE CAPTAIN AMERICA was a gigantic smash as soon as his first issue was released, not everyone in the United States was a fan of the comic. Remember, the first issue was released a full year before the United States went to war with Nazi Germany, and while most Americans were anti-Nazi, there were still a number of pro-Nazi supporters in the country, and they were not happy with a comic book created by two Jewish men whose first two issues had the title character punching out Adolf Hitler.
Joe Simon recalls one specific group that was irate over Captain America, the German American Bund. This was a pro-Nazi group that was heavily financed and used its riches to espouse its support of the Third Reich. It organized pseudomilitary training camps in Long Island and held huge rallies at places as large as Madison Square Garden in New York City. The group organized a deluge of hate mail to the Timely offices, along with obscene telephone calls with threatening messages. Simon recalled that they did not take it seriously at first, but when groups of menacing-looking men began to gather in front of the Timely offices on Forty-second Street, their attitudes changed. They reported the threats to the police, and soon they were assigned police protection.
One day, not long after the police protection began, a phone call came into the Timely offices. It was none other than the mayor of New York, Fiorello La Guardia, who wanted to talk to the editor of Captain America Comics.
La Guardia is famous in New York history for reading the newspaper funnies over the radio to the city’s youngsters when there was a newspaper strike in 1945. So it is not that surprising that he would take an interest in a comic as popular as Captain America was at the time, but, still, when you go to work at your comic book company, you don’t expect to get a phone call from the mayor of New York!
Simon picked up the phone, and La Guardia, known as the Little Flower, said to him, “You boys over there are doing a good job. The city of New York will see that no harm will come to you.” As a creator, it does not get any better than that.
WHEN IT COMES to avoiding getting taken advantage of in a business arrangement, it is always advisable to get the terms of the deal written down on paper. Joe Simon and Jack Kirby knew that they could not trust a verbal arrangement with Timely publisher Martin Goodman over royalties, so they had Goodman sign a written contract stating that he would pay Simon and Kirby a 15 percent share of the profits of Captain America’s success, but that agreement quickly appeared to have been filed under the category of “empty promises.” Goodman claimed that he was glad to share the profits with Simon and Kirby, and he did pay them their 15 percent, but that 15 percent was based on a remarkably low profit. Goodman was presumably using some creative accounting to come up with the argument that he was barely turning a profit on a comic book that was, at its peak, selling a million copies a month.
As a result, although Simon and Kirby were being paid well in their salaried positions at Timely, they felt like they could negotiate a better deal at DC Comics, where they would not be taken advantage of in the same manner. And the deal they signed with DC did end up paying them quite well for the next few years. However, with their departure, the paltry royalties they had received from Timely turned into zero royalties—Goodman ceased paying them.
Years later, in 1967, Joe Simon pursued taking control of the copyright of Captain America when it was first up for renewal. He attempted to challenge the copyright of Timely (by then Marvel Comics) by asserting that he delivered Captain America, not as a work-for-hire comic, but as an independent worker, and that he should gain the benefit of the second term of the copyright. Kirby had already settled with Marvel by that time, so Marvel was assured half of the copyright. Still, Simon kept fighting until he, too, ultimately settled in 1969.
While Simon was investigating in preparation for a possible trial, he found some bizarre financial information regarding Captain America. One of the events that really galled Simon was when Captain America received his own film serial in 1944.
The serial starred Dick Purcell, and it was so drastically different from the comic book that one would almost wonder if they had not simply added Captain America into the plot of an entirely different film. For years Simon was haunted by the idea that his cocreation was the star of a film, and he was to receive no money for it! So he was quite surprised to find out, in 1967, that Martin Goodman had received zero dollars for Republic Pictures’ license to Captain America for the film serial. Goodman felt that having a film released of Captain America would pay for itself in terms of added publicity, and while it certainly is possible to quantify the value of publicity when it comes to monetary damages, it is still striking that Goodman did not receive a single red cent for the adaption of one of the most popular comic books at the time.
AFTER JOE SIMON and Jack Kirby left Timely, a young staffer was placed in charge of Captain America (except for a three-year span when he was in the military), but young Stan Lee was at a loss. Now that World War II was over, Captain America did not exactly have much in the way of a purpose anymore. He was designed to fight the Nazis, but with the Nazis finished, what else could Captain America do?
At first Captain America returned stateside, and Steve Rogers became a teacher. Captain America and Bucky began fighting crime like ordinary superheroes. Eventually, Bucky was shot, and Captain America got a new sidekick, Steve’s girlfriend, Betsy Ross, who took to calling herself Golden Girl. By now it was the late 1940s, and the book’s sales continued to fall. For the last couple of issues, the format changed to include horror stories as well as Captain America stories, and the book was renamed Captain America’s Weird Tales. In the last issue, Captain America did not even appear in his own comic book!
That looked like it for Cap, but for a brief period in the 1950s, while the company was calling itself Atlas, it decided to give super-heroes a try. Perhaps it thought the name change might have had some impact. In any event, Captain America returned, ultimately in his own magazine once again. Only this time, with the Nazis gone, Captain America had a new target.
The covers of the first issues of the return of Captain America proudly state on the cover (and this is the actual cover tagline), “Captain America ... Commie Smasher,” and so began a short-lived revival where Captain America would take on the evil Reds for a time before sales became just too low to continue. These issues were drawn by a young John Romita, who would later go on to have great success at Marvel and to serve as its art director
for years.
When Marvel brought Captain America back for good in the early 1960s, it changed his story so that he was left for dead at the end of World War II after a rocket explosion left him stuck in suspended animation in the middle of the Arctic. Bucky was presumed to have died in the same rocket explosion, but recently Bucky was revealed to have survived the explosion as well). All the “Commie smasher” stories were explained away in the modern comic to have been other people posing as Captain America and Bucky.
ONE OF THE most underappreciated jobs at comic book conventions is that of the actors who dress up as superheroes and endure hours of humiliation simply to entertain comic book fans. Usually, they are not exactly the most talented actors in the world, although in the late 1970s in New York, the actor portraying Captain America at comic conventions was none other than Star Trek: The Next Generation ’s Jonathan Frakes!
Frakes had moved to New York after studying theater at Penn State and Harvard. While in New York, he was a member of the acting company the Impossible Ragtime Theater and appeared in plays or bit roles on television, but acting roles were not plentiful at the time for Frakes. During this acting dry spell, he took on a number of other jobs to make ends meet, working as a waiter and a furniture mover, but the most memorable part-time job he took was appearing at comic book conventions as Captain America, in full costume. Frakes took the role seriously and was an excellent Captain America, putting up with the fans and their questions with grace and aplomb.
Frakes eventually moved to Los Angeles, where he began to get better acting roles, appearing as a guest on a number of televisions series over the next few years, as well as starring roles in some failed pilots. Eventually, in 1987, Frakes would land the role that has made him famous to this day, that of Commander William Riker on Star Trek: The Next Generation .
Undoubtedly, Frakes has used his experiences appearing at comic book conventions as Captain America to inform his appearances as himself at Star Trek conventions, and, in fact, Frakes is known for being an excellent guest at conventions, extremely friendly and accommodating to fans. Perhaps some of the best qualities of Captain America rubbed off on him while he was wearing the suit.
THE 1970S WERE an interesting time at Marvel Comics, as well, particularly for the books written by Steve Englehart. In the early 1970s, Stan Lee was taking on more and more business-related dealings on top of his being Marvel’s editor in chief, so he could no longer manage to write his titles. Thus Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway more or less split the books up, with Thomas notably getting Fantastic Four and Conway getting Amazing Spider-Man. Eventually, when Lee was promoted to publisher of Marvel, he named Thomas the editor in chief. This resulted not only in Thomas leaving a number of books because of his added responsibilities but also in the loss of Conway, as he was hoping to be named editor in chief and did not want to stay at Marvel if Thomas was going to be the new editor in chief instead (though not due to any personal enmity toward Thomas). This opened up a number of titles to new writers, and that is where Steve Englehart stepped in, taking over a number of prominent titles such as The Avengers (from Thomas) and, most notably, Captain America (from Conway).
The young Englehart (in his midtwenties at the time) had many of the same views that Marv Wolfman and Len Wein had at DC Comics in the late 1960s (as detailed on pages 66-68), except that Marvel actually gave Englehart the freedom to try out his ideas. As he took on Captain America, he introduced ideas of pacifism and antiwar protest into the title while still maintaining a fairly traditional superhero-fighting-super-villain style to the comic, which was highlighted in his epic Secret Empire story line, where the villain was none other than the president of the United States!
Captain America and his partner at the time, the Falcon (one of the very first prominent African American superheroes), were caught up in an elaborate plan by the villainous group the Secret Empire, which attempted to ruin Captain America’s reputation and take control of the world. The story line was set during the days of Watergate, and a lot of the Secret Empire’s rhetoric was designed to resemble Nixon’s administration in the way he attempted to keep a veil of secrecy over his White House. Ultimately, Englehart moved from subtle commentary to overt commentary, when Captain America tracked down the leader of the Secret Empire, Number One, and he turns out to be the president of the United States! At the last moment, Englehart decided not to show the actual face of Nixon in the issue, but the dialogue makes it clear that it is, indeed, supposed to be Nixon. The president, wracked with guilt over his role in the Secret Empire, then commits suicide.
While it is hard to imagine in this day and age, at the time Englehart claims he was not told once by an editor to tone down his story, and the decision to avoid actually showing Nixon’s face was simply self-censorship on his part. Whenever there is a controversial story line in comics today, it is always helpful to imagine trying a story like Englehart’s in the current context, and suddenly the modern stories do not seem quite so controversial.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF a modern story being one-upped by a story from the past involves Jean Marc DeMatteis’s run as writer of Captain America during the early 1980s, when DeMatteis planned on killing off Captain America twenty years before Marvel decided to do it!
DeMatteis began writing the title in 1982. Paired with artist Mike Zeck, DeMatteis’s run was well received. During his run, DeMatteis brought back Bucky from the 1950s (the “Commie smasher”-era Bucky), Jack Monroe, and turned him into an interesting supporting cast member, Nomad.
While the title was nearing its three hundredth issue, DeMatteis developed a bold new approach to Captain America that he proposed and his editor, Mark Gruenwald, accepted. DeMatteis was going to have Captain America announce that he was going to try to go about making the world a better place without using violence. This, of course, would be taken as bizarre news by the rest of the world. Captain America would begin to lose popular support as he traveled around to discuss pacifism. Ultimately, Jack Monroe would be manipulated by the bad guys into thinking that Captain America was out to hurt America, and Monroe would end up assassinating Captain America at a rally.
At this point, DeMatteis was planning to replace Captain America with Black Crow, a Native American superhero that he had introduced earlier in his run writing the book.
DeMatteis was to begin the story line in a double-size #300, which was already written, but then Marvel editor in chief Jim Shooter discovered the plans, and he quickly shut them down, overruling Gruenwald’s earlier approval.
Shooter then cut the size of #300 down to a regular comic and rewrote the issue himself. DeMatteis took the cue to quit the title. Eventually, Gruenwald would end up taking over the book himself, writing it for an amazing eight years!
8
THE X-MEN
The X-Men debuted during the same month in 1963 as another notable Marvel team book, the Avengers (both titles were by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby). The X-Men were a team of mutants, humans born with a different genetic makeup that manifests itself at puberty in the form of superhuman powers. With the public fearful of them and with the need to train these young mutants in how to control their powers, Professor Charles Xavier (aka Professor X) formed a school for mutants and taught his students, not only how to use their powers, but how to use them to fight the forces of evil as the superhero team known as the X-Men. The first team of students was made up of Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Iceman, Angel, and the Beast. Their biggest nemesis was Magneto, who led the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, a group that wants to either destroy or dominate normal humans. Later on, Magneto and Professor X would come to represent the Malcolm X/Dr. Martin Luther King dynamic when it came to the rights of mutants.
After a few years, the original X-Men series was canceled, and Marvel just published reprints for a number of years, until editor in chief Roy Thomas suggested that writer Len Wein and artist Dave Cockrum introduce a new team of X-Men. This “All-New, All-Different” team of X-Men consisted of international mutant
s such as Wolverine (Canada), Storm (Kenya), Nightcrawler (Germany), Banshee (Ireland), and Sunfire (Japan), plus an Apache mutant called Thunderbird. After debuting in Giant-Size X-Men #1, the new team (led by Cyclops, the lone original member to remain) took over the X-Men title with X-Men #94.
Writer Chris Claremont scripted Len Wein’s plots and soon took over the writing of the book himself. Artist John Byrne replaced Cockrum with X-Men #108. Claremont and Byrne worked together for the next three years on a dynamic run that was highlighted by the character Wolverine becoming one of the most popular characters in all of comics, and their depiction of the former X-Man, Marvel Girl, who gained fantastic powers (and a new name, Phoenix) that ultimately drove her mad, causing her to choose to sacrifice herself rather than endanger the universe. By the end of the “Dark Phoenix Saga,” Claremont and Byrne had taken a title that was not even being released monthly and turned it around so much that, by the time Byrne left the title after Uncanny X-Men #143, the book was poised to become Marvel’s best-selling comic.
The next year, it achieved that distinction, a position it has held for most of the last twenty-five years. Claremont wrote the book for a remarkable seventeen-year run, seeing it expand from one poor-selling title to an entire line of X-Men-related comic books.
During the 1990s, the X-Men starred in the popular and long-running animated series titled X-Men. In 2000 they starred in a second animated series, X-Men: Evolution, which was a success as well, running for four seasons. Also in 2000, the first X-Men film was released to great popular success. Two blockbuster sequels followed, with more movies in the works, including a Wolverine spotlight film and a Magneto spotlight film.
Brian Cronin Page 12
