Fighting American #1 (1954)
by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby
In 1940, Simon and Kirby created a patriotically themed superhero for Timely Comics (which would later become Marvel). You know him as Captain America.
In 1954, Simon and Kirby created a patriotically themed superhero for Prize Comics (an imprint of Crestwood Publications). You know him as Fighting American… if you know him at all.
I’ll talk about the behind-the-scenes of his creation later: let’s first jump into Fighting American’s origin story.
America is in the middle of a conspiracy to swindle money from people and give them to *gasp* enemies of America!
But before we tackle that one let’s meet Johnny Flagg, war hero turned TV presenter, and his brother Nelson who writes his program.
We also meet Mary, who handles the “woman’s angle” of the program. Not sure why she has to explain this to Nelson if he’s the writer… or does he write ONLY for his brother?
Nelson is presented as a great journaist, but I have to think that acting like this would have had him fired in the 50s too.
Too bad Nelson is not a figthing American.
As for his brother, he dies after fighting some nondescript enemies off-panel.
This results into Nelson being offered Captain America’s origin.
I’m kidding: this is way creepier than Cap’s origin, because Nelson is offered the chance to transfer his mind into the body of his resurrected dead brother!!!
We get a GREAT panel of the mind transfer…
…but that doesn’t diminish the creepiness of him being IN HIS DEAD BROTHER’S BODY.
So, uhm, we’re not going to address the fact that we have the technology to perfectly revive someone who was definitely dead, right?
Fighting American gets revenge for the death of his brother.
And so we close with Johnny Flagg making a passionate speech for Fighting American.
Without addressing the death of his brother, who is also his writer, who is also himself.
The issue has other Fighting American stories.
The second one introduces his Bucky ripoff sidekick Speedboy.
No, he doesn’t have super-speed or anything.
Also the story has the villain playing a high tech piano. So we know Kirby loved the idea way before using it for Doctor Doom.
The third has Fighting American deal with a competition between the United States and the Union Of Scary Communist Republics.
You’ve heard about the nuclear weapons race, you’ve heard about the space race, but have you heard about the road race?
Historical significance: 0/10
Silver Age-ness: 10/10
Does it stand the test of time? 2/10
This is basically what happens if you take Captain America’s origin story and you suck all the mystique and intrigue out of it.
The idea of switching bodies with the dead brother is COMPLETELY INSANE, and there isn’t much of an emotional connection because we don’t even see it happen or grasp the relationship between the two.
Saved from a zero exclusively thanks to some creative Kirby panels, but…
How close is this to the modern character? What modern character?
You might have asked yourself: how did this story happen? And what publisher was Prize Comics anyway?
It was an imprint of Crestwood Publications, also known as Feature Publications, which has a respectable history.
They were the first to have an ongoing horror comic (Dick Briefer’s “Frankenstein”), and the first ongoing romance comic (“Young Romance” from 1947).
But why would Simon & Kirby create a new character instead of continuing Captain America?
Because they had long left Marvel at this point, and they were upset that in 1954 Marvel had launched the “Commie Smasher” incarnation of the character without them.
(technically Marvel wasn’t called that yet, it was Timely first and Atlas later, but I’m just using Marvel for clarity).
That Captain America relaunch ended up being a complete failure.
But Prize Comics really believed in the project, to the point that Fighting American was a creator-owned series: something TRULY unheard of for the times.
The first two issues were straightforward for the times…
…even if the second issue DOES include a supersmart guy with two heads as its villain.
Starting with the third issue, however, the series switches to a completely new tone.
While there are still action scenes, the series now relies heavily on parody.
I mean this is a series where the super-communist has the power to smell very bad, so I you have to pray this is parody.
Also, if you thought that Kirby’s tendency to go completely off-topic is an exclusive of his 70s comics… already by issue 4, there’s a story that has absolutely nothing to do with anything else.
It’s an extended dream sequence where Fighting American thinks he’s a space hero.
They also do Stereotypically Italian Tarzan.
The fact that Kirby served on the Italian front during WWII makes this even more insulting.
I would say this is the most embarrassing thing Simon & Kirby ever created, but I remind you that the super-smelly communist is from this series.
He’s defeated by the power of bathing and capitalism.
Why this hard pivot to comedy, when the beginning was very straightforward?
Reportedly, it’s because while both Simon and Kirby were very much anti-communists, they were not buying into the Red Scare of the McCarthy years.
The first stories were deadly serious. Fighting American was the first commie-basher in comics. We were all caught up in Senator McCarthy’s vendetta against the ‘red menace.’ But soon it became evident that McCarthy … had gone too far, damaging innocent Americans. … Then, the turnaround, as his side became talked of as the lunatic fringe …. Jack and I quickly became uncomfortable with Fighting American’s cold war. Instead, we relaxed and had fun with the characters.
JOE SIMON
Even as a bimonthly series, sales were bad enough to only reach a total of 7 issues.
Years after the end of the series, because the character was creator-owned it had a strange publishing career.
The original stories were reprinted in 1966 by Harvey Comics and in 1989 by Marvel.
New series have been created by different publishers, always with permission from the Simon and Kirby estates.
DC Comics published a 6 issue miniseries in 1994, and Titan Comics did 2 separate 4 issue miniseries in 2017 and 2018.
But before all these, Awesome Entertainment relaunched the character in a series created by Rob Liefeld and Jeph Loeb.
Which is just… it’s just Captain America with another name. You can tell because he even has the shield, which Fighting American never used.
In addition, if you’ve ever had the misfortune to read Liefeld’s Captain America, he even rips off himself by copying his own version of the female Bucky.
There’s blatantly ripping off characters, and then there’s Rob Liefeld.
Marvel UNDESTANDABLY sued Liefeld over this, and as part of the settlement Fighting American was forbidden from ever throwing his shield.
Despite this, Liefeld and Loeb created two new miniseries (“Rules of the game” and “Dogs of war”) for Awesome Comics.
Between those versions, Liefeld briefly had a dispute with the Kirby estate about the licensing fees to use the character, so he briefly considered creating his own version: Agent America.
He never actually got to use him on anything, because Joe Simon threatened to sue over this.
I don’t know if it was for ripping off Fighting American, Captain America, or both.
Agent America is basically the bootleg version of the Temu version of the Wish.Com version of Captain America.