| Comic Source |
Name and Image
|
Description
|

Captain
America Comics #1 (March 1941): "Case No. 1. --
Meet Captain
America" |
 |
| Agent X-13 |
|
Agent X-13 was a young woman masquerading as the aged
proprietress
of a curio shop. Behind the shop was the secret lab of the
super-soldier
project.
I'm adding the covers of the comic issue to the entry for the
story depicted on the cover. Sometimes, the cover shows a
symbolic, rather than an actual, scene from the story, as has happened
here. |
| Captain
America Comics #1 (March 1941): "Case No. 1. --
Meet Captain
America" |
 |
| unnamed
Nazi spy |
|
This spy snuck into the secret lab as a high-ranking
government official.
He killed Prof. Reinstein but died while attempting to flee Captain
America. |
| Captain
America Comics #1 (March 1941): "Case No. 1. --
Meet Captain
America" |
 |
| Professor Reinstein |
|
Prof. Reinstein developed the super-soldier formula
America hoped to
use against the Nazi menace. He was assassinated before
making the
formula known. |
| Captain
America Comics
#1 (March 1941): "Case No. 1. --
Meet Captain
America" |
 |
| Captain
America |
|
Steve Rogers was an Army reject who volunteered for the
super-soldier
project as an alternative way of serving his country, being injected
with
the only sample of the formula. When the formula sample
proved successful,
the U.S. government decided to outfit him as a symbol of America and
put
him to work as a special agent.
|
| Captain
America Comics #1 (March 1941): "Case No. 1. --
Meet Captain
America" |
 |
| Private Steve Rogers |
|
The newly muscular Steve Rogers was placed into Camp
Lehigh as a private,
where apparently high officials kept him free from military red tape so
that he could act on his own when he saw the need. |
| Captain
America Comics #1 (March 1941): "Case No. 1. --
Meet Captain
America" |
 |
| Mascot
Bucky Barnes |
|
Camp mascot Bucky Barnes burst in on Steve Rogers as he
was changing
into his Captain America uniform. In those heady days of wanton child
endangerment,
Cap decided Bucky had to learn to fight by his side. |
| Captain
America Comics #1 (March 1941): "Case No. 1. --
Meet Captain
America" |
 |
| Bucky |
|
Apparently, no one ever associated Captain America's
sidekick Bucky
with the Bucky of Camp Lehigh, even though Cap operated around Lehigh
as
often as not. Chalk it up to those unnamed officials acting
as watchdogs. |
| Captain
America Comics #1 (March 1941): untitled #1 |
 |
 |
| Sando |
Omar |
|
Sando & Omar were the first Cap villains,
beyond the origin. Sando
was a Nazi agent who hypnotized the idiotic Omar into "predicting" acts
of sabotage shortly before they happened. |
| Captain
America Comics #1 (March 1941): untitled #1 |
 |
| F.B.I.
Agent Betty Ross |
|
Betty Ross was assigned to the Sando and Omar
case. She encountered
Cap frequently. She was apparently dating Sgt. Duffy and had
casual
contempt for the goldbricking Private Rogers. |
| Captain
America Comics #1 (March 1941): untitled #2 |
 |
| Rathcone |
|
Rathcone was a Nazi chess master, manipulating people
like chess pieces. |
| Captain
America Comics #1 (March 1941): "The Riddle of
the Red Skull" |
 |
| The
Red Skull |
|
The Red Skull was a Nazi saboteur and assassin and
became Captain America's
greatest foe, coming back every few issues. In his first
story, he
was unmasked as aircraft manufacturer George Maxon but died from his
own poisoned weapon. Apparently, as with the Joker, someone
recognized greatness,
and the artists resurrected the villain for later
use. |
Captain
America Comics #2 (April 1941): "The Ageless
Orientals Who
Wouldn't Die!" |
 |
 |
| Benson |
an
Ageless Oriental |
|
Benson was a banker who discovered the giant Ageless
Orientals in the
silent Himalayas. They were unable to be killed except by an explosive
sound louder than a gunshot. |

Captain
America Comics #2 (April 1941): "Trapped in the
Nazi Stronghold" |
 |

|
Adolph
Hitler
|
Hermann
Goering |
|
To rescue an influential patriot, Cap and Bucky go to
Germany, where,
in the course of beating up on generic Nazis, they also got to wallop
Adolph
Hitler and Hermann Goering. This is the fat Goering as portrayed in the
comic. I have no idea what he really looked like. |
| Captain
America Comics #2 (April 1941): "The Wax Statue
That Struck
Death" |
 |
| The
Wax Man |
|
The Wax Man was Mayor Dobbs, a fifth columnist who led a brigade of
US-based Nazi soldiers driving Super Tanks based in vast underground
bunkers
(it says here...). In his spare time, he murdered military commanders
either
by suffocating them in wax deathmasks of themselves or by kidnapping
and
decapitating them, keeping their heads in his wax museum. |
Captain America Comics
#3 (May 1941): "The Return of
the Red Skull" |
 |
| The
Red Skull |
|
The story opens with the Red Skull rising from where he
was left for dead, declaring himself immune to his own poisons. This
would become a common event: Cap would believe the Skull
dead, but he'd return in a later story, sometimes with an explanation
as to how he did it.
Here, the revived Skull resumes terrorizing military men, invades a
baseball game with his Power Drill (a train-like vehicle with a
drilling nose), and takes time out to hang a couple of con men, who are
impersonating Cap and Bucky, because he mistook them for the real thing. |
| Captain
America Comics #3 (May 1941): "The Hunchback of
Hollywood and
the Movie Murder" |
 |
| The Hunchback of
Hollywood |
|
This was a "Phantom of the Opera"/"Clayface I" type of
story. A movie
production was being sabotaged by a hunchbacked figure. The
Hunchback
of Hollywood was handsome actor Craig Talbot, a Nazi sympathizer who
opposed
the film's anti-tyranny message, and not horror actor "Barloff", who
played
the hunchback in the film. Quel
suprise! |
| Captain
America Comics #3 (May 1941): "The Queer Case
of the Murdering
Butterfly and the Ancient Mummies" |
 |
| The
Butterfly and Lenny |
|
The Butterfly was Dr. Vitrioli, a museum curator who
was robbing his
own museum. (Why he picked a butterfly
as a
costumed identity is a mystery.
He wasn't stealing butterfly collections...) Lenny was Dr. V's
assistant,
"a human derrick", one guard called him. |
| Captain
America Comics #4 (June 1941): "The Unholy
Legion" |

|
   |
Herr
Snupp
|
The
Unholy Legion |
|
The Unholy Legion were a band of fifth columnists
masquerading as beggars,
street vendors, and general underclass types. Under the command of Herr
Snupp, the Beggar Leader, they killed important defense
figures and
cheated
sympathetic Americans who thought they were helping the truly poor and
crippled.
I give you Snupp, who branded both his own agents and
law enforcement
types (before killing them) with a swastika, and three unnamed
murderous
beggars: a strangler/news vendor, a cripple with a crutch gun, and a
"Poisoned
Apple Annie".
All in all, a rather disturbing class warfare concept,
especially so
close to the Great Depression.
|
| Captain
America Comics #4 (June 1941): "Ivan the
Terrible" |
 |
| Ivan
the Terrible |
|
Cap and Bucky face Ivan the Terrible, who deposed a
kingdom's rightful
ruler, the just King Peter Ross, and set himself up. After beating
Ivan, it
turns out... It Was All A Dream! |
| Captain
America Comics #4 (June 1941): "The Case of the
Fake Money
Fiends" |
 |
| The
Fake Money Fiends |
|
Counterfeiters operating in Hillsdale kept snoopers
away from the old
house that was their base by dressing as ghosts. Seems to me that would
have attracted more curiosity than chased it away, but, hey, I didn't
grow
up in those times.
Many early Cap stories were inspired by movies.
If anyone can
place the source that first had counterfeiters playing as ghosts, I'd
like
to know what it was.
(And they would have gotten away with it ...)
|
| Captain
America Comics #4 (June 1941): "The Case of the
Fake Money
Fiends" |
 |
| Sergeant
Michael Duffy |
|
While an unnamed sergeant gave Pvt. Rogers a hard time
as early as
the Rathcone story, this recurring character first appeared in this
story.
Privates were often playing practical jokes on the sergeant, and the
innocent
Pvt. Rogers invariably was blamed for them, probably because Rogers
managed
to have a true accident involving Duffy every other issue. |

Captain America
Comics
#4 (June 1941): "Horror Hospital" |
 |
 |
| Dr.
Grimm and Igan |
Gorro |
|
Dr. Grimm ran a remote private hospital where he kept
madmen among
his other patients and experimented on all. Igan, here, is one of the
doctor's
early experiments.
Dr. Grimm's main experiment was Gorro, a gigantic
humanoid monster whom
he kept alive with the blood of unwilling donors, usually nurses in
Grimm's
employ.
|

All-Winners Comics
#1 (Summer 1941): "The Case of the
Hollow Men" |
 |
 |
| The
Lord of Death |
The
Hollow Men |
|
The self-styled Lord of Death tricked Bowery bums into
his lab, where
he replaced their blood with his "di-namo fluid", which gave them
super-vitality
and immunity to death for 24 hours. (Presumably, after the 24
hours
were up, they did die.) He then sent them on destructive missions
against
US. military suppliers.
The bums were only referred to as "the Hollow Men" in
the title.
In the story, they were just "zombies".
Where Cap appears in these anthology titles, don't
expect
there to be any relation between the cover and the story.
|

Young
Allies Comics #1 (Summer 1941): "The Coming of
Agent Zero" |
 |
 |
| The
Red Skull |
Agent
Zero |
|
Bucky leads a local chapter of the Sentinels of Liberty
(Timely's Captain America fan club) to rescue Agent Zero, a British
agent, from Nazis. Toro, the Human Torch's kid sidekick, helps out, and
the kids form the Young Allies to help the agent. The Red
Skull
steps in, things escalate, and the Allies take a per-chapter whirlwind
tour of war venues (the Home Front, Berlin, the Russian Front, Hong
Kong, and back to the USA) with Agent Zero.
|
| Young
Allies Comics #1 (Summer 1941): "The Coming of
Agent Zero" |
 |
 |
| Human
Torch |
Human
Torch (flaming) |
|
At the last
minute,
Captain America and the Human Torch (apparently their first meeting in
the comics) step in and wrap things up. |
| Young
Allies Comics #1 (Summer 1941): "The Coming of
Agent Zero" |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Toro |
Henry
"Tubby" Tinker |
Jeff
Vandergilt |
Aloysius
Percival "Knuckles" O'Toole |
"Whitewash"
Jones |
|
Plotwise, not a bad "kid gang" adventure. However, what I
assume was
the publisher's goal of having the members represent all major
demographics of
their readership (the fat kid, the rich kid, the tough kid) results in
the inclusion of a Black stereotype, "Whitewash Jones, who can make a
harmonica talk." ("Yeah man! I is also good on de
watermelon!")
You have to give Timely credit for including a Black kid in their gang
(DC's Newsboy Legion and Boy Commandos, for example, did not.), but the
result is at least embarassing, and often offensive, to modern readers.
Don't expect to see a Young Allies
Masterworks any time soon. |

Captain America Comics #5 (August 1941): "The
Ringmaster of Death" |
 |
| The
Ringmaster of Death |
|
He was a Nazi agent whose wheel of chance dictated the
night's assassination
victim. Other than controlling a circus full of Nazi performers, he had
no abilities. Looks a lot like the Hulk/Spidey Ringmaster, though,
doesn't
he? (Later Marvel stories made him the father of that Ringmaster.) |
| Captain
America Comics #5 (August 1941): "The Gruesome
Secret of the
Dragon of Death" |
 |
| Captain
Okada |
|
Captain Okada commanded a secret weapon of the Japanese
navy: the Sea
Dragon, a giant, ship-swallowing submarine.
Hey, it's Cap's first Japanese villain, and he isn't a racist
caricature! That's because Pearl Harbor hadn't happened yet.
Things got vicious immediately after that.
The Sea Dragon sub returned in a 1990's
Invaders story, and the idea itself was reused in another Cap story
later in the 1940s. |
| Captain
America Comics #5 (August 1941): "Killers of
the Bund" |
 |
| The
Bund |
|
The Bund was an actual pro-Nazi German-American
organization of the
WW2 period. Captain America and Bucky fought some Bund agents
who
were threatening loyal Americans Hendrich and Bob Shmidt. |
| Captain
America Comics #5 (August 1941): "The Terror
That Was Devil's
Island" |
 |
| Pepo
Laroc |
|
Pepo Laroc was the brutal overseer of Devil's Island,
the infamous
French prison camp. He was put in charge by the Vichy
government
after the Nazis conquered France, so that prisoners of war could
experience
his cruelty.
Like many Simon/Kirby stories of the '40s, this was
inspired by a movie, 1939's Devil's
Island. |
| Captain
America Comics #6 (September 1941): "The Camera
Fiend and His
Darts of Doom" |
 |
| The
Camera Fiend |
|
The Camera Fiend led a gang of crooks who were
attempting to steal
the British Crown Jewels, which were on tour in America. His
innocent-seeming
camera fired poisoned needles. He was actually Bucky's
teacher, Lucius
Hall.
|
| Captain
America Comics #6 (September 1941): "Meet the
Fang, Arch-Fiend
of the Orient" |
 |
| The
Fang |
|
The Fang was a Chinese warlord, ruler of a tong (a
criminal
Chinese secret society)
in America. The Japanese Baron Nushima hired his hatchet-men
to eliminate
two Chinese emissaries seeking a loan from the U.S. to help fight
Japanese
aggression in China.
While Fang never appeared again, in the 1960s Cap recalled his having
died at Hiroshima. I thought that was a nice touch.
|

Captain America Comics #6 (September 1941): "The
Strange Case of
Who Killed Doctor Vardoff?" |
 |
| The
Hangman |
|
The Hangman systematically eliminated anyone who stood
between him
and control of the super-strong silk invented by Dr. Vardoff -- and
there
was quite a list: Vardoff himself, his assistant Ludwig, businessman
Dino
Cardi, and a mobster's gun moll, all of whom felt the grip of his noose
of super-silk. Actually, the Hangman was Vardoff himself, who
wanted
nothing more than to be left alone to do his research. |

All-Winners Comics #2 (Fall 1941): "The Strange Case of
the Malay Idol" |
 |
 |
| Kuoli,
King of the Islands |
Malay
chieftain |
|
Steve Rogers, Bucky, and Col. Carter are stranded on an
island in the Malay peninsula when their plane goes down. The
pilot, Kurt Mueller, faked the crash in order to get secret documents
Carter carried. As Kuoli, King of the Islands, Mueller
commanded a
small army of Malay warriors. |
Captain
America Comics
#7 (October 1941): "Captain
America and the
Red Skull" |
 |
| The
Red Skull |
|
The Skull returns, whistling Chopin's Funeral March as
a
prelude to
his murders. That's the big gimmick for the story. Nicely
eerie, perhaps, for radio or film, but not especially effective on the
printed page.
By the way, the cover seems to have no relation to any of the stories
this issue, so I'm putting it with the first story. Expect the same for
future issues.
|
| Captain
America Comics #7 (October 1941): "Death Loads
the Bases" |
 |
| The
Black Toad |
|
The Black Toad was Chuck McArthur, manager of the
Badgers baseball
team. Using blowgun darts, he tried to make it appear as if
the team
was jinxed, so that he could buy it from its current owner at a bargain
price.
The Black Toad reappeared in a dream Cap had in issue #18, one of the
few villains (besides the Red Skull and Hitler) ever to appear more
than once in the 1940s. |
| Captain
America Comics #7 (October 1941): "Horror Plays
the Scales" |
 |
| The
Fiddler |
|
The Fiddler was a Nazi assassin who used his violin to
kill. First,
he had an assistant, acting as a servant, put a bomb-laden radio in his
victims' homes, which The Fiddler would detonate with certain notes
he'd
play during a public concert broadcast on the radio. He also could play
frequencies that the human system could not stand, but he accidentally
killed himself in one attempt, not knowing Cap and Bucky had stopped
their
ears. |

Captain America
Comics #8 (November 1941): "The Strange
Mystery of
the Ruby of the Nile and Its Heritage of Horror" |
 |
| Pharaoh
Ra the Avenger |
|
When Henry Sanders sold a supposedly cursed ruby from
an Egyptian tomb,
the ruby's new owners began dying at the hands of a seeming spirit of
Egyptian
vengeance. Cap exposed the fake Pharaoh as Sanders, who couldn't bear
to
see his treasure in the hands of others. |
| Captain
America Comics #8 (November 1941): "Murder
Stalks the Maneuvers" |
 |
| Pierre
Dumort |
|
Pierre Dumort posed as a Major from the Free French
forces and led
the soldiers of Camp Lehigh into a war game using live ammo. Cap
exposed
the deception and brought Dumort to justice. |
| Captain
America Comics #8 (November 1941): "Case of the
Black Witch" |
 |
| The
Black Witch |
|
The Black Witch tried to keep heiress Karin Lee from
her inheritance,
Hagmoor Castle (near Camp Lehigh!), by making it appear haunted. The
Witch
was revealed to be Feritt, the lawyer for the estate, who knew there
was
oil under the castle grounds. |
Captain America
Comics #9 (December 1941): "Captain
America and the
White Death" |
 |
| The
White Death |
|
This was another "kill the heirs" plot, but this time
lawyer Matthew
Clinton conspired with one of them, knife-throwing son-in-law Manuel
Perez, who masqueraded as the White Death,
to kill the others and then share the estate.
For some reason, the White Death was deemed memorable enough to appear
in an album issue of Captain
America
in the 1960s.
|
| Captain
America Comics #9 (December 1941): "Captain
America and the
Man Who Could Not Die--" |
 |
| Nick
Pinto |
|
Nick Pinto was sent to the electric chair but then was
arrested committing
crimes days later. He was sent to the chair again, after which Cap
discovered
a conspiracy with a prison doctor to fake Nick's death each time. (My
micro
is taken from the splash page image of Nick in the hardcover reprint;
in the body of the story, as in the entire original printing, he
appeared
as a normal human.)
This story was
probably inspired by
Lon Chaney Jr.'s Man Made Monster (Universal,
1941), but there
have been other "Man Who Wouldn't Die" stories which could have
influenced this, too.
|
Captain
America Comics
#9 (December 1941): "The Case of
the Black Talon" |
 |
| The
Black Talon |
|
The Black Talon was artist Pascal Horta, whose painting
hand was crushed in a car accident. A surgeon transplanted the hand of
Strangler Burns, a Black murderer who wanted to atone by donating his
body
to science, onto the artist. The artist then claimed "the corpuscles of
the
dead killer's hand invaded my blood-stream – slowly seizing control of
my brain", forcing him first to paint, and then to create, scenes of
death.
Inspired by the film The Hands of Orlac,
or more likely its later
remake with Peter Lorre, Mad Love (MGM, 1935),
neither of which
used the race
angle. Dunno who's to blame for that one.
|

All-Winners
Comics #3 (Winter 1941): "The Canvas of
Doom" |
 |
| The
Artist |
|
The Artist paints portraits of people killing
themselves,
using paint laced with an hypnotic drug, so that the viewer is forced
to act on the image.
This is one of the first Cap stories not drawn by the Simon/Kirby team.
Al Avison, inker on some earlier stories, apes
the
Simon/Kirby style in layout, if not the details of the art.
Story
is by "S.T. Anley", i.e., Stan Lee. |

Young
Allies Comics #2 (Winter 1941): "Fate Spins an
Evil Web" |

|

|

|
| Black
Talon |
Baron
Boche |
The
Fish-Men |
|
Nazi agent Baron Boche offers the Black Talon control
over America if he'll aid the Nazi cause. Talon learns Bucky's Young
Allies team is helping a young woman find her
explorer father, and that the father has discovered an unknown island,
recently risen from the sea bed and inhabited by fish-men "natives".
The Black Talon is rather colorless here, compared to his original
appearance. Yes, he still has the grafted hand, but he's played as a
gang leader rather than a homicidal artist. (Perhaps the
corpuscles were better assimilated?) The Talon also later turned up in
a dream in #18, making him Cap's only three-timer from the
'40s. |
| Captain
America Comics #10 (January 1942): "Spy Ambush" |
 |
| Countess
Mara |
|
Countess Mara led a team of spies to steal a new
rapid-fire grenade
gun.
This may be the adventure Bucky later refers to as involving the "Satan
in Satin", as Cap and Bucky ride a motorcycle here and in no
intervening adventures I can find. |
Captain
America Comics
#10 (January 1942): "Hotel of
Horror" |
 |
| Netman |
|
The Netman, a fifth columnist, learned Cap was to be
honored by an
American city (Gotham City!) and, posing as Charley Boswell, the
Mayor's
secretary, led Cap into a hotel in that city filled with traps and
killers. |
| Captain
America Comics #10 (January 1942): "The Phantom
Hound of Cardiff
Moor" |
 |
| The
Hound |
|
The Hound was supposedly an ancient spectre, cursing
those who lived
in Cardiff Manor after the original owners were forced out. He was
really
Mr. Murdock, the last of the original owners who, in conjunction with a
phosphorus-painted mastiff, sought to reclaim the manor from recent
buyers.
Yeah, yeah, The Hound of the Baskervilles.
(20th Century- Fox, 1939, for a film version to serve as inspiration.)
Again, "Cardiff Moor"
was supposed to be somewhere near Camp Lehigh. This is the last
published Simon/Kirby Cap story.
|
| Captain
America Comics #11 (February 1942): "The Case
of the Squad
of Mystery" |

|

|
| The
Second Squad |
Herr
Grotz |
|
The Second Squad is performing rather well in the war
games today. You might say they operate with German
precision. Cap finds they've been replaced by Herr Grotz's spies. |

Captain America Comics #11 (February 1942): "The Feud
Murders" |

|

|

|
| George
Brinner |
Uncle
Forrest Coger |
Colonel
Rand |
|
Two privates accuse each other of stirring up an old
family feud. One is killed, and the other flees to his mountaineer
family
to
warn them. Cap, following, finds a land speculator behind the
revived feud.
Obviously, this was based on the Hatfield-McCoy feud of the late 19th
century. |
| Captain
America Comics #11 (February 1942): "The
Symphony of Terror" |

|

|

|
| Mephisto |
Inspector
Gribbon |
Detective
Finnegan |
|
An opera company manager and a lead singer are
murdered in rapid succession. Suspicion falls on another of the
singers, but the man in the Mephisto costume turns out to be a jilted
lover of the female lead. A pair of bumbling detectives appear for
comic relief.
Another "Phantom of the Opera"-inspired story.
|

Captain America Comics #12 (March 1942): "The Terrible
Menace of the
Pygmies of Terror" |

|

|
| Doctor
Crime |
The
Pygmies of Terror |
|
The mysterious Dr. Crime has stolen and refined the
shrinking solution of the head-hunters of the Amazon. He sends shrunken
gangsters into homes to steal for him.
Dr. Crime is one of the few '40s Cap villains who returns in another
story. Also, this is the first Cap story which is 20 pages
long, compared to the 10-12 page stories of previous issues |
| Captain
America Comics #12 (March 1942): "The Case of
Rozzo the Rebel" |

|
| Rozzo
the Rebel |
|
President Alvaro, of the South American nation of
Oroco, comes to America. Rozzo, an exiled revolutionary and his former
colleague, attacks him, to revenge himself for imagined wrongs.
Somehow, Rozzo has built a hidden underwater citadel, where
Alvaro is made prisoner. Steve Rogers is assigned as Alvaro's
bodyguard, so Cap must come to the rescue. This is another 20-page
story. |

All-Winners
Comics #4 (Spring 1942): "The Sorcerer's
Sinister Secret" |
 |
| The
Sorcerer |
|
Mysto the Magician is really the Sorcerer, a Japanese
spy. During a show near an army base in the Pacific, he causes a
colonel to disappear, so that he can torture him into revealing base
defenses. Cap proves his supposed magic feats are actually
stage
illusions. |

Captain
America Comics #13 (April 1942): "The League of
the Unicorn" |

|

|
| King
Unicorn Zong |
The
League of the Unicorn |
|
For ages, members of The League of the Unicorn have
been the master criminals of Asia. They wear helmets with
steel
horns, used to gore their foes. Now they've come to America, to disrupt
friendship between China and America, by killing the visiting Prince
Tsaihoon.
Cap exposes King
Unicorn Zong as Hargraves, a railroad tycoon, who saw a chance to make
a big profit in Asia and revived the moribund League to do so.
This is the first post-Pearl Harbor cover. Expect more of
this.
|
| Captain
America Comics #13 (April 1942): "The
Lighthouse of Horror" |

|
| The
Looter |
|
The
gang of the mysterious Looter is behind the sabotage at Last Chance
Lighthouse. But who is the Looter? Is he Lems, the
lighthouse keeper who hates strangers? Or is he the suave Mr.
Philips, whose shipboard romance with Betty Ross was interrupted when
their ship crashed at Last Chance Lighthouse?
If you think the Looter looks like an evil Popeye, you're right. |

Captain
America Comics #14 (May 1942): "The Horde of
the Vulture" |

|

|
| The
Vulture (I) |
Little
Moose |
|
Steve
Rogers's supply convoy, taking materiel to Fort Mojave in the American
southwest, is attacked by Native American renegades, led by The
Vulture. Though suspicion falls on his friend, Little Moose, Cap
suspects a Japanese plot and unmasks the Vulture as Hugh Bradley, a
local trader.
The story shows signs of a rushed last-minute
editing, changing the original "Black Hawk" into "Vulture" – mostly.
Certainly the character looks more like a vulture than a
hawk,
but there could have been a few art changes, too.
|
| Captain
America Comics #14 (May 1942): "The Petals of
Doom" |
|
| The
Yellow Claw (I) |
|
No relation to Atlas's Fu Manchu imitation of the
1950s, this Yellow Claw is a European who sends poisoned flowers to
military officials. He does have a pair of claw-like yellow hands, but
no explanation for them is given. |

Young
Allies Comics #3 (Spring 1942): "The Coming of
the Khan" |
|
| The
Khan |
|
The Khan has been promised the rule of America, if he can
successfully pull off an invasion of America. The YA learn of this and
follow him to Alaska, where they help the army thwart the invasion. |

Captain
America Comics #15 (June 1942): "The Tunnel of
Terror" |

|

|

|
| Fritz
Krone |
Moeller |
The
Tunnel Creatures |
|
Fifth
columnists under Herr Moeller's command attempt to spread fear and
despair in America. When Cap stops their usual efforts, Moeller's
superior, Fritz Krone, has disguised agents erupt from a new tunnel
under construction, pretending to be some sort of subterranean people.
Actually, the tunnel will intercept Krone's secret
base if it
is not stopped.
|
| Captain
America Comics
#15 (June 1942): "The Invasion
from Mars" |

|

|
Gool,
Martian Warlord
|
Fake
Martian
|
|
10-foot-tall Martians are sighted around Camp Lehigh,
and
nearby Gotham City (again!) is threatened. Cap reveals the Martians to
be disguised Nazis, out to break American morale, but good old
Americans fight Martians as easily as they do Nazis.
|

All-Winners
Comics
#5 (Summer 1942): "The Vampire
Strikes!" |
 |
| The
Vampire |
|
Dr. Togu was "the world's greatest master of occult
medicine", who distilled
the secret of vampirism into a formula, which he drank. As
the Vampire,
he preyed on American Army officers, until Cap knocked him into
sunlight,
whereupon he reverted to human form and fell to his death. |
| Captain
America Comics
#16 (July 1942): "The Horror of
the Seas" |

|

|

|
| The
Hooded Horror |
The
Sea Monsters |
King
of the People of Lai-Son |
|
Captain America goes to Innsmouth!
Betty Ross is assigned to investigate disappearances near Valley Port.
She is captured by the Hooded Horror, leader of the cultists
of
the goddess Lai-Son, and taken to a temple beneath Satan's Reef to be
sacrificed.
Cap has followed her and learns the Hooded Horror is a Nazi agent who
wants Valley Port for a base. But the town was long ago taken over by
the people of Lai-Son and their sea monsters, so the Horror has been
impersonating their King. Cap frees the King, gets the story
of
the town, and blows up everything.
This is an unusual story, in several ways. First, the
monsters
are definitely the menace, but as soon
as Nazis are shown as involved, they become almost sympathetic. Next,
it's H. P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow over Innsmouth" all over again: the
harbor town
where
outsiders are unwelcome, a sinister bus ride, a cult, fish-men, a lair
under a reef. Finally, even acknowledging the source, it was
still, in the re-telling, a pretty creepy tale... until the explanation
of
how
the cult came to America: Vikings land on the island of Lai-Son (which
appears to be
in the Pacific) and intermarry with the cultists to steal their gold,
then leave – okay so far, if you accept either Vikings on the West
Coast or Polynesian-type islands in the Atlantic. After
centuries
of hunting, because Lai-Son demands they be
with their mates, the cultists find the descendants of the Vikings in
Valley Port, USA... and kill the people they've been searching for all
these years. Then,
instead of returning to their sunny island, they stay and build a new
home under
Satan's Reef.
|

Captain
America Comics
#16 (July 1942): "Red Skull's
Deadly Revenge!" |

|

|

|

|
| Archer
Red Skull |
Brute
Benson |
Duke
Shores |
Igor |
|
After breaking jail, the Red Skull masters archery,
then
gathers a
new gang around himself. They're bait to lure Cap, because he's certain
his arrows can pierce even Cap's shield. Bucky is hospitalized
and
Cap made a prisoner – and unmasked! Dressed as Cap (with giant red
teeth showing under the cowl), the Skull steals defense plans, ruining
Cap's reputation. But a healed Bucky tracks Cap down, and,
after
an arrows vs. shield showdown on the wings of a flying airplane, the
Skull falls to his seeming death. Cap leaves the plans with the body,
confident this will prove the Skull stole them....
By the way, note the Japanese flag the Skull wore on his chest instead
of his swastika at the beginning of this story. No reason given
for it; it was just there for a while, and then the swastika was back.
|

Young
Allies Comics
#4 (Summer 1942): "The Most Amazing
Story of All
Time" |

|
| Farmer
Red Skull |
|
The Red Skull had a hidden parachute, so he floated safely
down, changed clothes with a farmer he ambushed, and escaped. I
liked the way he looked as a farmer.
The rest of the story involves the Skull's plot to kill everyone in
Washington D.C. with poison gas released by treated papers.
Knuckles is thought dead for a while, and Bucky and Toro have a boxing
match. The Skull falls off a cliff at the end, and everyone stands
around the body, so it looks like he couldn't possibly have escaped
death this time.
|

Captain
America Comics
#17 (August 1942): "The Monster
from the Morgue" |

|

|
| Killer
Kole |
Dr.
Jason
Weirdler |
|
That popular stand-by, a gangster's brain in a
gorilla's body.
Cautionary
note to all scientists: do not announce your scientific breakthroughs
ahead of time. Dr. Thomas Austin, having successfuly revived
a
human corpse, plans to reanimate a gorilla. Rival Dr.
Weirdler decides to embarass him by substituing the jarred (and
presumably pickled) brain of Killer Kole for that of the gorilla. He
apparently needn't have bothered, because the experiment is a failure,
and the gorilla is thoughtfully given a Christian burial by "jeering
medical students" under a stone reading "Doctor Austin's Mistake". But
a lightning bolt, bypassing nearby trees and striking the grave,
completes the reanimation, and Killer Kole finds he can't help heading
for the circus to pick up his new mob. Okay, Kole starts killing the
judges who sentenced him to death, and Weirdler grows a conscience and
confesses all. Cap and Kole fight atop a fire ladder, and Kole falls to
his re-death.
Man, Frankenstein and King Kong and
any number of "Man Who
Wouldn't Die" revenge movies, all rolled into one! That's
Entertainment! |
| Captain
America Comics
#17 (August 1942):
"Sub-Earthmen's Revenge!" |

|

|

|
| The
Spook |
Queen
Medusa |
The
Sub-Earthmen |
|
When Nazi saboteurs attack Camp Lehigh, their
explosions
cause
turmoil in The World Below. Good Queen Medusa leads a troop
of
her giant-worm-riding Sub-Earthmen to the surface to investigate, but a
final shock seals the shaft behind them. Somehow, the "top-men" (us)
misunderstand the intentions of cavemen mounted on giant worms, and Cap
has to intervene to prevent a mutual massacre. But a Krimson
Klansman calling himself The Spook tells Medusa how she can have
revenge on the top-men. Cap has to stop the fatal misunderstandings
which ensue, and The Spook is revealed to be one of the saboteurs who
caused the whole thing. Pow, right in the kisser! (And, yes,
the Sub-Earthmen are still stranded.) |
| Captain
America Comics
#17 (August 1942): "Machine of
Doom!" |
|

|
| Prof.
Clement Mott |
Le
Bull |
|
Eminent scientist Mott thinks the war-torn world has
gone
mad, so
he goes mad, too, and plans to destroy the world with his Cosmic
Depressor (which apparently uses Cosmic rays to Depress the motion of
atoms, causing matter to drift apart). Vichy collaborationist Le Bull
wants North America to drift apart, but not necessarily anywhere else.
Cap wants to stop them both. He does.
Fort Lehigh is in Florida today.
|
| Captain
America Comics
#18 (September 1942): "Bowling
Alley of Death" |

|
| Gigo |
|
A new bowling alley in town attracts a lot of Camp
Lehigh
business,
but too many accidents, some fatal, happen there to the soldiers. Owner
Gigo is actually a Nazi saboteur. There's more to the story, about
Gigo's background in a Russian secret society, but it's all filler.
|
| Captain
America Comics
#18 (September 1942): "The Tomb
of Horror" |
 |
 |
|
| "The
Black Talon" |
"The
Black Toad" |
Prof.
Harold Wembley |
|
Steve Rogers, assigned to help an archaeologist, dreams
of two former foes.
That's all. It's a dream. Next!
|

Captain
America Comics
#18 (September 1942): "The
Mikado's Super Shell" |
|
Paw, "mad Japanese genius," has developed a massive gun
which
can
fire a shell across the Pacific. Cap invades Japan to destroy it. |

All-Winners
Comics
#6 (Fall 1942): "The Mock Mikado
Strikes!" |
|
Unknown
to the current Emperor of Japan, a fraternal twin brother was born
along with him. In order to keep the peace in the royal
family,
the brother was sent to Mexico and secretly raised by a trusted
agent. Now, this "Mock Mikado" is ready to raise an army of
his
own and invade America. And guess who's sent to stop him?
|

Young
Allies Comics
#5 (Fall 1942): "Horror In
Hollywood" |
|
The Owl, master of propaganda, is sent to Hollywood to
stop
production
of an anti-Nazi film. |

Captain
America Comics
#19 (October 1942): "The
Crocodile Strikes" |
|
A family in a decaying bayou manse is menaced by a
giant
crocodile.
Cap soon learns The Reptile is actually a human in disguise –
but who? One of the family? One of their servants? The
visiting professor? |
| Captain
America Comics
#19 (October 1942): "On to
Berlin" |
|
General Spenser is kidnapped and taken to Germany.
Steve
Rogers
fails
to volunteer for a rescue mission, and Bucky thinks
Steve's a coward, until he realizes Steve held back so that he could
accompany the mission as Captain America. Meanwhile, Hitler
calls
for his chief torturer, Herr Demon, to get needed info from the
general... |

Captain
America Comics
#20 (November 1942): "The Spawn
of the Witch
Queen" |
|
A British expedition finds the mummy of a child in an
Egyptian tomb. Following a spell, they restore the mummy to a
human child, which the expedition leader adopts. Years later,
Steve Rogers's unit, on assignment in Egypt, help re-discover the tomb
and the remains of the earlier expedition. The child has
grown
into a man, the Spawn of the Witch Queen, who is trying to resurrect
his mummified mommy. Cap exposes his British liaison as the one
behind the Spawn's mask.
|
| Captain
America Comics
#20 (November 1942): "The Fiend
That Was the
Fakir" |
|
The Japanese are arming hill tribes in India to oppose
the
British forces there. The Fakir leads those tribes.
|
| Captain
America Comics
#20 (November 1942): "The Case
of the Clammy
Things" |
|
|
| Doctor
Destiny |
The
Things |
|
Horrible "Things" emerge from the London Underground (subway)
system and kidnap the Lord Mayor and others. Cap and Bucky follow
and find the base of Doctor Destiny, who thinks his destiny is to rule
London. The Things are mutated humans.
|

Captain
America Comics
#21 (December 1942): "The
Creeper and the Three
Rubies of Doom" |
|
To
stop an important treaty between the Allies and the country of Alslavia
from being signed, a Nazi agent called The Creeper has stolen the
rubies from King Dane's signet ring. Cap must recover them or
risk
insulting the king. |
| Captain
America Comics
#21 (December 1942): "Satan and
the Sorcerer's
Secret" |
|
|
| Balthar
the Sorcerer |
Satan |
|
Would-be
sorcerer Mr. Balthar makes a pact with the devil and gains
death-dealing eyes. After beating him, Cap has to wrestle with the
Devil himself. |

USA Comics #6
(December 1942): "The Ghost's Gaze of
Death" |
|
War plants are terrorized by a ghostly figure, the
fright
causing accidents in the plants, and those who come close enough die on
the spot. Prof. Anton Harvey believes it's the ancient Greek
Medusa (except this Medusa is obviously male). Cap believes it's a
trick. Medusa is really Harvey, who is also a Nazi agent, and his look
of death is a concealed dart gun.
|

All-Winners
Comics
#7 (Winter 1942): "Return of Doctor
Crime" |
|
Doctor Crime, who has been allowed to wear his costume
in
prison, tells Nazi Von Eisner where to find the shrinking formula in
Dr. Crime's old house. Amazingly, Von Eisner doesn't steal the formula
but gives it to Dr. C, who escapes. Dr. C then kidnaps a general.
During the course of the story, both Bucky and Dr. C are shrunken and
have a fight, after which a hawk grabs tiny Dr. C for dinner.
|

Young
Allies Comics
#6 (Winter 1942): "School For
Sabotage" |
|
|
| Young
Allies Comics
#6 (Winter 1942): "The Comet of
Doom" |
|
|

Captain
America Comics
#22 (January 1943): "The Vault
of the Doomed" |
|
Congressman Barlow and his "anti-Nazi committee" are
making
things too hot for Mr. Schultz andf the local Washington Nazis, so he
is invited to meet with "Dr. Eternity, Spiritual Guide" -- i.e.,
medium. The ghost of Barlow's brother predicts Barlow's
death.
Cap and Bucky are passing by and find a vault under the house, where
Eternity and his hunchbacked servant seal them in. They are rescued by
another client of Dr. E's and unmask the Doctor to reveal "one of
Hitler's star boys!"
It may be that Dr. E was intended to be Mr. Schultz under the
mask. There isn't much resemblance, but it seems odd there's
be
an unmasking scene in the story without someone under the mask we'd
recognize.
|
| Captain
America Comics
#22 (January 1943): "Captain
America Battles
the Reaper! (The Man the Law Couldn't Touch!)" |
 |
| The
Reaper |
|
The Reaper is a demogogue who applies Hitler's "Big
Lie" principle
to the subversion of the U.S. government, telling Americans "right is
wrong,
and wrong is right". Since he never openly espouses revolt,
he can't
be arrested. |
| Captain
America Comics
#22 (January 1943): "The Cobra
Ring of Death" |
|
Both Senator Ralph and General Lang have died
suddenly.
Cap he thinks the odd cobra ring both men wore had something to do with
it. Bucky shows the ring in local curio shops and finds a
Bund
leader called The Ring, who captures him. Cap fights The
RIng's
giant servant, Toto, to learn Bucky's location, and The Ring is
accidentally killed by one of his own cobra rings: when the hand is
clenched into a fist, the head of the cobra injects strychnine into the
wearer. |

Captain
America Comics
#23 (February 1943): "The
Mystery of the One
Hundred Corpses" |
|
Cap and Bucky find almost a hundred corpses in a flooded
quarry, but no one in nearby towns seems to be missing. Dr. Izan
is replacing dying men with Nazi agents and dumping the originals'
bodies in the quarry.
|
| Captain
America Comics
#23 (February 1943): "The Deadly
Snapper" |
|
The Turtle-Man has, for a year, been help convicts escape
from Louisiana chain-gangs into nearby Swamp Sinister. Now, he's
ready to strike, at a Mardi Gras float using real jewels.
|
| Captain
America Comics #23
(February 1943): "The Idol
of Doom" |
|
Steve and Bucky see a woman and a Hindu disappear in a ring
of fire in the middle of a lake. Later, the woman's body is
found. It's all part of a plot to gain wealthy women's estates.
|

USA Comics #7
(February 1943): "Case of the Flying
Submarine" |
|
|

Captain
America Comics
#24 (March 1943): "The Vampire
Strikes!" |
|
Assigned to put a searchlight atop Vampire's Mountain, Steve
and Bucky find the home of Count Varnis, and darned if the Count isn't
acting funny...
|
| Captain
America Comics
#24 (March 1943): "Meet the Eel
of Horror Harbor" |
|
Investigating the mysterious sinkings of newly completed
ships, Cap and Bucky find men in the employ of The Eel, treating the
ships to attact the Eel's giant octopus, which drags the ships under.
The Eel also has a pit of giant electric eels, which Cap uses to finish
off both the octopus and the Eel himself.
|

All-Winners
Comics
#8 (Spring 1943): untitled |
|
General MacArthur is coming to visit Steve Rogers's
unit,
currently stationed in New Guinea. Prince Kuhomai, a Japanese officer
whose father committed suicide after losing to MacArthur at Bataan,
plans to avenge his father's death by blowing up the camp during the
visit. Cap and Bucky are imprisoned with the explosives, get free and
sabotage them, then use them to cause Kuhomai to blow himself up.
|

Captain America
Comics
#25 (April 1943): "The Princess
of the Atom" |
|
Vacationing with friends, Steve Rogers learns Dianne Ferrule
is actually a princess from a sub-atomic world, sent to Earth to escape
the evil Togaro. Using shrinking drugs, they return to Mita to fight
Togaro, who, in the meantime, has been sending his own men to Earth as
giants, looking for the princess.
Pulp author Ray Cummings adapted his own novel of the
same
name for this two-part Cap story.
Looks like this month's cover was intended for next month's story.
|
| Captain
America Comics
#25 (April 1943): "The Murdering
Mummy and the
Laughing Sphinx" |
|
A mummy has been murdering high government officials. Cap and
Bucky find it and learn it is preparing the way for the return of the
demon Modebl. They also manage to grab a sphinx charm from its neck.
Egyptologist Prof. Jameson is eager to examine the charm, but it is Cap
who learns the charm contains a liquid which enables him to face
Modebl... or so it seems, since the liquid is an opium solution,
causing hallucinations. Jameson is really the Mummy, but it's not
his fault: he drank some of this liquid and became a kind of
lycanthrope, unaware of his changing each night into the Mummy.
|

Young
Allies Comics
#7 (April 1943): "Meet the
Ambassador of Death" |
|
|
| Young
Allies Comics
#7 (April 1943): "The Scratch of
Death" |
|
|

Captain America Comics #26 (May 1943): "The Princess of
the Atom, Part
II" |
|
Not only was "Princess of the Atom" a two-parter, they
were
two long parts, 25 pages each. [?]
|
| Captain
America Comics
#26 (May 1943): "The Russian
Hell-Hole" |
|
Steve and Bucky, on a convoy going to Russia, are
separated
from the convoy when they stop a Nazi plane from strifing their
ship. In the captured plane, they make their way to Russia,
after
which they take a message from a dying Russian spy, escape a Nazi air
base hidden inside a glacier, fight wolves, and visit a Lapp village,
before finally thwarting a planned invasion of Murmansk, escaping from
chains in a sinking ship, and being feasted in the Kremlin.
There seems to be one of these "stop the invasion" stories about every
third issue on average, and I usually don't like them. But this one had
more coherence than most, with the Russian locale set pieces appearing
naturally. |

USA Comics #8 (May 1943): "Invasion of the Killer
Beasts" |
|
|
| Oberst
Von Steibel |
para-trooper
with
poisonous dogs
|
|
The story opens promisingly with a captured Nazi
para-trooper
telling how the accursed Captain America defeated their Nazi might, but
it heads downhill quickly. Oberst Von Steibel hand-picked 50 men but
failed to make
use of their own skills, putting para-troopers in with
infantry.
He gave them an animal weapon – dogs with poisonous fangs –
and
immediately, with
no time to accustom the dogs to the men, shipped them off to America on
a cramped sub, ensuring the travel time could not be used for training,
either. Only
50 men were supposed to cripple the entire US Army, and even then, they
use
their deadly new canine weapon was almost as an afterthought. They then
try to wipe out Camp Lehigh with a single truck with explosives – sent
to a dam, admittedly, but this was apparently something they had
planned in advance, and it had a single point of failure. Naturally, it
failed. I
think the Oberst was a double-agent, setting up 50 of the best Nazi
soldiers for sacrifice. Or maybe the plot was thrown together
with no sense of a real story. You decide.
|
| Captain America Comics
#27 (June
1943): "North of the
Border" |
|
Quebec City is the star of this tale, in which Baron
Von
Hartmann's capture of a Canadian general and his war plans is merely
the MacGuffin.
|

Captain
America Comics
#27 (June 1943): "Blitzkrieg to
Berlin" |
|
|
|
| Herr
Wolf |
Kapitan
Huntzel |
Pierre Leroux |
|
Cap and Bucky stumble across a deserted house,
gimmicked with
traps, which is the base of Herr Wolf's spy ring. The spies capture
them and return with them to Berlin aboard Kapitan Huntzel's u-boat.
Hitler gloats, but they escape, after learning about the construction
of a giant u-boat which will carry soldiers to invade
America.
With the help of Pierre Leroux, a resistance fighter, they destroy the
sub.
This is the kind of sloppy "stop the invasion" story I don't like, as
it loses its focus (Wolf's information) halfway through and has to
invent a new one (the giant u-boat).
|

All-Winners
Comics
#9 (Summer 1943): "Case of the
Sinister Hun" |
|
The Baron, the sinister hun in question, is trying to
blow up
the locks of the Panama Canal with "aerial torpedos" – actually, small
drone planes with explosives.
|

Captain
America Comics
#28 (July 1943): "The Challenge
of the Mad Torso" |
|
Letters signed by "The Mad Torso" taunt Cap to stop the
kidnapping of a famous researcher. He does so and follows a trail
to a Western mountain and a once-deserted monastery, now the home
of the Torso: a Nazi scientist whose bomb-wrecked arms and legs have
been replaced by mechanical ones.
|
| Captain
America Comics
#28 (July 1943): "The Vultures
of Violent Death" |
|
| The
Birdmen of Pa-Pi-Ru-Gua |
|
The Japanese have convinced the inhabitants of a South
Pacific island
to allow them to build a base there. Under their guidance,
warriors riding giant birds capture Cap, Bucky, and an Allied flight
crew, and Cap must face a series of trials to save them all from
execution. |

USA Comics #9 (July 1943): "Puppets of Death" |
|
Cap stumbles across a plot to eliminate Jameson, an
Allied
counter-spy. He trails Jameson to the Black Cat night club
where,
during a puppet performance, Jameson collapses and is later diagnosed
as having died of Dengue fever, so highly contagious that his body must
be buried immediately in a sealed casket. Hmm... Cap learns
that
the puppeteer, Varda, is using his show to infect targets with a drug
whose effects resemble Dengue but which instead puts them into
catalepsy, from which he later revives them to enslave them and use
their skills. (Dengue is so contagious, the "bodies" aren't
embalmed.) Cap is set up as a human puppet but manages to kill Varda
with an arrow to the throat!
|

Young
Allies Comics
#8 (July 1943): "North Africa Ahoy" |
|
|
| Young
Allies Comics
#8 (July 1943): "Terror of the
Rising Sun" |
|
|

Captain
America Comics
#29 (August 1943): "The King of
the Dinosaurs" |
|
| The
King of the Dinosaurs |
|
This time, it's a human brain in a dinosaur's body. |
| Captain
America Comics
#29 (August 1943): "The Case of
the Phantom
Engineer" |
|