CAPTAIN AMERICA 1940S NEWSPAPER STRIP #1

Review by: player1

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WRITER: Karl Kesel
PENCILS: Butch Guice & Karl Kesel

Size: pages
Price: 3.99

A great read, which really brought me back to my roots as a comic book reader.

As a kid, I read the funnies in the morning paper, and talked about them that day at school. I read the funnies in the evening paper, and talked about them the next day at school. I read the funnies in both Sunday sections, and talked about them on Monday at school.

My favorite strips were always the adventure strips. Sure, I read the funny ones, but the ones I really liked were the action ones. Comics for boys. Prince Valiant, Steve Canyon, Terry and the Pirates, the Phantom and others were my favorites. I realized why Peanuts was great and Pogo was awesome and BC was amazing, but I still loved the continuing adventures of heroes who never died.

Eventually, I made the switch for the funnies to comic books, and from funny animals to more continuing adventures of heroes who never died: Neal Adams’ version of Batman, Joe Kubert’s take on Tarzan, Sal Buscema’s rendering of Captain America.

Karl Kesel has captured and encapsulated half a century of comic and comic book reading in a month’s-worth of Sundays and dailies (OK there’s a fifth Sunday page in the book) and he does so with wit, charm and plenty of old-fashioned Cap-and-Bucky moxie. He doesn’t need an oversized-format, outrageous hype or a dozen fellow travelers. Just a quiet corner of the web to try a daily digital experiment, and a simple mini-series published in standard dailies-to-floppies format, and he’s created a comic book that more than pays homage to “what could have been” and outdated formats.

This Captain America is an homage to the character and the legacy, as well as a century’s-worth of some of the greatest comics ever published. Well done.

A fitting read for a fine Fourth. Five exploding stars, lighting up the dark sky of forgotten creators.

Cheers.

Story: 5 - Excellent
Art: 5 - Excellent

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