Captain America

John Shelton Lawrence is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Momingside College. With Robert Jewett he coauthored Captain America and the Crusade against Evil (2003), aud The Myth of the American Superhero (2002), which received the Johu Cawelti Award of the American Culture Association. 

Like Superman and Captain America before him, Spider-Man be=came a cultural icon for his era. Somehow the figure of an angst-ridden, quasi-nuclear costumed hero answered a variety of social needs. In one tale, the hero has to borrow bus fare to track down the villain. By the mid-1970s, Spider-Man sales had topped even those of Superman. In 1965, Esquire magazine noted that Spider-Man s image was as popular in radical campus circles as that of revolutionary leader Che Guevara. 

In between, a sort of bioterrorism came to the New World in the fifteenth century, aimed to defeat the Indians. Spanish conquistador Pizarro gave clothing contaminated with the smallpox virus to natives in South America. During the French and Indian War (1754-1767) Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander of British forces in North America, suggested the deliberate use of smallpox to reduce Native American tribes hostile to the British [116]. An outbreak of smallpox at Fort Pitt results in the opportunity to execute Amherst s plan. On June 24, 1763, Captain Ecuyer, Amherst s subordinate, gives blankets and a handkerchief from the smallpox hospital to the Native Americans and records in his journal, I hope it will have the desired effect. This was followed by an epidemic of smallpox among Native American tribes in the Ohio River valley, which may also have been spread by contact with settlers. Transmission of smallpox by fomites (on blankets) is inefficient compared with respiratory droplet transmission. 

Ciguatera poisoning was first reported by Peter Martyr, historian of the Americas, in the West Indies (Martyr 1555). Spanish sailors were also reported to have ciguatera as early as 1606 in the Pacific (Helfrich 1964). The famous voyager Captain James Cook reported an outbreak in the South Pacific in 1774 symptoms coincide with those evident today (Cook 1777). 

America s formal entry into the war on December 8, 1941, only accelerated this trend. Street and Smith had a nonfiction comic entitled Remember Pearl Harbor on the stands by early 1942. This 56-page book combined the various genres, as it included detailed maps of the Pacific theater, an extensive historical text, and the illustrated story of America s first war hero. Captain Colin Kelly Jr., who sank the Japanese dreadnought Haruna at the cost of his own life. The book ended with an appeal to buy war bonds. 

Whiz Comics 82 (February 1947) (Fawcett). Captain Marvel Adventures 107 (April 1950) (Fawcett). Captain Marvel Adventures 78 (November 1947) (Fawcett). Bradford W. Wright, Comic Book Nation The Transformation of Youth Culture in America (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 69-71. Captain Marvel Adventures 76 (September 1947) (Fawcett), 46-47. 

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