AFIRE ROS Captain middle America

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A supreme test for reading diet of all Socialist Press readers. But just in case it isn't, it may be worth commenting on the storyline of a recent series of issues.

In this latest titanic adventure the good Captain America succeeded in smashing a fascist gang known as the National Force and scuppering their plans for taking over New York as a launch-pad for world. domination.

No small achievement, and one which will have been avidly followed by the comic book's international audience of over five million readers.

Captain America is the lantern-jawed superhero who year after year tirelessly fights to preserve the liberty and wholesome integrity of white anglo-saxon middle America.

Royal blue tights

Dressed in royal blue tights and tunic that appear to have been sprayed onto his perfectly muscled irame, Captain America's image is completed by a striped belt with a white star and by a stars-and-stripes shield which can be used for anything from a deadly weapon to a parachute.

He also wears a blue mask with a large 'A' on the forehead and rather fetching little white dove-wings over the ears.

By the way, in case you're wondering, the 'A' does not stand for anarchy-the Captain is most definitely an agent of the bourgeois state.

Essentially he acts as the ultimate lawman, dealing with villains too big for the police and army, and sorting out corruption in the FBI and CIA as well as taking on the superbaddies.

Experiment

Captain America was created in 1941 in a secret laboratory experiment which transformed a puny US soldier into a fighting machine who practically destroyed the Axis powers without breaking sweat.

Since then, with varying degrees of commercial success, he has faithfully reflected and fought for the values and deepest fears of the American middle classes.

In the McCarthyite era he preached a loud campaign against communism and left a trail of devastated spies and "itth columnists" in his rightcous wake.

Hulk

In the late sixties the Marvel comie-book menagerie (including such warm and wonderful heroes as Spiderman, the Silver Surfer, the Incredible Hulk, Thor, the Fantastic four, Doctor Strange and Sergeant Nick Fury) was cagerly taken up by the radical youth and student movement.

Marvel's editorial board saw where the moncy lay and adapted their heroes to take up increasingly liberal positions.

In one "Captain America" series it was stunningly revealed that the old McCarthyite rightwing Captain had in fact been an imposter!

The true Captain emerged to give his alter ego a sound beating and began to take on crooked cops and politicians as well as Mafia-like criminals and various bizarre lunatics bent on world domination.

Wide eyes

Through it all the Captain has had to grit his perfect white teeth and jut out his square Jaw at the inevitable personal anguish that besets a super-hero.

No sooner has he found a pretty girl with wide eyes and big breasts than he is forced to abandon his dream of semi-detached normality.

All visions of raising a brood of little super-heroes, karatechopping their way through nursery, have to be subordinated to the selfless task of eradicating evil.

Which brings us to the National Force. We first become aware of them when they organise a rally in Central Park.

Their leader, the Grand Director, dresses in all-white as do his followers. Initially the IDLY BY AND SEE THIS GREAT NATION PLUNGED INTO DARKNESS!

THE TIME IS NOW!

LIGHT THE PYRE! audience of black and white workers and youth is violently hostile-"You want hate you got it!" yells one.

The Grand Director tries some standard fascist rhetoric ("A white America is a strong America!") but gets pelted for his pains.

So he sets tire to a huge cross which in turn lets off a secret mind-gas, turning the Park into an instant race rot.

Unfortunately one of the infected whites turns out to be Sharon Carter, a blonde Aryan temptress who Captain America has his beady, sex-starved eyes on.

She turns into one of the National Force's most zealous "converts"

The next episode opens with her leading an armed fascist attack on Harlem.

At the climactic moment only Captain America stands between them and a vengeful MEKENZIE.

€ OCTY PERLIN R. PARKER • LETTERING N. YOMTOV • COLORING ROGER STERN, EDITOR JIM SHOOTER EDITOR-INCHIEF squad of black gangsters spearheading the defence of their territory.

The Captain breaks a few heads on both sides and leaves the area under martial law imposed by the National Guard.

The conventional forces of the state are compromised this time however, as Captain America discovers when he goes to see the Chief of Police.

He tells the Chief that "This National Force isn't something new -they're Nazis by a different name! They've got to be stopped!"

Powerless

The Chiet draws sagely on his pipe and says, "I know how these hate organisations work. They prey upon the Jews, the blacks, the old, the sick ... anyone they can set up as scapegoats for the ills in our society! They gain the support of the gullible, the hateful and the fearful...

But he is powerless to act, word has come from somewhere "upstairs" to lay off the National Force.

It emerges that the shadowy figure behind the fascists and their Grand Director is a bloated maniac named as Dr. Faustus. • At this point the ironies become almost too bewildering to contemplate! It turns out that Faustus was a psychiatrist in a mental hospital -the mental hospital to which the imposter Captain America had been charitably committed by the right wing Nixon government!

Faustus had perfected his mind-control gas and had resurrected the McCarthyite Captain America in the guise of the Nazi Grand Director.

Swastika

• In one mind-boggling sequence the Grand Director broadcasts on TV dressed as Captain America, his famous shield emblazoned with a huge swastika-"1 represent Americans everywhere! Loyal, right-thinking Americans :.. the blacks, are bleeding us to death and picking their teeth with our bones!"

Needless to say. this unsporting behaviour gets its just STEP ASIDE, WHERE YOU rewards when the real Captain America gets within zapping distance.

The whole grisly affair reaches a climax on board a giant airship hovering. above New York. Faustus and his Nazis are planning to envelop the city with mind-gas.

Capitalist democracy hangs by a slender thread as the battle rages, but finally the airship crashes into the sea right next to ... (wait for it) ... the Statue of Liberty! (Wild applause, hysterical cheering and fainting).

The Captain himself rescues Faustus from drowning so that he can be brought to trial, but there is still the torment of personal anguish-Sharon has burnt herself to a crisp in order to die for her fascist ideals.

However in the words of the final frame, "there is no change in his resolute gaze. "The danger to freedom has abated ... but never shall it end."

Cliche

In comic books the cliche art-form all on its own!

• The serious point is that "Captain America" embodies many of the contradictions and glaring ironies that underlie most forms of popular culture.

A deeply racist symbol is seen opposing racism; the only blacks in the story are criminals; and the ideology of the National Force is only Captain America's value system taken to its logical conclusion.

And even this leaves out the entrenched sexism purveyed by Marvel and the other pulp comic companies.

In the final analysis the whole superhero and superheroine syndrome which is so popular is an important image of bourgeois individuality.

All the individual has to do IS retreat into the symbolic closet or phone-box and shed real life identity. in order to emerge as a souped-up embodiment of bourgeois norms and values.

Mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent only needs to whip off his spectacles to become Superman, aggressive champion of law and order and the American Way. There is no truth in the rumour that he is about to join the NUJ and carry out a principled fight against the bureaucracy, he wouldn't sell many comics that way!

Neo Nazis Or, in the words of the "Captain America" editors:

"We got the idea for the National Force from accounts of neo-Nazi marches in the MidWest over the past year.

Unfortunately it seems that the late seventies are not much different from the early years of the decade, or the thirties for that matter..

All of this is not to say, however, that the Captain will be espousing any specific political values other than the primal ones of freedom and liberty.

This magazine is not now, nor shall it become, a soapbox for social change. That's not what we're here for."

Reconstruct the Fourth Internotional!!

No. 1 Nov. 1979 DISCUSSION BULLETIN 60p THE TRANSITIONAL PROGRAMME IN TODAY'S CLASS Founding document of the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee Available, price 75p including postage from WSL, 31 Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 IHR

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SOCIA LIST PRESS, Wednesday'13 February 1980 out, where it has suifered defeats-in , China, Vietnam,

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"Captain America" is probably part of the staple