Captain of the Red, White, and Bland: Captain America's Early Days

Reading Chris Gavaler’s essay “The Imperial Superhero,” in conjunction with the first comic featuring Captain America, I found it interesting in how alike his predecessors and yet how different Cap’s purpose is from other superheroes.

It’s evident from the first Captain America story that the character is meant to be a safeguard against foreign invasion. In the comic, before Steve Rogers becomes Captain America, we are shown an America that has been infested by Nazi spies. This plays up fears many Americans had in dealing with Nazi Germany, that it would be possible for a foreign power to take over the United States.

In this regard, I read the early Captain America as a very isolationist hero. While other heroes are headquartered in America, particularly within New York, Captain America is specifically designed as an American champion meant to protect American interests. Where Gavaler discusses characters that gain their powers from exotic or alien lands, such as the Green Lantern who gains his powers from an alien ring, or are themselves foreign protectors like Wonder Woman the Amazon and Superman the Kryptonian. In contrast, Cap is a hero created by the American government, to be used at the militaries discretion. While to potential for Cap to be used as a colonial force, the comic presents him as a means of preservation and protection instead, leading me to believe that he is meant to keep the rest of the world out of America and isolate it from the rest of the world, even if Nazis need fighting before that can happen.

In other regards, Cap is very similar to other superhero characters of the time. He has an origin story that is grounded in pseudo-science, especially similar to characters like The Comet, who after an encounter with chemicals of some kind gain super abilities.

Interestingly, I found that the comic spends little time in discussing Cap’s personality, but rather spends this time explaining that his purpose will be to protect the United States as a soldier. Cap as a person is essentially nonexistent in relation to his ultimate purpose. This is not the case with characters like Superman who are given very distinct and identifiable personalities. Superman can be said to be cunning or manipulative, but Cap does not display any real qualities outside of I guess a sense of patriotism that suits his superhero name. As Steve Rogers he is still a bit of a blank slate. In his earliest form, Captain America seems to serve a wholly political purpose at the sacrifice of a narrative purpose.

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