The end of the war meant changes were in store for our heroes: some were dropped, some changed circumstances.
Characters
- Captain America wound down the war stories. Betty Ross had already largely stopped appearing but only made one appearance in these two years. Sgt. Duffy’s last Golden Age appearance ran shortly before Hitler’s death and Germany’s surrender. Before the war’s end, Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes would go missing, presumed dead, and other men would take over the roles of Captain America and Bucky. Of course, this would be established by retcon in the 60s and 70s, and they’re still referred to as Rogers and Barnes.
- One of those men would be Jeff Mace, who was still active at this time as the Patriot. His friend Jack Casey stopped showing up in his stories, although Mary was usually still around to wonder how Mace and the Patriot always seemed to know what the other was thinking.
- In the Sub-Mariner stories, Betty Dean started tagging along more often, apparently having switched jobs from being a police officer to being a reporter. As for Namor himself, he returned stateside and remained friendly with America, helping with cases that took place near the coast so he could use his underwater talents.
- The Destroyer had two developments, one natural, one weird. First, as the front lines were closing in on Berlin, the Destroyer moved east to continue his campaign against Japan. Second, at some point, Keen Marlow was forgotten; the Destroyer never took off his mask, even when dressing as the enemy. (No one ever asked him, “Herr Eindringling1, why are you wearing that mask/what’s wrong with your skin to make it corpse blue?”) The Marvel Wikia says Florence – unseen for a few years by this point – may have been killed by the Nazis, so maybe her death drove Keen a bit crazy.
- Meanwhile on the home front, a lot of the Whizzer’s stories would see the man challenged by the criminals to catch them. This was never a good idea and would always backfire on the criminals.
- Unsurprisingly, the military stories starring Sgt. Dix and Jap Buster Johnson wound down as the war ended, Johnson’s final story appearing between the Japanese surrender being announced in mid-August and formalized in September.
Closing Thoughts
- While Axis agents remained a threat (even after the war ended – hey, it takes months to make a comic book), criminals simply out for money or revenge or other motives not affected by the war started reappearing in stories in 1945. The Axis plots went from routine “this is our latest plan of attack” to “this is how we’ll turn the tide and win the war” to “Nazi Germany will rise again, and here’s how we’re going to make it happen.”
- There haven’t been direct references to the atomic bomb yet – again, comics take months to make and even if anyone at Timely was aware of the Manhattan Project, they weren’t going to put state secrets in a comic. WMDs have appeared, of course – one story had Captain America battling Japanese spies for the secret of a weapon that causes indiscriminate casualties and ecological damage. It ended with the weapon’s design lost forever, which Cap said was just as well, because America would never have to resort to something like that to win the war. The story was published August 10, 1945.
- The small set of lead features and their formulaic nature made for a fairly repetitive read. This is exacerbated by writers hitting on one idea and reusing it – three or four different stories had the Torch and Toro in death traps where if one flamed on before the other, the explosion would kill the one who didn’t flame, so they had to be sure to flame on at the same time. And one Angel story and Captain America story were clearly developed from the same script, with just the heroes swapped out between them.
- The superhero collapse had begun by the end of 1945. The new titles introduced in these two years would be cancelled after a few issues (Action Comics/Complete Comics, the relaunches of Daring Comics and Mystic Comics) or quickly reworked to remove the superhero features (Miss America). USA Comics also ended its run in 1945, leaving only eight titles: All Select, All Winners, Captain America, Human Torch, Kid Komics, Marvel Mystery, Sub-Mariner, and the Young Allies. (Miss Fury would continue in newspapers, but Timely’s final compilation ran in 1945.)
Next: And it had only begun.