Captain America

With the overwhelming success of Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Iron Man, Thor and the Avengers for Marvel in the early 60's, it was virtually a no-brainer for Marvel in 1964 to bring back the hero that defined the company more than twenty years before : CAPTAIN AMERICA!

Turns out Cap was frozen in "suspended animation" since the late forties when in the process of pursuing a bad guy (turns out it was ZEMO!), he was plunged into the icy water and frozen - only the Super Soldier Serum coursing through his veins kept him alive within the block of ice - to be found by The Sub Mariner, and then the Avengers who proceeded to defrost him (see Avengers #4).

Of course he was kept from aging, and this "man out of time" became a member of The Avengers right away.

Flash forward only a matter of months , and Kirby stayed on board ffor 8 or 9 issuesnwhen he was given his own solo spot as the co-feature in the title inhabited by Iron Man, Tales of Suspense. There, we saw Steve Rogers struggling with this modern world, and haunted by the death of his 1940's partner Bucky Barnes, for which he felt resposible. And then the title gave us a real treat by running a number of stories based in WWII, with Cap and Bucky twarting the Nazi's and in particular their arch nemesis, THE RED SKULL.

The added treat is that most of Cap's Tales of Suspense entries were drawn by the man who co-created and originally drew him in the 40's, Jack Kirby. These are all fantastic, dramatically told issues.

It wasn't until the end of the run in 1968 that Marvel decided to give Captain America his own book, which took over the numbering from Tales, beginning with issue #100.

Don't worry, they gave Iron Man His own title, too!

Stan Lee still wrote the book for a while, but Kirby stayed on board for only 8 or so issues, after which point the book went through many different creative teams, most notably a lovely 3 issues from Jim Steranko, then turned over to Gene Colon and (still) Stan for quite a while. The most important event that occurred during this time was the introduction of THE FALCON in issue #117. The Falcon would become Captain America's official parter in issue #134.

Shortly after this, other writers and artists would take over, incuding writers Gary Friedrich and Steve Englehart - and Sal Buscema would helm the art duties for an extended period of time.

Suprisingly, JacK Kirby would return to Marvel in 1976 and would resume his duties, including writing, on Cap and The Falcon for a good year or so!

Other memorable runs continued to this day, Roger Stern, J.M. DeMatteis, John Byrne, Mice Zeck, Paul Neary, Mark Waid - all made significant contributions over the years.

The Captain America legacy continues to this day, with the great 2000's re-boot including the acclaimed Winter Soldier storyline, but classic Silver and Bronze Age books are particularly valuable. See examples in Quality Comix's online price guide!