Friday, May 11, 2012

A gratuitous post on "The Avengers" designed to draw web traffic

Welcome to Shameless Friday. Yes, even ephemeraologists have no shame.1

With "The Avengers" being the No. 1 movie in the country, I dug up an old comic book that features Captain America. The panels here are from the March 1968 issue of Marvel Super-Heroes, which features stories about Captain Marvel, Black Knight, the Human Torch, Vision, Captain America and Sub-Mariner, plus a full-page advertisement for The Mothers of Invention.2

The Captain America tale, drawn by John Romita Sr. and reprinted from a 1953 issue, is a tale of Cold War intrigue. The preface states:
"The champion of spy fighters comes face to face with the most dreaded killer in all the red spy network ... THE EXECUTIONER ... as Captain America fights to protect his country's TOP SECRET!"
Now I'm going to spoil the ending of the tale, which involves an "atomic cannon" test at the "Atomic Proving Ground at Frenchman's Flats, deep in the Nevada desert."

Here are the last two panels...



And I think sums up the United States in the 1950s about as well as anything, doesn't it?

Footnotes
1. We love, for example, rooting through your junkiest junk to find treasures.
2. Previous Papergreat posts involving comic books include:

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