Quick quiz! Who said the following in the 1950s:
1) “Americans play not to win, necessarily, but for the sake of good sportsmanship and fair play … which Nazis and Reds know nothing about at all!”
2) “Real Americans never turn Red!”
3) “If we can only teach [the Chinese] the rest of the real truth — that their own masters are the real killers … and that the United Nations are the only ones who can cure what ails them … with freedom and democracy!”
4) “I can’t believe an American boy would fall for Red hogwash!”
Was it Roy Cohn? Sen. Joe McCarthy? Vice President Richard Nixon? Elvis?
Nope — it was “Captain America … Commie smasher!” Or so said the legend on his comic-book covers of the ’50s, part of a brief superhero revival at Atlas Comics that lasted from 1953 to 1955.
I learned all this from “Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era Heroes Vol. 2″ ($59.99, Marvel Comics), which is the recently released second hardback (of three) collecting all the superhero stories published by Atlas Comics in the 1950s.
Which wasn’t many. Atlas (which was Timely Comics in the ’40s and became Marvel Comics in the ‘60s) was like most other publishers in the ’50s — it published few, if any, superhero books after most of them were canceled in the late ’40s.
And what few Atlas did publish mostly starred the three best-selling characters from its Timely incarnation during World War II: Captain America, Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch. But instead of fighting Nazis and Japanese, as they did in the ’40s, the “Big Three” were fighting Communists — which they usually called “rotten skunks,” or “dirty Reds,” or when they were really agitated, “dirty rotten Red skunks.”
That sort of jingoistic ultra-patriotism worked just fine in the ’40s, when we were fighting “Nips” and “Ratzis,” but somehow it didn’t work as well in the Cold War, which wasn’t as straightforward as WWII, included the unpopular “police action” in Korea and had the threat of nuclear armageddon. Looking back on it now, the ’50s dialogue alternates between laughable and chilling. Here, for example, is a caption that concluded “Come To the Commies!” in “Captain America Comics” #76 (May 54):
“Beware Commies, spies, traitors and foreign agents! Captain America, with all loyal, free men behind him, is looking for you, ready to fight until the last one of you is exposed for the yellow scum that you are!”
Yikes!
This volume is particularly heavy with propaganda, as it includes “Captain America Comics” #76-78, which is all of them from the ’50s. (”Captain America Comics” #1-75 were published by Timely from 1941 to 1950.) There’s also both superhero issues of “Men’s Adventures” (#27-28, May-July 54, which starred all of the Big Three), and the full ’50s run of “Human Torch” (#36-38, April-Aug 54, which starred the Torch, of course, but also had one Sub-Mariner story per issue).
The first two “Atlas Era Heroes” volumes pretty much wrap up all the appearances of Captain America and Human Torch (and Marvel Boy) from the ’50s. The third and final volume will be all “Sub-Mariner,” a title which lasted almost a year longer than the Captain America and Human Torch revivals. Why did Subby stay afloat longer – and why did all these revivals ultimately fail? Hard to say. According to the Introduction by comics writer and historian Roy Thomas, Atlas publisher Martin Goodman launched the revivals because “The Adventures of Superman” was a hit on TV. Apparently, the enthusiasm for TV superheroes didn’t carry over to comic-book superheroes.
And the quick demise of “Captain America Comics” (three issues) is particularly puzzling, as the Sentinel of Liberty was the biggest seller of the Big Three back in the ’40s. Howcum? Thomas provided some information in his Introduction:
“(Captain America artist) John Romita said (Atlas/Marvel editor) Stan (Lee) once told him that the ‘Captain America’ title was canceled ‘because of the backlash of the Korean War,’” Thomas wrote. “John felt Cap had become virtually a ‘dirty name’ for those who opposed that ‘police action’ — but that wouldn’t account for the other four series (being canceled).”
Well, that wasn’t very helpful.
But “Atlas Era Heroes Vol. 2″ itself is very interesting. The stories range from pretty good (Bill Everett’s Sub-Mariner) to gawdawful (most of the Cap and Torch stories), but they’re fascinating from a cultural, historical and/or sociological perspective.
Unless you’re a dirty rotten Red skunk!
Comics
Responses to “Superpatriots, Sizzlers and Sub-Mariners”
March 19th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Great stuff, Cap. I’ve read about 6 months worth of “Alter Ego” the past month or so, and they reference this era quite a bit. I will have to check this out.
As for the books being cancelled, isn’t it always about sales? Now if the question is, why didn’t they sale? That I wouldn’t know obviously it would only be supposition on my part.
March 19th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Of course you’re right, Travis, that it was poor sales what done in “Captain America,” “Human Torch,” Sub-Mariner,” “Men’s Adventures” and “Young Men” in the mid-1950s.
But why? Why, for example, was Captain America popular enough to sell well in every decade from his inception except the 1950s? And it was only a year after the cancellation of “Sub-Mariner” that DC’s Flash proved popular enough to launch the second great superhero age, the Silver Age. Why did superheroes not sell in 1953-55, but sell big from 1956 onward? Heck, both Sub-Mariner and Captain America were successfully revived just a few years after their mid-1950s cancellation (in in 1962’s “Fantastic Four” #4 and 1964’s “Avengers” #4, respectively.) And before that, of course, Marvel had a new, successful Human Torch in “Fantastic Four,” which debuted only seven years after “Human Torch” folded. What changed?
I just don’t know. And the Roy Thomas quote in the blog quoting John Romita is as about as close as Thomas comes to an explanation.
He does speculate a bit on Martin Goodman’s mindset though — Thomas thinks that there wasn’t enough lead time from the first book in the revival, “Young Men” #23, Dec 53, to know the sales numbers well enough to justify launching the three solo titles in the spring of 1954. Thomas thinks it was a gut feeling, that “Goodman bet on ’superheroes to win’ — and he lost.”
But it’s just speculation, and Thomas warns “as with many things from the early days of comics, we’ll probably never know.”
March 27th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Maybe “Sub-Mariner” was a “lightning in the bottle” thing. Wasn’t Jacques Cousteau starting to come on the scene in the mid-50s? And Lloyd Bridges’ “Sea Hunt” would be on TV by the late ’50s. Perhaps underwater adventure stories was what kids were interested in at this time.
I believe it was an interview with Bill Everett he stated that they were working on a “sub-Mariner” TV show because of th popularity of the comic and the Superman television show. Its fun to theorize though.
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