White argues that there can be no better model of ethical behavior today: “Cap’s ‘old-fashioned’ moral code is exactly what we need to restore civility and respect in the 21st century in both our personal lives and our political debates. In his new book, The Virtues of Captain America: Modern-Day Lessons on Character from a World War II Superhero, Mark D. entry into a world-shaking conflict, the Captain has always embodied the good in human beings. He’s the person you wish you were.”Īppearing in the run-up to U.S. He can punch bad people and jump through glass. It may be the fact that he is so recognizably human that makes him the most modern of the comic superheroes.Īs the writer who launched the superhero in his most recent incarnation in 2012 put it, the Captain “is a patriotic soldier, directed by a personal ethical compass, belief in the American dream and faith in his fellow man. Captain America isn’t a superman he is an average human being whose powers have been enhanced to the nth degree. Injected with a special serum and exposed to a course of radiation with “Vita-Rays,” the scrawny young man acquires astonishing strength, resourcefulness and courage. Trying to enlist, but rejected because of his scrawny physique, Rogers agrees to be used as a subject in a secret project. When he first appeared in March 1941, Captain America was the alter ego of Steve Rogers, a skinny art student from New York who had been transformed into a super-soldier by the U.S.
His sterling qualities ill-suited to the grim intrigues of the cold war, he vanished from view, seeming at times to have been killed off.
Throughout the war years the comics were an enormous popular success, but the Captain failed to make the transition into the bleak peace that followed. struggle against the Axis powers that was already on the horizon, the Captain first appeared on the scene nine months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The authors of Captain America’s early adventures were liberals, and something of the universalistic spirit of American liberalism has infused the character they invented. Confronting the plotters, the comic-book hero makes one of many declarations of faith that resound throughout his more than 70-year-long career as a fighter against evil: “I represent the American dream! A dream that has precious little to do with borders, boundaries, and the kind of blind hatred your ilk espouses!” In a story from the early 1980s, Captain America uses his amazing powers to destroy a renegade American intelligence agency that is plotting an attack on the Soviet Union in order to make the United States the last remaining superpower.
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