‘Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice,
Be not dishearten'd—Affection
shall solve the problems
of Freedom
yet;
Those who love each other shall
become invincible—
they
shall yet make Columbia victorious.’₁
Walt Whitman’s lines from his 1865 collection, Drum Taps, are like Captain America’s inner voice in Jack Kirby’s 200 years in the making, Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles tabloid, published 50 years ago this week (15 June, 1976). Kirby and Whitman search for America in conflict, in difference, in challenge, in contradiction, in the best and the worst, they fight for an ideal, to identify what has been lost and to restore it.
Kirby was riding high in 1976, back on Captain America, introducing the Marvel version of the Fourth World with the Eternals, yet to face the jealous carping of little man editorial assistants who would mark the return of the King, with continuous tiny pricks of criticism as they stacked the letter pages with negative comment.
America the nation, longed for a lift from the
depths of Watergate, the disruption of the Sixties, Presidential assassination
attempts, inflated economic turmoil. A big 200th party fitted the
bill nicely and so along comes Jack Kirby to deliver the comics equivalent of a
big battle bash.
Yet this giant-sized battle bonanza is no shoot
‘em up, feel good, spectacular. It is Kirby’s search for America, his
examination of one man ‘s soul and symbol for a country, his Captain’s journey from
action to wisdom, from the outer fight to the inner revelation. Kirby’s America
is just as much about what is seen as it is about what is unseen, what is
missing. And this story all starts with Mr Buda.
Jack Kirby was a lifelong man of faith, brought up in a conservative Jewish household, his creative journey in comics put no limits on his imagination. His openness to new ideas, to different philosophies meant he could communicate with people so different to himself, a 50 year-old, hanging with hippies in the Sixties and seeing far more about what the counter-culture really meant and how it affected youth than his others his age.
His Mr Buda, like the original, calls Captain America to a spiritual quest through time, visiting formative events in American history. The practical, grounded, old-world Cap, is skeptical and dismissive of his teacher, he sees his service in only concrete terms. Our hero cannot understand the Buda’s words ‘…the doors to eternity fly open. Thus, you can see things with a universal eye – such as a symbol of your country as you never have before. Destiny and duty wills it!’
Cap’s journey to self-awareness begins with denial but before the story is out, he will be transformed. His first step into the past is back to when it all began, fighting the Nazis in WWII. There he meets his long-dead pal, Bucky, reunited in the joy of partnership. Cap is angry at Buda as Bucky is taken away but Buda correctly identifies that Bucky is what is missing in Cap’s life, the void, that reconnecting with pain, with suffering, is not necessarily negative, it is the beginning of wisdom, found in the love of another. Freedom from fascism is victory over the past, freedom in friendship is memory lived.
If Cap’s first stop was familiar, part of his experience, his next is not, jarringly dropped into a Revolutionary War carriage and set to meet Benjamin Franklin and Betsy Ross. Cap ‘….suddenly become an alien in his own land…’ Great symbol of America, unknown to its founders. From the near destruction of what the Republic and its allies stood for by the Axis powers to the creation of the American democratic ideal. Kirby’s story structure is point, counterpoint, what is gained, what is lost, how that process changes a person, a country.
Cap journeys from the Philadelphia middle class tea party creation of the American flag, from Cap’s own shield, to Kirby’s own 1930s depression era, crime ridden New York. From a vision where ‘all men are created equal’₂ to the reality of capitalist collapse, the desperation of the excluded unemployed, aliens in their own land. Freedom can exploit as much as it can elevate. Cap stands up for what is right against the overwhelming forces that would crush the individual.
The theme of exclusion continues in chapter three where Cap goes out West and meets ‘my fellow Americans’, he is ‘beginning to absorb the sights and sounds and emotional content as no man ever has, each brief experience is a glimpse of dimensions sorely lacking in the reams of words that shape a country’s image.’ What is missing, what is the void, the rights, treatment, inclusion of First Peoples, Native Americans.
Cap and Geronimo talk and they explore the conflict that freedom brings, between two sides, two cultures, the freedom to be different but united as one country. Geronimo: ‘The troopers hunt us, and we ambush them, thus the killing goes on until we are dead of free.’ Cap: ‘Liberty or death. Those words are truly American Geronimo. Sometimes I wonder how we can be brothers and strangers at the same time….and yet we are. We are Americans who must find each other and in doing so become as one people.’
That struggle is not easy but Cap’s belief is not shaken. ‘There is another way!! Another way!! We’re all Americans!’
‘One from Massachusetts shall be
a Missourian's com-
rade;
From Maine and from hot Carolina,
and another an Ore-
gonese, shall be
friends triune,
More precious to each other than
all the riches of the
earth.’₃
Cap becomes a WWI pilot in chapter four and then checks in with Mr Buda on his progress. The report card for Steve Rogers is not a good one. He has been on a journey through time and overcome many physical challenges but his spiritual progress is lacking, he is not seeing what we see and is frustrated and ‘weary’.
Mr Buda eviscerates him: ‘How little you seem to have gained from such a valuable experience. Did you really expect the march of this great nation to be a form of mock pageantry?...you want to lead a parade and smile at the crowds…is this the shallow façade that is Captain America?...will that make you happy? Is a happy ending the answer to all problems? Would you strike me and walk away contented?’
Kirby wants to live the ideal but the only way to live that is to experience the beauty but also confront the ugliness. Cap drops into the flight of an enslaved African American man in John Brown’s pre-Civil War America. He helps him continue his freedom run.
The living legend is next at a nuclear bomb test, the freedom to create and then destroy everything we have built. Cap questions the worship of technology.
‘Behold the future comes. The purest fire and
substance from the stars…or obscenity ablaze in Satan’s eye?’ From atomic fires
to the burning of a city in the Chicago conflagration. Cap’s belief, his inner
voice, his faith in gain from loss is still present as his companion fears only
ashes will remain: ‘That won’t faze Americans. They’ll build a new city here. A
city they’ll write songs about.’
Now the future. Beyond what we have seen and experienced in the past. Beyond our current awareness, seeing into our own soul that which has been hidden from us. Just when Cap thinks ‘…it’s an exercise in futility, you’ve got nothing to teach me’, comes the revelation. Buda: ‘Experience teaches, not I Sir. If you watch me carefully, you will realize I am merely a doorway – opening to reveal the light beyond.’
The face of the future is seen by the light of the moon as Cap travels skyward and finds only more of the same. A fight on the moon, over the moon. Yet it’s all a façade. A Hollywood movie set. A place where the symbol of America’s greatest good, is not even recognized. The future is fiction. America is one giant party, style over substance, a mad musical where performance and popularity matter not passion, not heart, not truth, freedom is farce.
And then something breaks in Cap, something breaks through, all he’s seen, the ideals, the suffering, the lost lives, the maltreatment, the American dream denied, it must stop. This horrific parody of American patriotism, this swill, this death dance, is a repudiation of everything America has stood for. It’s time for anger to assert itself for the freedom of all.
‘I’m not going on with this! It’s got to stop!.Right now! I said—stop!...I said cut! Cut!’ Cap calls out to eternity, he goes beyond himself, he wants the answer, he wants it now in a way that he denied before. ‘Buda!....show yourself!...It was you who spoke of America and the truth at the heart of it! I’ve still got to see it, Buda!...Where is the essence that makes all Americans stand up as one – no matter what their lot may be?’
It turns out that Buda’s answer is similar to another great prophet from another tradition: ‘In a serious matter such as this, it is best to approach it as a child…the child remembers what a man forgets.’ It’s what we have individually and collectively forgotten that is important. Our hopes and dreams we had as children aren’t childish, they are the aspirations that need to be at the heart of our culture, the belief you can triumph over adversity, prejudice, whether you win or lose, you go on, even in death, hope lives.
Kirby’s America is a ‘…place of stubborn confidence—where both young and old can hope and dream and wade through disappointment, despair and the crunch of events—with the chance of making life meaningful.’ No show, no parade, no parodic displays, no self-importance, Cap sits with the smallest and we hear their voice. The freedom to be humble and listen to those not heard. Kirby has faced conflict, dressed the wounds, reached out in hope to let the doors to eternity fly open to friendship, faith, renewal. A gift that is above rubies.
‘An old man bending, I come, among new faces,
Years looking backward, resuming,
in answer to chil-
dren,
Come tell us old man, as
from young men and maidens
that love me;
Years hence of these scenes, of
these furious passions,
these chances,
Of unsurpass'd heroes, (was one
side so brave? the
other was equally brave;)
Now be witness again—paint the
mightiest armies of
earth;
Of those armies so rapid, so
wondrous, what saw you to
tell us?
What stays with you latest and
deepest? of curious
panics,
Of hard-fought engagements, or
sieges tremendous,
what deepest remains?’
(The Dresser by Walt Whitman in Drum Taps as
published on the Whitman
Archives)
₁From Over the Carnage Rose a Prophetic Voice by
Walt Whitman in Drum Taps as published on the Whitman Archives
₂All men except for enslaved people. That took
until 1868 when the 14th Amendment gave all Americans citizenship.
₃From Over the Carnage Rose a Prophetic Voice by
Walt Whitman in Drum Taps as published on the Whitman Archives
Research this issue –
-Drum Taps as published on the Whitman Archives
As part of this, he is vain enough to think he can bring new insights into Jack Kirby’s comics, primarily Kirby's Fourth World comics and so, on the 50th (or 40th) anniversary of publication of each issue of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, Forever People, New Gods and Mister Miracle, he published a contextual commentary. Check out his earlier entries on this blog and tell him to stop talking so pretentiously in the third person for God's sake!
