Now that Captain America has been hopelessly and irretrievably screwed up beyond all redemption by the current powers-that-be at Marvel, about the only thing that fans of the original version of the character have is the past stories published of America's most patriotic superhero to remember him by-- along with a bit of creative speculation about how he might have been successfully handled by the right creative team during the 1950s. This was a subject I touched on in a previous thread of over a year ago titled: "Why Did the Atlas Superhero Revival of the 1950s Fail-- and How Might It Have Succeeded?", and here I'm going to explore the issue in more detail focusing on Cap himself.

[Above: Captain America by illustrator Robert McGinnis, from a Bantam books paperback novel published during the 1960s.]
The question is: how do you take take this character from where he was in the 1940s and bring him to where he needed to be as a superhero in the decade of the 1950s Cold War era?
And despite what some may think (whatever their politics), if we're going to remain true to the man's character it's simply wishful thinking to imagine that the original Steve Rodgers Captain America wouldn't have been fighting the Soviets in some manner or another (though not exclusively so) during those years had he been active. Except for the remaining DC heroes at the time-- due to the company's willfully myopic editorial short-sightedness when it came to this subject-- the editors of many of the other remaining heroic strips did do so. Not only did the protagonists in Atlas' own espionage comics like Spy Thriller and others battle them, but Quality's Blackhawk and even characters as unlikely as Plastic Man and Captain Marvel in their own surreal worlds fought Communist villains from time to time during the 50s. Though there would have been room to explore other themes too, of course Cap would've been facing Communist foes in a credible 1950s revival, if for no other reason than Goodman would have insisted that he did.
So, what had to be done with Captain America in order to pull off something that was both possible to accomplish and also have been a creative (and at least a satisfactory sales) success for a few years during the 1950s? Here's a rundown of my suggestions:
First: Marvel would've had to devote a good deal more thought than they did for the 1950s Cap revival and been willing
to shell out some additional money to make it happen. To begin with, I don't think Stan would have been the right scripter for this book as I conceive it
(though he would have remained as editor of the title). What Goodman needed to do, in my opinion, is cut back on some of the lousy comics he was shoveling into
the market and use the savings to tap into and hire a couple of the other creative writers in his own publishing empire-- particularly the men's adventure
and crime magazines he owned (and some ideas from the best of the newspaper strips)-- to brainstorm with both them and Stan to develop Captain America further
beyond the 1940s version of the hero, though still making him accessible to a young male teenage readership.
Second : They had lure Kirby back on the strip to pencil it. It would have been difficult to get him during the early 1950s,
though if we assume that the new Captain America is only a bi-monthly I don't think it would have too much for him to handle with his other work.
But if an early 1950s launch doesn't happen, and they don't get around to revamping Cap until 1955, Kirby would have been leaving his failed
Mainline publishing effort with Joe Simon by that time, so in theory would have been available for the book. In that latter scenario, however, they also would
have had to work within the restraints of the Code Authority.
But-- both Simon and Kirby had an ongoing, unresolved controversy with Goodman dating from the 1940s about profits from Captain America, and
this remained a sticking point. So, without going into all the messy details of the matter, let's also stipulate that Goodman comes to some sort of
equitable financial settlement with Kirby to get him on board for the new book. At that point, as far as the art is concerned, all he needs is a good inker.
Unfortunately, though, Kirby had mostly indifferent inking on his artwork during the fifties, so in this imaginary version they make the effort to get Wally
Wood to provide the perfect finish his pencils. By the mid-1950s, Wood having just lost a publisher himself with the collapse of EC Comics at around this time,
could have been had for a price too, so Goodman should have thrown him the couple extra bucks a page it would have taken to get him. Below, several 1950s Kirby
art samples to give you a feel for the sort of visuals we would have seen from him-- first, part of a dramatic double-page spread from the adventure series
The Fly in 1959, and a short segment from the late 1950s Shield (aka The Double Life of Private Strong):
Also, here's two pages from Kirby's Fighting American #2 dating from this period; a story in which the hero's plane is crippled by enemy fire and crash-lands, and both he and his sidekick awaken in a foreign Communist base located atop Mount Shasta, where they're about to be executed by a Soviet general as the "first pre-[Cold War] criminals":
Just imagine Wood putting his own inking polish on this level of work, and now we're getting somewhere in crafting an interesting 1950s Captain America revival.
Third: My own preference would be to get rid of the kid, or at least slowly push him to the edge of the stories. Stan
didn't like boy sidekicks anyway. And in this new version, Captain America's most memorable adversary isn't necessarily the Red Skull. It's not
that I would mind seeing the former Nazi in the book battling Cap from time to time, but not simply as a cardboard figure with a Soviet hammer and sickle
insignia plastered on his chest, manically running around like an idiot. I'd prefer him to be a more remote, hidden and sinister international crime figure
along the lines of an Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the mastermind behind S.P.E.C.T.R.E. This would be in contrast with a daring new character that would be added to
the series. In this alternate version of Captain America's 1950s adventures, his main Soviet foe wouldn't be the usual sort of burly,
perfunctory Atlas villains we saw in the actual lackluster Lee/Romita tales.
It would be a dangerously lethal, sultry, Communist femme fatale.
What I'm thinking of is someone modeled along the lines of one of Will Eisner's strongest female villains like Sand Saref::
...and visually similar to the 1940s Airboy's Valkyrie--
She's first introduced in the strip as a dangerous Soviet espionage agent. But as the storyline progresses over many months clues are dropped that lead readers to believe that she may, in fact, be a double agent, and as the case with Airboy and Valkyrie, there's a hint of the Soviet spy's romantic involved with Captain America, too, a plot development that would have opened up some very interesting directions for the book to explore.
And for those who think the idea of having Cap deeply involved with this sort of character would have been outdated by that time, they should think again; it never really goes out of style. For a perfect example of what I mean, I've noticed that in the upcoming adventure movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which, coincidentally, is also set at about the same time in 1957:
....the rogue archaeologist is also battling the Soviets, and his main antagonist is a character who looks as though she's virtually modeled after Valkyrie. Take a look at this first photograph released by the studio of actress Cate Blanchett as "Agent Spalko" from the film (complete with pistol and sword), a female Soviet villain from the time when we considered Communists evil, rather than the butt of jokes about waiting in line for bread:
This is exactly the kind of character I'm talking about.
I think this concept works for Captain America. It's certainly a better idea than what we actually ended up with. Could Marvel have done this sort of thing with a Cap revival during the 1950s? I don't see why not. All it would have taken is a good deal more thought given as to how to go about it, borrowing from already established character ideas and plot lines from some of the best comic book and adventure writers of previous years, and doing their own riff on them-- with Kirby and Wood drawing the book. Done right, it would have really been outstanding. Too bad it never happened.
Even if the book had to eventually be canceled due to the later Atlas implosion, which limited both the number and type of comics that the company could distribute, it still would've been worth doing. In the end, Stan Lee simply revives Captain America in 1963 with essentially the same sort of backstory that he came up with, the only difference being that the hero's adventures had continued well into the 1950s-- with the result that he had became a much stronger, more interesting character for the experience.
