A Visual Index to Captain America Comics

The 1940s Captain America

I've always wondered why Simon and Kirby chose "Camp Lehigh" as the name for Steve Rogers's home base. The stories seem to take place in either metropolitan New York or Washington DC. But "Lehigh" is native to eastern PA (where I used to live), being an Amish corruption of "Lechauweki". Surely Camp Lehigh was not in the Lehigh Valley.  (The Summer 1942 "Vampire" story seems to place Camp Lehigh in California.)  Are army camps named for people, instead?  (There is a Camp Kilmer, named for poet Joyce Kilmer, in New Jersey, where Kilmer lived.) In later years, the location of the camp was more clearly in the Ramapo Mountains of New York/Pennsylvania.

By the way, those who may have seen some of these stories in 1960s reprints in Fantasy Masterpieces may be interested to note that some items acceptable in the '40s were touched up for the '60s. The Butterfly, for example, pierced his victims with his long snout; the reprint implied he just leapt at them and knocked them down. The Hunchback of Hollywood, in his splash panel, was portrayed as a drooling, acromegalic monstrosity, toned down to simpler deformity for the '60s. And Igan and Gorro had their fangs pulled, literally as well as figuratively: Igan was redrawn to have two eyes, and Gorro had a rounder, more ape-like face.  O tempora, o mores!

Part 1: The War Years

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	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!"	The Mock Mikado	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	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"	The Reptile	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"	Herr Demon	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"	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 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"	The Creeper	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"	Medusa	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	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"	Prof. Kraut
Young Allies Comics #6 (Winter 1942): "The Comet of Doom"	Togo
Captain America Comics #22 (January 1943): "The Vault of the Doomed"	Doctor Eternity	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"	The Ring	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"	Izan	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	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"	Prince Ba'rahm	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!"	Count Varnis	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"	The Eel	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	Prince Kuhomai	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"	Togaro	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"	Karr the Mummy Modebl	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"	Ambassador of Terror
Young Allies Comics #7 (April 1943): "The Scratch of Death"	The Serpent
Captain America Comics #26 (May 1943): "The Princess of the Atom, Part II"	Togaro	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"	Baron Von Hartmann	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"	Baron Von Widemouth	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"	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"	Varda	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"	Gen. Leroux
Young Allies Comics #8 (July 1943): "Terror of the Rising Sun"	The Whip
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"