December 20, 1940: Captain America Debuts

December 20, 1940: Captain America Comics #1, with a publication date of March 1941, is published. It will still be nearly a full year before America enters World War II, but the cover shows the titular superhero giving Chancellor Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany a right cross. The publisher is Timely Comics, which will become Marvel Comics in 1961.

As created by writer Joe Simon (1913-2011) and artist Jack Kirby (1917-1994), both of them Jewish and with a vested interest in the defeat of the Nazis, Steve Rogers is a young man from Brooklyn, New York City, rejected for service in the U.S. armed forces because he's too skinny and weak. But his persistent patriotism gets him recommended for a new project, the U.S. Army's "super-soldier serum."

It's a success, and now, he is, ironically, the Aryan ideal: A tall, blond, blue-eyed man with great strength and superior reflexes. But the scientist who developed the serum is killed by a Nazi saboteur before he can use the serum, whose formula only he knows, on anyone else. There will be no army of American super-soldiers, just one, and Steve becomes "Captain America."

Under both his real name (with the mere rank of Private) and as Cap, Steve fights the Nazis all through World War II, along with his Army camp's teenage mascot, James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes, acting, to use an analogy to DC Comics, as Robin to his Batman. They fight Nazi super-soldiers such as the Red Skull and Baron Zemo, and lesser threats. Steve's star-spangled shield, whose design was adjusted from the first issue, becomes an item of offense as well as defense, as he becomes an expert at throwing it.

Cap became Timely's most popular character, and in 1944, he became the 1st character from what would become Marvel to appear in the movies, in a serial where he was portrayed by Dick Purcell. But after World War II, superhero stories declined in popularity, and Cap's appeal faded with the Nazis no longer a threat. The series was discontinued in 1950.

Dick Purcell as Cap

In 1964, Marvel revived the character, making him part of their superhero team The Avengers. They explained his absence by saying that he and Bucky were believed to have died on a mission just before V-E Day, May 8, 1945. Cap ended up frozen in the North Atlantic Ocean, revived by the Avengers, and had to adjust to a modern world, knowing that someone like him was needed again. It would be decades before Marvel explained that Bucky had survived, leaving Cap thinking that he hadn't, thus saddling him with survivor's guilt.

In addition to the Avengers, Cap forms alliances with Rick Jones, formerly sidekick to the Hulk, and who bears a freaky resemblance to Bucky (the first thing Cap noticed about him); and with Sam Wilson, a flying superhero known as the Falcon, who in 1969 became the 1st black American superhero in mainstream comics. (Black Panther debuted in 1966, but, as the king of a fictional African nation, was not American.)

After experimenting with Spider-Man and the Hulk in the late 1970s, CBS aired 2 Captain America TV-movies in 1979, starring Reb Brown with a somewhat different take on the character, one who was not involved in World War II, although his father was, and was heroic enough to be nicknamed "Captain America."

Reb Brown as a motorcyclist Cap,

complete with helmet

In 1990, a feature film was made, with Matt Salinger, son of author J.D. Salinger, playing a Cap that's revived in the present day, stunned to see that the Germans are now America's allies, but that the Red Skull has survived and leads a criminal organization, much like the comics' Hydra but not named as such in the film.

Matt Salinger as Cap

In 2001, Marvel launched the Ultimate Marvel series, with the idea of starting their legendary characters over in the present day, but otherwise getting them back to their roots. The twist with Cap was that he and Bucky started out as the same age, and as friends in Brooklyn, but that Bucky survived the war, and when Cap is thawed out in the present day, Bucky is an old man.

In 2011, the Marvel Cinematic Universe got around to Cap, releasing Captain America: The First Avenger. Chris Evans, who had previously played the Human Torch in 2 Fantastic Four movies, plays a Steve who has Bucky (Sebastian Stan) as a contemporary, and sees Bucky apparently die well before his own apparent sacrifice, but is otherwise the character previously known.

Chris Evans, the definitive Cap

The retcon (introduced in the 1960s) of his romance with British secret agent Peggy Carter, played in the MCU by Hayley Atwell, is played up, to the point where, when The Infinity Saga was finished with Avengers: Endgame, after putting the swiped Infinity Stones back to where and when they belonged, Cap stayed in the past, and lived out his life with Peggy, and, as an old man, handed his shield over to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), who becomes the new Captain America.

There have been occasional DC and Marvel crossovers. One was Amalgam Comics, which imagined DC heroes combined with Marvel heroes. Batman and Wolverine became Darkclaw, Wonder Woman and Storm became Amazon, and so on. Superman and Captain America were merged to become Super-Soldier.

I'd like to believe that each company's stories exist in the other's universe -- so that Superman's hero is Captain America, and vice versa.

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December 20, 1940 was a Friday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL scheduled no games for this date. So there were no scores on this historic day.