Captain America Movie T-Shirts

Marvel's biggest success during The Golden Age, and one of the top-selling superheroes of all time, Captain America is, first and foremost, a manifestation of patriotism. Cap was punching Hitler in the face a full year before the US ever entered World War II. When Pearl Harbor hit, Cap rode the wave of public spirit that followed,identifying himself forever with a period that may have been The Golden Age of the United States as much as it was The Golden Age of comic books.

In 1940, Captain America was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Simon wrote the first Captain America book with penciled lettering right on the drawing boards, and Kirby came in with finer detail, fleshing out the finished product. Cap is best symbolized by the shield he carries, though both Simon and Kirby had originally designed the shield to be triangular, but soon after made it round instead. It represents both defensive cover, as used by the Roman and Greek warriors of history, and as a target, to draw the attention of the assailants. When thrown like a discus, Cap's shiel also functions as a highly effective weapon. A safeguard that draws fire and then fights back, the shield is the perfect emblem for Captain America.

Simon said that Captain America was a consciously political creation; he and Kirby were morally repulsed by the actions of Nazi Germany in Europe and felt that it was inevitable that the U.S. would be a player in World War II: "The opponents to the war were all quite well organized. We wanted to have our say too."

Captain America Comics #1 — cover-dated March 1941 and on sale in December 1940, a full year before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but a full year into World War II. On the cover was Captain America punching Adolf Hitler in the jaw, the issue sold nearly one million copies. Even by today's standards, that's a hell of a lot of sales for just one issue.

Even though sales were strong, there were still those who objected. Simon noted, "When the first issue came out we got a lot of... threatening letters and hate mail. Some people really opposed what Cap stood for." With sidekick Bucky Barnes, Captain America continued to face the same threats that the U.S. and the Allies faced during World War II; primarily Nazis and Japanese. Captain America soon became Timely's most popular character and even had a fan-club called the "Sentinels of Liberty." Sales remained close to a million copies per issue. As a contrast, consider that the weekly circulation of Time magazine during the same period was 700,000 and that there were dozens of comic books on sale for every news magazine. "We were entertaining the world," Simon says.

Captain America's appeal was novel; he was not born with great power, but rather had it bestowed upon him as a gift. The champion of freedom started out as Steve Rogers, a scrawny 4-F rejected by the army and then redeemed by a dose of a "strange seething liquid" that turned him into a strapping specimen of heroic young manhood. It cold happen to anyone, even the ordinary reader. And part of the attraction was that Steve Rogers never became excessively gifted; he wasn't invulnerable - he was just tougher and braver and smarter than anyone else. The secret formula and its inventor were destroyied by saboteurs, and therefore Captain America was the only one of his kind, assigned by the government to disguise himself as a private in the army. The fact that many readers would soon find themselves in that very same army helped insure "Cap's" popularity; the new solders remained comic book fans, and they, too, hoped to be heroes in disguise. Meanwhile, the "kid buddy" showed up as Bucky Barnes, the teenage "mascot of the regiment" at Camp Leigh. Timely had already established the precedent of a younger, less powerful sidekick with The Human Torch's companion Toro, so readers without quite enough nerve to imagine themselves as the hero could at least identify with the eager young assistant and imagine themselves tagging along.

Cap's inspiring image also carried implicit intimation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, crippled by polio and yet a charismatic leader during the Depression and World War II. But there was more to Captain America than the simple patriotic ideal; dozens of other super heroes would wrap themselves in the American flag without making an equivalent impression on the reading public. Cap was a very special hero destined to appeal to readers for a very long time.

After World War II, with the popularity of superheroes began to fade, After Bucky was shot and wounded in a 1948 Captain America story, he was succeeded by Captain America's girlfriend, Betsy Ross, who became the superheroine Golden Girl. Captain America Comics ended February 1950 with issue #75, By this time the series had been titled Captain America's Weird Tales, for two issues, with the finale issue being a horror/suspense anthology issue that didn't even have Captain America in the story.

When the war ended, Captain America seemed to lose his purpose, he became almost irrelevant. His successful return in the 1960s however, ingeniously took advantage of the problem: Captain America was portrayed as a relic of a less complicated era, awakened like Rip Van Winkle. As he continued to reflect the spirit of the United States, Cap sought the meaning of freedom and patriotism in a time where counterculture and social revolutionary concepts reigned amongst the youth adn an era of irresponsible excess and flamboyance flourished; it was the "High Sixties," man! The 1960s became synonymous with the new, radical, and subversive events when many Americans saw patriotism as uncool, unquestioning loyalty to political leaders. If there was ever a time when Cap was needed, it was in the '60s.

Captain America was formally reintroduced in The Avengers #4 (March 1964), which explained that in the final days of WWII, Cap had fallen from an experimental drone plane into the North Atlantic Ocean, spending decades frozen in a block of ice in a suspended animation. Joining the Avengers, Cap quickly became the leader though "haunted by past memories, and trying to adapt to 1960s society."

You can visit the official Captain America movie page here.