For more than 60 years, Captain America served as an iconic figure in popular culture, and one of Marvel Comics' flagship characters. He represented everything good and positive about the classic American ideal - truth, strength, liberty, and an unflappable belief that justice would always prevail. When his alter ego, Steve Rogers, was assassinated by a sniper outside a federal courthouse, his death rocked the comic world and left fans and critics with numerous questions about his life and how it ended. Did he die a political casualty of the Global War on Terrorism, or was it just another Marvel marketing ploy? Had he become an anachronism in tights, or was he still a self-conscious, larger than life figure who tried to bear the full existential weight of what American military power had become? And how is his death in the Civil War series to be reconciled with his second death, in Morrell and Breitweiser's series ""The Chosen?"" This book brings such speculations into sharper focus, compiling critical essays by a wide range of authors, including art and literary scholars, professors and graduate students, historians, and ""Captain America"" writers. The range of topics discussed include the ways in which Nazi Germany was represented in ""Captain America Comics"" from the 1940s to his resurrection in the 1960s; the creation of ""Captain America"" in light of the Jewish American experience; the relationship between Captain America and Captain Britain, who was featured in a few rare UK Marvel comics; the groundbreaking partnership between Captain America and one of the first mainstream African American superheroes, The Falcon; and, the various successful and unsuccessful attempts that were made to kill Captain America before his 'real' death.
About the AuthorRobert G. Weiner is humanities librarian at Texas Tech University. His works have been published in the following journals: Journal of Popular Culture, Public Library Quarterly, Journal of American Culture and Popular Music and Society. He lives in Lubbock.
Book InformationISBN 9780786437030
Author Robert G. WeinerFormat Paperback
Page Count 243
Imprint McFarland & Co IncPublisher McFarland & Co Inc
Weight(grams) 478g