Does America Need a Hero?

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Speaker 3 While most of you were playing ball in the sand locks, this war started.

Speaker 4 Adolf Hitler's all-out attack on Poland makes the long-dreaded European war a certainty.

Speaker 6 I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

Speaker 9 Steve Rogers was a scrawny kid growing up in New York.

Speaker 10 And to the Republic for which it stands.

Speaker 9 World War II was going on. The United States had not yet been involved.

Speaker 12 Adolf Hitler's mechanized forces are racing toward Paris as French resistance collapses.

Speaker 9 There was a lot of unrest going on in America of what was happening over in Europe and across the globe.

Speaker 3 We heard that a thing called the Nazi Party had taken over.

Speaker 9 He wanted to do what he could.

Speaker 12 A chance to help the Army Air Forces throw a punch that'll knock Hitler and Tojo bullagged.

Speaker 9 He tried to enlist, but was rejected for all types of purposes.

Speaker 7 One nation, indivisible.

Speaker 9 His size to having asthma, flat feet, with liberty. He just couldn't be enlisted.

Speaker 10 And justice for all.

Speaker 9 But that wasn't going to deter him.

Speaker 9 Eventually, this caught the eye of the U.S. military.
And so

Speaker 9 they were going through their own experiments at the time to develop what is known as the super soldier.

Speaker 9 They approached Steve Rogers and said,

Speaker 9 listen, you have the heart. Would you be willing to try to do this experiment for your government? And of course, he said, absolutely.

Speaker 1 Don't be afraid, son.

Speaker 16 You're about to become one of America's saviors.

Speaker 13 Calmly, the young man allows himself to be inoculated with strange, seething liquid.

Speaker 13 There!

Speaker 2 It is done!

Speaker 1 He's changing.

Speaker 16 We shall call you Captain America.

Speaker 18 The first issue of Captain America, it's a million seller.

Speaker 17 As the ruthless warmongers of Europe focus their eyes on a peace-loving America, the youth of our country heed the call to arm for defense.

Speaker 18 Lots and lots of people are reading comics.

Speaker 17 But great as the danger of foreign attack is the threat of invasion from within.

Speaker 18 Certainly, once you get into the war,

Speaker 18 tens of thousands of issues of comics are going out to GIs

Speaker 20 around the world.

Speaker 4 Death to the dogs of democracy!

Speaker 5 East and West, our nation is menaced as never before.

Speaker 21 And inside the Captain America comic books is this blonde-haired, blue-eyed, white, all-American super soldier. He wears a red, white, and blue costume that looks like a reimagined American flag.

Speaker 21 A big star on his chest, stripes tight against bulging muscles engineered engineered by the US government. His power is his superhuman strength.

Speaker 21 He carries no weapon, only a shield, and he fights only when he must.

Speaker 18 He's not someone who has always known power.

Speaker 18 So he is someone who knows what it is like to be the one getting sand kicked in their face. He's on the side of the little guy.

Speaker 7 Time for Captain America to go to work.

Speaker 2 Bam.

Speaker 21 Many of us know Captain America from the many Marvel movies he's in. But let's face it, out of all the superheroes, he doesn't have the coolest superpower.

Speaker 21 He can't fly or shoot webs or turn invisible. But what he does have going for him, aside from his super strength, are his morals.

Speaker 9 He's a character that all the other characters in Marvel look up to when they don't know what's the right thing to do.

Speaker 21 The right thing to do.

Speaker 7 I came here to save blood, not to shed it.

Speaker 21 In some ways, Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, is someone many of us might want to be or might want to believe in. Kind of like America itself.

Speaker 21 We want to live in a place that stands up to bullies, that knows right from wrong, and calls out injustice.

Speaker 21 And because Steve Rogers is this scrawny kid behind the mask, maybe he's someone we all can be.

Speaker 18 You are never going to be Superman.

Speaker 18 Unless you suddenly find a lot of money from somewhere, you are never going to be Batman.

Speaker 18 But.

Speaker 18 But there's always that chance, isn't there, that you could one day be Captain America.

Speaker 7 Justice will always triumph.

Speaker 13 You, me,

Speaker 21 any one of us, we could be the good guy doing the right thing.

Speaker 21 But what happens when what's right isn't so clear? How does a comic book hero designed to represent America's values survive in a changing world?

Speaker 21 I'm Rand Abded Fattah.

Speaker 16 And I'm Ram Teen Arab Louis.

Speaker 21 Coming up, producer Devin Katiyama brings us the story of Captain America's identity crisis and what happens next.

Speaker 13 I'm Abdul from Montreal, Canada. Captain America, he's a child of Irish immigrants, and that's really why I relate to him as a character, as an immigrant myself.

Speaker 13 Someone who's born from Paris from Senate Gal have taken on the American image in a sense, connecting to my American culture. You're listening to Through Line from NPR.

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Speaker 13 Part one,

Speaker 2 punching Nazis.

Speaker 13 Here's the front cover, issue number one of Captain America.

Speaker 13 Capt gives Hitler a right cross

Speaker 13 while Nazis shoot their pistols. There's a Tommy gun too.

Speaker 13 A ricochet off Captain America's red, white, and blue shield as if he's untouchable.

Speaker 13 It's December 1940.

Speaker 18 So you can see very clearly this front cover is making the case that we, Americans, can't stay out of this war. It is going to come to us eventually.

Speaker 13 This is Michael Goodrum.

Speaker 18 I am the author of Superheroes and American Self-Image, From War to Watergate.

Speaker 13 He's also a cultural history professor at Canterbury Christ Church University in England.

Speaker 18 So the first issue of Captain America Comics comes out a year before Pearl Harbor.

Speaker 3 For the first time in our history, we began mobilizing an army while still at peace.

Speaker 18 The U.S. doesn't have troops on the ground, but Roosevelt runs in 1940 on the platform of being the arsenal of democracy.

Speaker 24 We must be the great arsenal of democracy. For us,

Speaker 24 this is an emergency as serious as war itself.

Speaker 18 Supplying and supporting, but not direct involvement.

Speaker 13 Many Americans following the Depression and the brutality of World War I don't want to go to war. The U.S.
military is kind of small and the war hasn't reached U.S. shores yet.

Speaker 10 But

Speaker 10 that

Speaker 18 wasn't enough for some people.

Speaker 13 People like Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, the creators of Captain America.

Speaker 18 Both Simon and Kirby are Jewish.

Speaker 18 They know what is happening in Europe. They can't go over and fight, but they need to do something to try and get people involved.

Speaker 18 As Joe Simon says, that you were always on the lookout for the next great villain, and it was becoming hard to think of a worse villain than Adolf Hitler.

Speaker 13 That first issue of Captain America, the one where Cap's punching Adolf Hitler right in the face, sold around a million copies.

Speaker 13 And the audience was probably a lot bigger than that since comic books would get passed around like a Netflix login.

Speaker 13 It was mostly kids reading comics, but since they were sold on newsstands and in drugstores, a lot of people would have seen that front cover, including a group of Nazi sympathizers who terrorized Simon and Kirby.

Speaker 13 And it was in that moment, around the time the first issue came out, that a guy looking for work got a gig helping out.

Speaker 25 Stan Lee is probably

Speaker 25 the best known figure in American comic books ever.

Speaker 13 Stan Lee went on to help create hundreds of superheroes, iconic ones like Spider-Man, Black Panther, The Hulk, Iron Man, X-Men.

Speaker 25 Stan really is kind of a Walt Disney kind of figure. Strangely enough, Disney now owns Marvel.

Speaker 13 This is Danny Fingerroth. He worked with Stan Lee as a comic book writer and editor for years.

Speaker 25 He also wrote A Marvelous Life, The Amazing Story of Stan Lee.

Speaker 13 So Stan got this job as an assistant to Simon and Kirby, running errands, proofreading, the background stuff.

Speaker 13 But then in just the third issue, they ask him to write a short storyline for Captain America. It's only a couple of pages, but in it, you start to see iconic pieces of Cap's identity being born.

Speaker 18 Captain America throws his shield.

Speaker 13 He hurls the spinning disc across the room, knocking a knife out of a bad bad guy's hand.

Speaker 18 What an iconic thing that would go on to become.

Speaker 13 And all of a sudden, Cap's main prop, this tool for defense.

Speaker 18 You can hide behind the shield.

Speaker 20 Great.

Speaker 13 Becomes a weapon.

Speaker 13 And Stanley would get more chances to write over the next year as Captain America became this Nazi fighting machine.

Speaker 13 And then, December 1941,

Speaker 13 the U.S. enters the war.

Speaker 13 The following year, Stan enlists in the army, working in military communications. But on the side, he keeps writing Captain America.

Speaker 7 Today, a terrible menace is closing in upon us from all sides. It is the menace of fascism.

Speaker 12 One of these new worlds must break asunder.

Speaker 7 Things are in turmoil in the East. A bold stroke would put power in the hands of anybody.

Speaker 13 Cap fights Nazi saboteurs and Japanese soldiers. And I'm not gonna lie, the art didn't age well.
There were a lot of racist stereotypes, but patriotism sold well during the war.

Speaker 13 Stan even included not-so-subtle messages for Americans to sacrifice for the greater good.

Speaker 7 You know that it's the duty of every American to buy war stamps and bonds.

Speaker 2 And then, as the Allied powers start winning the war, something strange happens.

Speaker 13 The popularity of superheroes begins to fade.

Speaker 18 It's difficult to have superheroes fighting the war when

Speaker 18 you are fighting the war, your brother is fighting the war, your dad, your uncle,

Speaker 18 real people are fighting and winning.

Speaker 22 1944, the tide is turning.

Speaker 26 We shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war.

Speaker 13 And then in August of 1945, the U.S. drops two atomic bombs on Japan.
One on Hiroshima.

Speaker 26 If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.

Speaker 13 And then a few days later, on Nagasaki, Japan agrees to surrender, and the war ends.

Speaker 13 After the war, America emerges as a global superpower. There's relief, there's a little bit of optimism, but for Captain America, there are some big questions about what comes next.

Speaker 13 Because what does a superhero engineered by the U.S.

Speaker 2 military do when the war is over? Who does he fight?

Speaker 13 What's his role in the country? And what is America?

Speaker 25 Captain America, without a big war that the country is involved in, almost becomes directionless.

Speaker 7 I've been getting restless, and I've got to go back to work.

Speaker 13 So in 1946, Stan tries to address the private life of Captain America.

Speaker 7 I'll take a run down to this school.

Speaker 13 Cap becomes a teacher, but he also goes on to fight criminals and monsters, and he doesn't have a clear enemy or purpose. The genres of comics were also expanding.
Romance, Western, crime.

Speaker 13 At one point, in 1949, Captain America gets into horror and is brought down to hell by this satanic dude.

Speaker 2 Very worried.

Speaker 13 But to be relevant again, Captain America needs a worthy enemy. One that the entire country can rally behind.

Speaker 13 And then...

Speaker 13 The Cold War.

Speaker 19 We all know the atomic bomb is very dangerous. In recognizing a communist, physical appearance counts for nothing.

Speaker 12 Since it may be used against us, we must get ready for it.

Speaker 19 Freedom-loving peoples all over the world stand alert to the menace of communism.

Speaker 9 Captain America was no longer needed to fight Nazis or to fight the Japanese army or saboteurs.

Speaker 13 This is Rick Verbonas, co-host of the Captain America Comic Book Fans Podcast.

Speaker 9 Now there was a new villain. Now there was a new threat, and that was communism.

Speaker 13 So in 1954, Cap's like, all right, I got it.

Speaker 18 He comes back as Captain America Commissmasher.

Speaker 23 Commissmasher.

Speaker 13 And he's fighting shady-looking dudes, but he's also fighting guys like an all-American star athlete and scholar.

Speaker 18 The kind of boy that all good American boys should be looking up to.

Speaker 8 Hmm.

Speaker 7 Reminds me of someone.

Speaker 13 Who's secretly a communist spy trying to influence the young minds of Americans? Comrade,

Speaker 13 you have done a fine job all these years.

Speaker 11 Are you ready?

Speaker 5 I am, Comrade.

Speaker 18 And he decides he's going to blow up the UN building in New York.

Speaker 14 Give up the UN. Let each country have peace or war as it wishes.

Speaker 7 He's a Red spy, and we've got to prove it.

Speaker 13 Cap stops the bomb from exploding, takes down the spy, who admits, I work for the Reds.

Speaker 5 It's all a communist plot.

Speaker 7 And at the end of the story, Captain America says, Americans play not to win, necessarily, but for the sake of good sportsmanship and fair play, which Nazis and Reds know nothing about at all.

Speaker 18 So again, it's that kind of conflation of fascism and communism.

Speaker 13 But these ideologies are different.

Speaker 13 Fighting communism wasn't the same as fighting fascism and the Nazis. The enemy during the Cold War wasn't as clear and wasn't even necessarily over there.

Speaker 13 It could be within the country itself.

Speaker 12 Even if there were only one communist in the State Department, there could still be one communist, too many.

Speaker 13 By the early 1950s, all kinds of people were being labeled communists. The Red Scare, the Lavender Scare, Hollywood had its blacklists.

Speaker 2 It was a witch hunt.

Speaker 27 Don't you think the American people are entitled to know whether you admit or deny that you're a member of the Communist Party?

Speaker 13 And pretty soon, in 1954, comic books would be put on trial too. Comic books are an important contributing factor in many cases of juvenile delinquency.

Speaker 13 At the same time the McCarthy hearings against communism were happening, The Senate also held hearings concerning the influence of comic books on kids.

Speaker 18 The star witness for the prosecution, as it were, is Frederick Werthem.

Speaker 13 A German-born psychiatrist who is generally considered a progressive thinker. He also wrote a book called Seduction of the Innocent.

Speaker 13 I hate to say that, Senator, but I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic book industry.

Speaker 18 He turns up with a whip that he's bought out of the back of one of the comics.

Speaker 13 And his message? That comic books are damaging the minds of of children because of their gruesome images, their violence and sexual or racist depictions.

Speaker 18 Not very many people come to the defense

Speaker 20 of comics.

Speaker 13 And in the middle of these Senate hearings, Captain America fades away. And a lot of other comics do too.

Speaker 18 The Senate hearings make comics toxic.

Speaker 18 No one wants to go near comics after this.

Speaker 13 Amidst these hearings, fearing federal regulation, the comic book industry established its own censorship system known as the Comics Code. It would limit what comics could do.

Speaker 13 No sex, drugs, or anything bad about authority.

Speaker 18 Good always has to be shown to win, and good is defined as the law, politicians, all the way up to

Speaker 18 the very elite of the American legal and political system.

Speaker 13 In other words, the establishment.

Speaker 18 It becomes very difficult for comics to do

Speaker 18 any social criticism.

Speaker 13 But the United States was going through its own identity crisis, and soon the counterculture of the 1960s would start clashing. with the establishment and Captain America would return.

Speaker 13 That's coming up.

Speaker 28 Hi, this is Leah Hager, and I am calling from Fort Collins, Colorado, just to rave about Through Line. Every episode I listen to is,

Speaker 28 I don't know, it sounds extreme, but maybe a little life-changing, especially episodes that touch on the heart of issues that are going on in our world today.

Speaker 28 And you're listening to Through Line from NPR.

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Speaker 2 Part 2:

Speaker 13 A Man Out of Time.

Speaker 9 So in this block of ice is just a dark silhouette of a figure.

Speaker 13 A shadow.

Speaker 9 But you don't know who it is.

Speaker 9 And it's starting to slowly dissolve.

Speaker 9 And then we see a bit of a hand poke out of the ice.

Speaker 10 A human bare hand.

Speaker 9 Slowly melting and floating away.

Speaker 13 In 1964, Iron Man, Giant Man, Wasp, and Thor, the Avengers, are cruising in their submarine and they find this body suspended in animation. locked in an iceberg, dissolving in the ocean.

Speaker 9 They pull him out of the water into the submarine.

Speaker 2 Who can he be?

Speaker 13 And realize, wait, it's the famous red, white, and blue garb of Captain America. He's breathing.
His eyes, they're flickering.

Speaker 9 It's him.

Speaker 13 This is Rick Verbonas, co-host of the Captain America Comic Book Fans podcast.

Speaker 13 He says after the comics code is established, DC Comics starts reimagining some of their legacy superheroes. and Marvel responds by creating new superheroes of their own.

Speaker 13 But this time, they make them more reflective, flawed, human, and superheroes start making a comeback. So Stan Lee over at Marvel says, which of our legacy characters should we bring back?

Speaker 9 Stan Lee was the ultimate marketing guru.

Speaker 13 And when Captain America reappears in 1964, frozen in ice, Stan told fans on the inside cover of the comic book that Cap's comeback was because they demanded it.

Speaker 9 Maybe that's true.

Speaker 29 A tale destined to become a magnificent milestone in the Marvel Age of comics, bringing you the great superhero which your wonderful avalanche of fan mail demanded.

Speaker 9 You're getting a heavy sales pitch here.

Speaker 25 Stan somehow made this appearance of Captain America the most important event of my life.

Speaker 13 Again, Danny Fingeroth, the author of A Marvelous Life, The Amazing Story of Stan Stan Lee.

Speaker 25 I bought three copies. That's right, I invested 36 cents.

Speaker 13 In that issue, Avengers number four.

Speaker 13 Captain America's been frozen in ice for about 20 years since the end of World War II. And when he thaws out, the Avengers bring him to New York.

Speaker 9 He sees the differences in the styles.

Speaker 7 The fashions.

Speaker 13 The hairdos. He sees two women with their hair piled high in beehives.

Speaker 7 How different they are.

Speaker 9 The cars are different.

Speaker 13 He's looking at a small green convertible.

Speaker 9 The New York skyline is different.

Speaker 13 And later at a hotel, he's watching TV for the first time.

Speaker 16 What happens next?

Speaker 9 And he really is truly a man out of time.

Speaker 5 I don't belong in this age. In this year.
No place for me.

Speaker 13 Tectonic generational shifts were happening in American society. The civil rights movement was going on, the women's rights movement.
The president had been assassinated.

Speaker 13 The war in Vietnam was escalating. I mean, we were building rocket ships to the moon.

Speaker 25 Cap became this like Hamlet kind of character, just always with his hand stapled to his forehead in grief and anguish.

Speaker 9 Stan Lee is making

Speaker 9 Steve Rogers a human.

Speaker 13 Steve Rogers, that scrawny kid behind Captain America's heroic mask.

Speaker 7 All my life, I've tried to find a place for Steve Rogers, but he still lives under the more colorful shadow of Captain America.

Speaker 9 Steve questions his place in the world.

Speaker 7 Am I destined to go through life with no real identity of my own?

Speaker 9 His place

Speaker 9 in modern society.

Speaker 7 This is a new world, a new age, an age of atomic power, space exploration, social upheaval, and yet an age over which the threat of war hangs heavy once again.

Speaker 9 And he questions whether or not he's a relic.

Speaker 7 And so long as danger beckons, there's still a need for an old relic like Captain America.

Speaker 13 And it wasn't just Stan and Cap who were thinking about the character's identity.

Speaker 13 Marvel was also printing letters from fans inside the comic books where they would debate who Cap should be, what he should stand for, and really what does it mean to be an American hero?

Speaker 13 His roots belong in the past, not now.

Speaker 9 There were a lot of different letters that came in that were basically saying the same thing. No one but a dreamer can think the world is safe and peaceful.

Speaker 9 You know, we need a Captain America in our world today. Comics are based on patriotism.
And then others were like, ah, you know, he no longer serves a purpose in this world.

Speaker 9 The dear captain is far from a war lover. Cap is a a war lover.
We don't need a patriotic symbol. I see nothing wrong with Captain America being a conservative or a lover of America.

Speaker 9 You guys know that Cap is a defender of the establishment.

Speaker 13 Most Captain America comics in the late 1960s had at least one letter arguing about Captain America's identity. It became known as the patriotism-centered controversy.

Speaker 13 Captain America is not a superhero, he's a super American.

Speaker 25 Stan saw things were changing and he also saw that his audience was changing. So it was a big problem for somebody in entertainment like that.

Speaker 25 You know, if you take a stand on an issue, you potentially lose half your audience.

Speaker 13 But it became harder for Stan to ignore his audience, especially since he'd been touring colleges and speaking with students who were talking to him about war and peace and civil rights just as much as they wanted to talk about his comics.

Speaker 13 So he tries to respond in different ways. He creates the Falcon, one of Marvel's first black superheroes.
And the Falcon is introduced in a Captain America comic. But it's trickier than that.

Speaker 13 Because what does an Uber patriot from an older generation think about things like racism and segregation or the war in Vietnam? Which side does he fall on?

Speaker 18 Superheroes are good at a lot of things, but certainly in the 60s, they're not great at complex

Speaker 18 interventions.

Speaker 13 Michael Goodrum wrote about this in his book, Superheroes and American Self-Image. And he says one place where it gets complex for Captain America is on college campuses.

Speaker 18 Captain America engages with two different student protests in two different ways.

Speaker 13 It's 1969, and by now there have been a lot of high-profile protests on college campuses over civil rights, gay rights, women's rights, and of course, the war in Vietnam.

Speaker 13 And Captain America is still wondering what his role in society is.

Speaker 5 If I gave up this life, what would it really matter?

Speaker 13 But he's cap, so.

Speaker 18 He's sent kind of undercover as a gym teacher to investigate why a student leader has suddenly become a rabble-rouser.

Speaker 9 he sees that there's these protests seem to be getting a little out of hand

Speaker 2 a student is kind of roughing around a professor the student is mark baker our most articulate most respected student leader it turns out that mark baker has been brainwashed

Speaker 13 And another student, passing as a radical hippie, is doing the brainwashing on behalf of a supervillain.

Speaker 13 His name is Grizzly.

Speaker 9 Of course it is. Don't listen to him, Marsh.
We can take him. It really conveys a feeling of violence about to erupt.

Speaker 13 And so Cap gets in the middle of it.

Speaker 7 If they have to call the police, then anything may happen. But maybe Captain America can break him up before it's too late.
But I've got to be careful. I'll be facing students, not super villains.

Speaker 13 And it's subtle. You can see that Captain America has some empathy for the students who want more respect, but he's still fighting for the establishment.

Speaker 13 He takes down the radical students, saves a professor, and then the dean kind of lectures the student leader at the end.

Speaker 13 You're still free to dissent, but let's try for a little education between riots, okay?

Speaker 18 The implicit line of that is

Speaker 20 student radicalism is harming us.

Speaker 18 It could be a cover for

Speaker 15 bad things, right?

Speaker 13 But this younger generation wasn't being silenced.

Speaker 13 And in May of 1970, the opposition to the war in Vietnam would reach a turning point when the National Guard killed four students at Kent State who were protesting.

Speaker 13 Whether or not it was on Stan's mind when he was writing Captain America, it was definitely on the minds of people in the United States.

Speaker 18 The next time Stan Lee writes a student protest, it's quite different.

Speaker 9 He sees that there's a lot of armored policemen, helmets and batons,

Speaker 9 going up against civilians.

Speaker 7 Here's where I ought to step in and make like a swinging hero. And Cap thinks to himself, but how do I know whose side to take?

Speaker 15 What the heck?

Speaker 7 The cops don't need any help, but these kids do.

Speaker 18 So Captain America intervenes on the side of the students against the police.

Speaker 13 Cap still doesn't quite understand why some students feel like they have to resort to violence and can't be more like him, measured and reasonable.

Speaker 13 And this is where having strong morals gets tricky because applying those morals, doing the right thing, in real life means that you're often taking sides, which Cap does.

Speaker 13 Later, he's asked to read a speech on television promoting law and order, and he breaks from the script.

Speaker 5 I've been asked to speak to you today to warn America about those who try to change our institutions.

Speaker 5 But, in a pig's eye, I'll warn you.

Speaker 5 This nation was founded by dissidents, by people who wanted something better.

Speaker 5 There is nothing sacred about the status quo, and there never will be. I don't believe in using force or violence because they can be the weapons of those who would enslave us.

Speaker 5 But nor do I believe in an establishment that remains so aloof, so distant, that the people are driven to desperate measures.

Speaker 13 The audience both loved and hated this story, according to Stan Lee.

Speaker 13 And a few months later, Stan wrote an editorial in a Captain America comic responding to critics who didn't think Marvel should do stories about politics or civil rights or the environment, what Stan called real issues.

Speaker 13 And he wrote that he was hearing it from all sides, saying, quote, we're just trying to make some sense out of the nutty news items and ridiculous reports that assail our senses every minute.

Speaker 13 If we can make you think, if we can anger you, arouse you, stimulate, and provoke you, then we've served our purpose.

Speaker 22 It's a dialogue with the Times.

Speaker 18 They're leading a discussion that is then helping people to work out how they fit in the country and how they conceive the country.

Speaker 25 Everybody has a different interpretation of what Captain America is and who he should be. In the 50s, the villains were the commies.
And then you get to the 60s.

Speaker 25 And what does Captain America stand for? And that's really been an issue with Captain America ever since he was thought,

Speaker 25 you know, in 1964.

Speaker 13 Coming up, as the U.S. sinks deeper into Vietnam, a conscientious objector becomes the voice of an American war hero.

Speaker 13 You're listening to Through Line from NPR. I'm Jack from New Jersey, and Captain America is my favorite character of all time, as he acts as a constant reminder of what the American dream should be.

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Speaker 2 Part 3:

Speaker 2 The Secret Empire.

Speaker 13 Good to meet you.

Speaker 2 I'm Devin. Yeah, hi, Devin.

Speaker 13 This is comic book writer Steve Englehart. I met up with him at his home in Oakland, California.

Speaker 13 Should I take my shoes off?

Speaker 2 No, I don't care.

Speaker 13 Steve has worked on everything from X-Men to the Avengers to Batman

Speaker 13 and Captain America, which he took over writing in the 1970s. We'll get to how that happened in just a bit.

Speaker 2 I always wanted a secret room like Batman had, you know, where you go through the grandfather clock and go into the cave or whatever.

Speaker 13 At this point, Steve walks me into his den.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 we built this.

Speaker 13 It's a bookcase that's a secret door.

Speaker 2 Unfortunately, it drags on the floor, so it'll have to like mess with it.

Speaker 13 We walked through the bookcase and were immediately met with sunlight streaming through the windows. Not exactly Bat Cape vibes, but pretty cool.

Speaker 13 And the room is lined with shelves full of cases of comic books.

Speaker 2 This is the 50s Captain America,

Speaker 2 and then in the next box, I guess. And are these organized by issue or are they just by issue? Well, by title, All My Captain Americas, and then we then we go to Doc Savage.

Speaker 13 10-year-old Steve would have been in awe of this secret comic book layer. Comics were one of his first passions in life.

Speaker 13 Although, by the time he got to college, he wasn't exactly planning a future in comic writing.

Speaker 2 I graduated from college with my degree, and I got accepted at law school at the University of Michigan, actually.

Speaker 13 But it was 1969. The Vietnam War was raging, and he was expecting his draft orders to come down any day.

Speaker 3 I do not find it easy

Speaker 30 to send the flower of our youth, our finest young men, into battle.

Speaker 12 We did not choose to be the guardians at the gate,

Speaker 3 but there is no one else.

Speaker 2 I had no interest in fighting a war, but, you know, you're a young American male at the time period. You can either flee to Canada or you can just say this is the way it is.

Speaker 2 So I enlisted and chose journalism.

Speaker 2 I was in basic training at Fort Knox and there was another guy from Indianapolis where I was living by that time.

Speaker 2 I didn't know him but because we were both from Indianapolis we kind of bonded during the basic training.

Speaker 2 He went to Vietnam

Speaker 2 and was there about three days and stepped on a landmine and blew his legs off and took a week to die from what I heard.

Speaker 13 Steve was hearing a lot of stories like that on the base. People coming back from Vietnam disillusioned and broken, including his sergeant in the journalism office.

Speaker 2 The sergeant had made himself an ashtray and he put the American flag to cal on the bottom of the ashtray so he could grind his cigarettes out on it.

Speaker 13 In other words, like, this is what the American flag deserves.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 And so, eventually, I decided that I was going to get out of all of this.

Speaker 13 Steve asked to leave the army on the grounds that he was a conscientious objector.

Speaker 2 If I had lost the case, I would have been in Saigon the next day.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 then the orders came down that I was allowed to get out, and I left.

Speaker 2 I hopped on a train. went up to New York and started trying to get into comics.

Speaker 13 It was 1970, and New York was the place to be if you had dreams of writing for the two big comic publishers, DC or Marvel.

Speaker 2 I ended up living in a sixth-floor walk-up in the Bronx with three other guys and one of the guys' mothers.

Speaker 2 You know, it was like your whole starving artist come to New York, get started kind of thing.

Speaker 13 He took whatever work he could find.

Speaker 2 One-page fillers, mysteries, or romances, or, you know, backgrounds for other better artists.

Speaker 13 And eventually, in 1971, he lucked into a position at Marvel.

Speaker 2 One of the people I knew was the writer on Nick Fury, Agent of Shield, and he called me up and he said, I'm going to be gone six weeks. Can you, you know, take over my job at Marvel?

Speaker 2 At the end of six weeks, decided not to come back.

Speaker 13 Which meant Steve could keep the job at Marvel.

Speaker 2 Eventually, I got the Beast from the X-Men,

Speaker 2 and they liked the way I was doing The Beast. So then, like, two months later, they came to me and said, okay, Captain America, this book is not doing well.

Speaker 2 It was Marvel's least successful superhero book.

Speaker 13 And so they tell Steve, hey, we'd love it if you could take one last stab at reviving this defunct superhero.

Speaker 2 We're not really necessarily expecting you to figure something out, but, you know, maybe you can.

Speaker 13 So Steve goes home and rereads every issue of Captain America he had.

Speaker 13 And he begins to wonder if maybe where the writers before him went wrong was trying to equate Captain America with the American government or military, with institutions. Instead, Steve thought,

Speaker 2 What if he stood for American ideals?

Speaker 2 The stuff that transcends whatever America's doing at this particular time?

Speaker 2 So I wrote my first story with that in mind:

Speaker 17 Captain America, America, hero or hoax.

Speaker 13 In this new storyline, there are two Captain Americas.

Speaker 21 A fake one?

Speaker 13 I am Captain America.

Speaker 11 Your friend is some pinko who has duped the American public, who's trying to sell out this great nation to the Reds.

Speaker 13 This cap is a racist cap who beats up black people in Harlem and is still obsessed with fighting communists.

Speaker 11 We found that most people who weren't pure-blooded Americans were commies.

Speaker 13 And then there's the real cap who's become more progressive.

Speaker 7 You think I'm a traitor?

Speaker 2 Grow up, fella.

Speaker 7 Times have changed. America is in danger from within as well as without.

Speaker 13 The two of them fight.

Speaker 8 Bam.

Speaker 2 And the real cap wins.

Speaker 13 And so does Marvel. This storyline made Captain America Comics bestsellers again.

Speaker 2 And just as Steve gets going, they caught the Watergate burglars breaking into the Watergate Hotel to burgle the Democrats.

Speaker 17 The incident raises a number of serious questions about the credibility of politicians and political groups.

Speaker 13 By 1973, it was becoming clear that the Nixon administration might have had a hand in the break-in.

Speaker 13 I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their president's a crook. Well, I'm not a crook.

Speaker 13 Steve was hooked on this story, as was most of America, and he tuned into updates as he packed up his apartment into a U-Haul, preparing to cross the country for a big move out west.

Speaker 13 Meanwhile, he was working on something new for Captain America. And when he finally hit the road, the radio was a constant companion.

Speaker 13 Once again, on all things considered, we're going to sample some opinions concerning Watergate.

Speaker 2 So I'm driving all day long, listening to Watergate.

Speaker 4 Otherwise referred to as the Caper of the Bungled Buggy.

Speaker 2 Thinking about America.

Speaker 2 There's a feeling of frustration and bitterness and cynicism all over the country about seeing the country change from the east coast into the Midwest flatlands and the rolling hills.

Speaker 5 In Maryville, Missouri.

Speaker 2 The Rockies, deserts, and mountains.

Speaker 17 What is Watergate?

Speaker 8 Might be something like a watermelon, only it's a Watergate.

Speaker 13 All the while, Steve is asking himself, if I were Captain America,

Speaker 2 what would I do?

Speaker 13 And by the time he got to California, his new storyline for Captain America was complete.

Speaker 17 The Secret Empire.

Speaker 2 I wasn't writing a crime documentary. I was writing a Captain America comic book.

Speaker 2 So I recast stuff.

Speaker 2 Nixon's right-hand man was Haldeman, who had been an advertising guy. And I came up with a character called Harderman, who was an advertising guy.

Speaker 2 And Nixon's re-election committee was the committee to re-elect the president, which was known as Creep.

Speaker 2 And I came up with the Committee to Regain America's Principles, which is known as CRAP.

Speaker 2 Captain America one day discovered that there were ads being run by the Committee to Regain America's Principles saying that Captain America was a vigilante,

Speaker 2 not to be trusted. Then Captain America got thrown in jail.

Speaker 23 Suddenly, the jailhouse wall bursts into bits.

Speaker 2 And eventually, he broke out of jail.

Speaker 18 Ultimately, they work out

Speaker 18 that the Secret Empire is behind all this.

Speaker 13 Michael Goodrum is the author of Superheroes and American Self-Image.

Speaker 18 The Secret Empire is a secret organization that is aiming for greater power than democracy would allow them.

Speaker 18 And the head of the Secret Empire, Captain America, has a showdown with him.

Speaker 8 Do not force my hand.

Speaker 2 Captain America chased him into the White House, into the Oval Office.

Speaker 7 Alright, mister, into the line.

Speaker 8 I gambled on a coup to gain me the power I craved, and it appears that my gamble has finally failed.

Speaker 13 And he proves to be no match for Captain America.

Speaker 2 Defeated. He blows his brains out in front of Captain America.

Speaker 2 You never see his face, but nobody is in doubt, really, who that's supposed to be.

Speaker 2 I couldn't kill Richard Nixon in the comic book.

Speaker 13 Why couldn't you make him Nixon? Was that too far?

Speaker 2 I thought so. I mean that was my decision, right? It was all up to me.

Speaker 2 There was no editorial pushback at all from Marvel.

Speaker 2 I always thought he was like a New Deal liberal, that, you know, he was a Roosevelt guy. He'd grown up with Roosevelt as the president.

Speaker 13 And so he would have believed in the government's power to fix society's problems.

Speaker 2 So to have that guy find out that the president was a crook,

Speaker 2 I saw the possibilities of that guy being disillusioned.

Speaker 18 Once Captain America has had this showdown, he loses his faith in America.

Speaker 5 I'm the one who's seen everything Captain America fought for become a cynical sham.

Speaker 18 So

Speaker 18 he stops being

Speaker 18 Captain America

Speaker 18 because he doesn't want to give the ideological support of him dressing up in the American flag to the government. He thinks that they're all corrupt.
I can't defend them.

Speaker 18 So he becomes Nomad,

Speaker 18 the man without a country,

Speaker 18 and

Speaker 18 carries on trying to fight crime.

Speaker 13 Did you feel like it was a big risk to change his identity, to basically, you know, be anti-establishment?

Speaker 13 I mean, Captain America for so long was pro-establishment, and now all of a sudden you flip the script.

Speaker 2 Well, the world was anti-establishment in those days. The energy was with

Speaker 2 young people.

Speaker 2 He doesn't want to stand for the America that he just saw. It turned out,

Speaker 2 you know, that he could stand for ideals even if the president was a crook.

Speaker 13 Less than a year later, Nomad went back to being Captain America and Steve Engelhardt eventually passed the baton to new writers.

Speaker 13 But Steve had forever changed the idea of what kind of patriot Captain America could be. that he could love his country and also not love what his government was doing.

Speaker 13 But that wouldn't mean Captain America would always stay the same. And the iterations that followed have often been a response to the moment they're born in.
Cap's been more militant.

Speaker 13 He fought terrorism after 9-11. Then he was critical of Kuantanamobe.
There have been Black Captain Americas, a native Captain America.

Speaker 13 In the latest Captain America movie, Cap teams up with a superhero originally named Sabra. an agent for Israel's national intelligence agency, Mossad.

Speaker 13 After getting backlashed, the studio decided to call her Ruth and had her work instead for the United States.

Speaker 13 These debates about what Captain America should stand for, who he should fight for, and what is right or wrong, they're all part of a conversation we continue to have about who we are and who we want to be.

Speaker 31 We're doing episodes on amendments, and one of our guests talked about amendments to the U.S.

Speaker 31 Constitution as these majestic generalities, like intentionally vague morals and ethics that speak to something greater. And I kind of see Captain America as one of these majestic generalities.

Speaker 18 It's a good phrase, it kind of sums up Captain America.

Speaker 18 You can make of him what you will,

Speaker 18 but it is supposed to be majestic.

Speaker 18 It's beautifully crafted in terms of setting up the critique of the systems and America and then working it back round so that you follow Captain America through the journey of resoliciting your ideological belief in the idea of America.

Speaker 18 You want to believe the best of people and that there's always someone out there who's going to do the right thing.

Speaker 16 That's it for this week's show. I'm Ramteen Arab Louis.

Speaker 21 I'm Randab Dilfattah, and you've been listening to Through Line from NPR.

Speaker 16 This episode was produced by me, and me, and Laurence Wu, Julie Kane, Anya Steinberg, Casey Minor, Christina Kim.

Speaker 13 Devin Katayama.

Speaker 23 Irene Naguchi.

Speaker 7 This is Christopher Beale, and I played Captain America.

Speaker 21 Thanks to Neil Vandehei, Chad Bryan, Don Moore, Sandia Dirks, J.C. Howard, Cameron Fraser, Dustin Brumley, Ryan Dorgun, and Ali Katayama for their voiceover work.

Speaker 21 Also, thanks to Ambert C., Tony Cavan, Johannes Durgi, Edith Chapin, and Colin Campbell.

Speaker 16 Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vokel. The episode was mixed and mastered by Robert Rodriguez.

Speaker 21 Music for this episode was composed by Ramptin and his band, Drop Electric, which includes Anya Mizani, Naveed Marvi, Show Fujiwara.

Speaker 16 And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write us at throughline at mpr.org. And make sure you follow us on Apple, Spotify, or the MPR app.

Speaker 16 That way, you'll never miss an episode.

Speaker 21 Thanks for listening.

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