Today we look at how everyone treats Captain America as if he is much older than his actual age.
It’s about “How can I explain?”, which is a feature highlighting inexplicable comic book plots.
My buddy Fraser Sherman wrote to me about a question he had when talking about Captain America’s age in a recent blog post, and I’ll answer Fraser’s question in a future post, but his observation general reminded me of something that came up frequently when Eileen Gonzalez and I were discussing the Avengers issue by issue (you can check out the issues we covered here, from #1 to #85), namely the fact that age and Cap’s general experience as a superhero never made sense in the Silver Age Avengers comics.
HOW OLD CAN CAPTAIN AMERICA BE WHEN HE ENTERS SUSPENDED ANIMATION?
Something that comes up a lot when I talk about Golden Age comics is the fact that while the comic creators involved certainly almost always took their jobs very seriously (okay, I admit that ‘there were Golden Age creators who felt that their comic book work was basically below them and DIDN’T put as much effort into their work as you’d hoped), they didn’t They weren’t exactly the kind of people who would, like, store bibles for their characters, either. Therefore, it’s nearly impossible to know for sure what age Joe Simon and Jack Kirby had planned for Steve Rogers. Captain America Comics #1 when he first transforms into the Super Solider known as Captain America…
That said, while the comic doesn’t say exactly how old Steve Rogers is, he sure does look like a teenager, doesn’t he? Maybe 20 years?
Okay, so Steve Rogers now becomes Captain America and first fights against saboteurs and other enemy agents until the United States goes to war, then Captain America fights against Axis forces to the rest of the war. However, this was later retconned by Marvel in avengers #4 (by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and George Roussos), where we learn that Captain America and his trusty sidekick, Bucky, were involved in a horrific explosion before the war ended and despite Steve Rogers initially crossing the war alive and becoming a teacher (with Bucky becoming his roommate until he is shot and replaced by a new sidekick, Golden Girl). So obviously Steve hit the water and was frozen in suspended animation before the war ended, so how could he be when that happened? I think 24 is overkill, but let’s go with 24 for the sake of discussion…
Now let me note, I totally get the idea that war turns boys into men faster than you can say Cooleyhighharmony, so Captain America’s leadership and ability to command a play is completely reasonable if he is a 24-year-old war veteran. We see the same kind of concept (just on a much smaller scale) with professional athletes, where they become “leaders” at a young age and it gets to the point where we’re talking about, say, Lebron James as a veteran graying now that he is 37 years old. So I certainly don’t expect Captain America’s age to mean he’s being treated like an inexperienced guy. I think the scene in Avengers #4 where Cap springs into action and Rick Jones notes how Cap changes his voice to bark commands is a perfect example of how, even if Cap were to be a young man, he certainly can reasonably be a commander of men and women…
But, again, he would still only be 24 years old! And yet, as soon as he joined the Avengers, it was like the same age as Hank Pym and Tony Stark, two ADULTS fully into the team.
CAPTAIN AMERICA IS NOT REALLY OLD!
However, while they all acted like peers, it wasn’t until Captain America got NEW teammates that the age really started to get weird. As you all probably know, in avengers #16, the original team resigned, and Captain America was given three new teammates to lead, all three of whom were reformed supervillains – Hawkeye, former Iron Man villain partner Black Widow, and Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. These new teammates were much younger and less experienced than Cap’s other teammates, but at the same time, Captain America himself shouldn’t be that old!
And yet, in avengers #17 (by Don Heck, Stan Lee, and Dick Ayers), Cap notes how young they all are, and Hawkeye acts like Cap is an old jerk…
The same idea followed in avengers #21 (by Heck, Stan Lee, and Wallace Wood), where Hawkeye pitches the “Methuselah” moniker for Captain America…
Methuselah is a character from the Bible who lived to be almost 1000 years old! I guess you can tell Hawkeye is being ironic with the nickname, like he knows Cap isn’t that old and just acts like that or whatever (or just referring to the fact that the Cap’s birthday was a long time ago), but I don’t know, he keeps making comments that suggest he thinks Captain America is old…
We also see it in the next issue, when the team goes their separate ways for a while and Hawkeye notices how old Captain America is…
What’s fascinating here, though, is that when we see Cap all alone, he too thinks about his age!
It’s really like Stan Lee just decided to pay homage to Cap for all those years in suspended animation and still consider him old, despite clearly not being that old at all!
Thanks for the inadvertent suggestion, Fraser! I will come back to your actual question very soon! If anyone else can think of a good unexplainable comic book plot, email me at brianc@cbr.com!
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