Archival Site 2004-2006 see See http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/

Sunday, November 28, 2004

Captain America #112 - Lest We Forget

So, the story goes, Jim Steranko takes over CAPTAIN AMERICA from Kirby with #110. Shortly thereafter, for whatever reason, Kirby's asked to draw #112 on an extremely tight deadline. He's told the cliffhanger to #111 had Captain America dying. Did they want him to bring Cap back to life? No, they wanted him to keep Cap dead.

And thus was created the Kirby comic that most closely resembles modern Marvel comics, a full issue where almost nothing happens.

The story is pretty much that Cap's mask is fished out of the water, and he's presumed dead, so Iron Man is informed. Iron Man then goes over Cap's file, so we get short vignettes of Cap's original WWII adventures and villains, the classic retro-fitted "death of Bucky" bit with Zemo, Cap's thawing out courtesy of Namor and scenes from his adventures of the previous few years. I have a soft spot for this particular page:



as it features Modok, one of the Kirbyest of the Kirby villains of the 1960s, and those wacky bee-keeper minions of AIM.

So the story is light, it does at least look really good. George Tuska inks, I think the only other work he did with Kirby was finishes on some Cap stories a few years before this, but he does a good job here, presumably on as tight a deadline as Kirby was. Frank Giacoia inks Kirby on the cover, which is unfortunately Modok-free.

Published 1969

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I've always had a soft spot for this issue, since as a wee lad of 9, my older brother (who got me interested in comics in the first place, and bought the majority of Marvel comics, as well as other companies), bought this issue off the newsstands. When I saw the issue, I asked my brother: "They're killing Captain America?", he answered, in that warm-hearted older brother tone: "He's not dead, you idiot!" or something to that effect. That fill-in issue by Kirby worked to keep the suspense up, even though it wasn't part of Steranko's plan.

Nick Caputo

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