Gene in January, Day Twenty TwoCaptain America #118 page 8 by Gene Colan and
Joe Sinnott https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1697029
Considering the publication history of "The House of Ideas," much of it can be
boiled down to one idea: "Let's make Captain America evil!"
There was the Acrobat disguised as Cap (Strange Tales #114), racist 1950s Cap,
Capwolf (the idea was evil), vampire Cap, and please miss me with that Black
Widow-killing Hydra Cap bullshit.
1969 gave us the best evil Cap in Captain America #115-119, where the Red Skull
used the cosmic cube to switch bodies with Steve Rogers. Following the Nazi
atrocities of WWII, the Red Skull raised the evil stakes in this sequence by
being curt to a hotel desk clerk (pictured here) and refusing to sign
autographs for fans. Now that's what I call evil!
Joe Sinnott over Gene Colan (Cap #116-124) is a complete delight. Masterful at
rendering form and surface, Sinnott's supple, graceful line moored the
eccentricities of artists like Jack Kirby and Gene Colan, but also refined
their pencil art into a hybrid four-color hyper reality that still stands out
as some of the medium's greatest work.
The absolute pinnacle of comics writing appears in panel five, the real reason
I "needed" to buy this page. This is the kind of dialogue you get when the
writer and the editor are the same person. As a child, I had to reread the
cheer that Stan wrote for the Cap fans several times to convince myself that I
wasn't hallucinating.
Imagine if the anti-war, civil rights, and feminist movements of the 1960s had
tasked Stan Lee with creating rousing slogans to chant at demonstrations and
marches? We might now be living in a parallel-universe America where
marginalized populations are relegated to second class status.
On further consideration, perhaps they should have given Stan a shot, after all.
Pax,Sean
