In honor of the seventy-fifth anniversary of Captain America this month, we're doing a countdown of your favorite Captain America stories of all-time.
You all voted, now here are the results of what you chose as the 75 Greatest Captain America Stories!
Enjoy!
10. "He Who Holds the Cosmic Cube!" Tales of Suspense #79-81
This three-parter by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Frank Giacoia and Don Heck, brought the Red Skull into the modern age at the same time as the Cosmic Cube was introduced, the reality-altering device that the Red Skull gets a hold of, leading to one of the most famous battles in Captain America history (a battle that has been done and redone countless times in the years since) as Red Skull is the king of the world and no one can stand against him but Captain America...
Tremendous work.
9. "Death of the Dream" Captain America (Volume 5) #25-30
This was the first arc of the three-part "Death of Captain America" saga (you could argue that this should just be one big "Death of Captain America" entry, but A. the three parts are pretty distinct stories, B. people voted for them separately for the most part and C. people who voted for other parts also voted for this part, so it's not like adding in the other parts would even move this one up at all - if you want to count them all as one big story, then Brubaker's "No Escape" arc and I believe Remender's "Loose Nuke" arc would make the Top 75) and this is the one that kicked off the second part of Ed Brubaker's epic Captain America run, as Steve Rogers is seemingly murdered after being arrested following the events of Civil War...
Steve Epting and Mike Perkins did the artwork for this story, which quickly turns into a team-up of Falcon, Winter Soldier, Black Widow and Sharon Carter as they try to learn who killed Steve, while Iron Man discovers Steve's wishes of what should happen to Captain America next...
8. "Death of the Red Skull" Captain America #293-300
This was the final arc of J.M. DeMatteis' run on Captain America, and he and artist Paul Neary (working with, no joke, almost a different inker every issue) brought the battle between Red Skull and Captain America to a final conflict as the Skull, now growing way old, decides to make Cap old, as well, to get his final revenge...
The whole thing deals with Baron Zemo and Black Crow and Nomad and Bernie Rosenthal, pretty much all of DeMatteis' run is represented in this arc.
Go to the next page for #7-6!
7. "Blood on the Moors" Captain America #253-254
Captain America goes to England where he teams up with his old Invaders buddies to take on Baron Blood. If this storyline only introduced a brand-new Union Jack, it would likely be well-remembered as yet another excellent Roger Stern/John Byrne/Joe Rubinstein Captain America adventure. But this one went one step further, with one of the great Cap fights of all-time...
What an amazing piece of storytelling.
6. "Captain America No More" Captain America #332-350
Mark Gruenwald teamed up with a young Kieron Dwyer (inked by Al Milgrom) for this epic storyline, where Steve Rogers is stripped of his shield and the secret identity of Captain America. The government appoints John Walker, the jerk known as Super-Patriot, to be the new Captain America and they assign him his own Bucky, although quickly changing it to Battlestar once they realized that calling a black guy "Bucky" was offensive. Steve Rogers, meanwhile, teams up with his old friends Falcon, Nomad and the new hero, D-Man, to fight crime under his own identity, the Captain.
Gruenwald masterfully wove together the two competing stories - the new Cap and Battlestar making their way as new heroes while the old Cap and his pals fought bad guys on their own terms. It was here, too, that Diamondback really started to remake herself to be "worthy" enough of being Cap's main squeeze. The most memorable mini-arc within the overall epic story is when Viper tries to turn the people of Washington D.C. into snakes, including Ronald Reagan himself!
Here's an example of how Gruenwald balanced the two simultaneous narratives...
By the end of the story, Steve was Cap again, but we gained a few new heroes, USAgent and Battlestar. It was a very satisfying epic arc. Well-crafted by Gruenwald, Dwyer and Milgrom.