User blog comment:MarvelFan1001/1941 Cap America/@comment-61022-20110910053301

Captain America Comics #1 is... Dry in comparison to what passes for stories these days. Taking it into perspective, the idea of the "super-hero" was a relatively new thing. A lot of the ideas that were coming out were "fantastic" in and of itself because they were new concepts. The idea of someone like Superman, or Captain America, or whoever was just such crazy new ideas for people they were excitement enough.

Keep in mind this is a generation just as the 20th Century started booming technology wise. Air planes and automobiles were becoming more common place, and as Johnnybravo44 mentioned, the war was going on.

I think the other thing that is prevalent in that first issue of Captain America was that it was that it was not *as* serious as other war inspired comics. It was published a year before Pearl Harbor and for the most part while Americans back then recognized that Hitler and the Nazis were bad guys, they were so far removed from it all it was all fun spy stuff until December 7 1941.

Those old Captain America Comics are interesting in that they are the product of the times. A lot of horror stories, murder mysteries, the stuff of the pulp magazines that were being pushed at the time. Most of his rogues gallery were guys in goofy masks, mad scientists with poisons, and possible ghosts and ghoulies.. Not to mention Nazis and Japanese soldiers... The real science fictional dynamic of a super-villain and so-on didn't really pick up until the later 50's and early 60's.

Then there is Tuk... The backup story.... Which is another sign of the times in that back then super-heroes were not the bread and butter of the comic industry, they had all sorts of stories -- including stories about cave boys from the distant past.

It's a bit of a lost art in the comic book industry, but it has been making a bit of a comeback these days. Super-heroes still have a corner on the market. But at least Marvel is publishing other stuff that are not super-heroes. The majority of it are adaptations of fiction (Marvel Illustrated, Laurel K. Hamilton, Stephen King etc. etc.) but it's still there. I would love it if Marvel started doing sci-fi and western stories on a regular basis... The last good one they did was when they did Jack Kirby's Galactic Bounty Hunters (A good read, check it out the TPB is a great collection of the series)