Of all the featured characters in "THE MARVEL SUPER HEROES" syndicated animation fest, "CAPTAIN America" was the second oldest. His life history dates back to the first issue of his own Comic Magazine, bearing his name as the title; which was dated March 1941.
In it we have the origin story. We read of how former 4F physical weakling Steve Rogers volunteers himself as a sort of human guinea pig. The Top Secret Governmental Project involves the use of a super serum (later recounted as a capsule taken orally) which had the effect on the body of an otherwise skinny, 97 pound weakling (who always gets sand kicked in his face at the Beach*) of very rapidly packing many "pounds of shock blasted, steel coiled Muscles" onto the frame of any underweight men taking it.
In short, we had what is essentially the first Anabolic Steroid user; long before the adoption of steroids by the Track & Field athletes, before their acceptance by the Competitive Bodybuilding Community, before any NFL bans and long preceding any overdone, stagy and useless Congressional "probes" into Major League Baseball's tacit wink, nod & okay of their use.
Well, the Albert Einstein look-alike Scientist checked out soon after, leaving Private Steve Rogers as the one and only true American Super Fighting Man and hence it was decided to have him assume the Super Hero's mandatory dose of the split personality in taking on the old "Secret Identity" ploy.
When the Super Hero revival in the Comics started with the re-introduction of many of the DC Characters such as The Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, The Atom and the Justice League of America (the original being known as the Justice Society in the 1940's); Marvel Comics' wily and quite prolific creative team of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby started to bring out some of their own new "Long Underwear" characters to both take advantage of and add impetus to the ever growing trend. (One which has not ended to this day, some 40+ years later.
AS a result of the now Marvel Comics*** totally enthusiastic participation in this Super Hero thing, Stan Lee's new family included The Fantastic Four, Spiderman, Thor, The Hulk, Dr. Strange and Iron Man, with more coming all the time. But the older comics readers clamored for the return of some old World War II era characters, like the Sub-mariner and (alas) Captain America.
Well after a false start in a Human Torch Story featuring a fake C.A. in Strange Tales Comics # 114, dated November 1963, the old Stan Lee creativity kicked in to give us a most memorable method of revival. Stan must have figured that they still had the character around their editorial offices, albeit on ice, but ready to go whenever the climate in comics favored super hero characters.
SO, the Lee & Kirby team gave us Cap's return in The Avengers # 4, dated March, 1964. In it the Avengers team of Thor, Iron Man, Giant Man & the Wasp are returning to the USA in their Submarine following an extended battle with the Sub-Mariner; when they discover a mysterious frozen figure encased in a portion of now melting glacial ice. (Luckily it was just outside of their Sub's sea-viewing super port hole!) And the frozen guy turned out to be, why Captain America (himself), of course. With a little of the tongue-in-cheek, Lee & Kirby had Captain America literally on ice in the Comics Pages! SO this finally brings us down to "THE MARVEL SUPER HEROES" Show and the "CAPTAIN America" portion of the show, to be exact.
As an adaptation from the Comics Page to the limited animation of the Television screen, there is very little to criticize. Sure the animation is limited, very limited. But the rendering of all of the other aspects are done par excellence! As a matter of fact, the stories are very nearly totally literal transference from the Comic Book stories to the TV films. The voice actors do a bang-up job in their rendering of the characterizations and in dramatically delivering the oft Larger than Life and Shakespeare-like dialog.
Some of the stories seemed to be a little disappointing to me as a comic reader; but perhaps I was being a little too harsh on the Captain. After all, he was newly revived into a Post World War II (very Post WWII!) and he was still getting his legs back under him during this period. However, any storyline which featured Captain America's old Nazi Agent nemesis, the Red Skull, be it set in the 1960's or back in the Days of World War II; be they on printed page or in filmed Animation, they are usually exceptional, great, Top Shelf, Bon Ton, even Four Star!
We are also reminded that this was the second Captain America adaptation to a motion picture; the first being made during World War II. In CAPTAIN America (Republic Pictures, 1944) the famed Republic "Thrill Factory" gave the public a rare mis-fire. It was possibly the most disappointing Serial that the Studio had made up to that time. And it's not that the 13 Chapter Serial was so bad, it wasn't. It's just that there were so many liberties taken with the character of C.A. in the adaptation as to render it another altogether different thing from our formerly 4F draftee, Mr. Steve Rogers.
But our 1960's TV version of "CAPTAIN America" righted all of that; and in a really big way!
NOTE: * Sand kicking, 97 pound weaklings and "Dynamic Tension": our salute to Charles Atlas.
