Was Captain America's Debut Rushed For Fear Hitler Would Die 'Too Soon'?

CBR

By Brian Cronin

Published Dec 7, 2019

In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, learn if Captain America's debut was really rushed out for fear that Hitler would die before it came out!

Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and fifty-ninth installment where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.

As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends.

NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I'll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!

COMIC LEGEND:

Timely Comics rushed Captain America Comics #1 into print partially because Martin Goodman was worried that Adolf Hitler might be dead before the comic book came out

STATUS:

True

FRED VAN LENTE DAY CSBG TAKEOVER continues with a Comic Book Legend I got from Fred.

Captain America was not the first patriotic-themed superhero, but he quickly became the most famous of them all and part of his fame is likely owed to the brilliant comic book cover that was used for the first issue of Captain America's solo series, Captain America Comics #1, which featured, in December 1940, Adolf Hitler getting punched out by the new superhero...

Hitler was at war with the rest of Europe at the time, but it was a year before the United States entered the war, so drawing a world leader on a comic book getting punched like this was still a very big deal.

Martin Goodman had enough faith in the new character that he agreed to give Cap his very own series right off the bat, a real rarity in those days.

However, Goodman also wanted the book on the market FAST. One of the reasons for why I first saw in Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey's brilliant Comic Book History of Comics (which you can buy on sale from Comixology right now).

You see, Goodman was worried that Adolf Hitler would die before the book came out. Joe Simon recalled the Timely (now Marvel) publisher explaining, "The bastard is alive and in the center of a very explosive situation. He could get killed - even when our book is on the presses. Then where would be?"

Mark Gertis had that quote in his awesome book, Take That Adolf!

Goodman obviously hated Hitler, but it's hilarious to see part of his ire at that precise point in time was "Don't let him die before our comic book comes out!"

They went back to the Hitler well a few times...