Compare Me to the Sea to Rhyme in Poetry

The producer goes to pay Peter, but he has to pay him with a check so there's a tax record (I don't think this is true - I think the bigger issue is Peter's lack of a social security number but alright...) So, he asks Peter for his name. Peter obviously can't give his real name if he's going to maintain his secret identity as Spider-Man, so he instructs the man to fill the check out to "Spider-Man". The producer agrees, for some reason, though he does note that Peter will likely have a hard time cashing the check. Peter, in his infinite teenaged wisdom is like, "Nah, I'm good."

And then he gets to the bank....

I love how the bank teller is willing to accept an ID that says "Spiderman" like this is a totally normal thing.

To make matters even worse, Jameson is busy at that very moment typing up an article about Spiderman, with the express purpose of trying to run him out of town.

Which.... Why?? Like, he literally hasn't done anything yet, except for crawling around on ceilings and swinging from webs on TV. Why is Jameson so pressed?

Peter shows up at the TV station again -- even though he still hasn't figured out the check issue -- only to find out he's been cancelled, both professionally and culturally.

I'm with Peter on this one. Does J. Jonah Jameson just hate fun??

Next we get a clip of Jameson on TV, where, okay, so his issue is the robber/murderer (the one who killed Ben) that Peter caught and turned over to the police in his origin story. "We cannot allow that masked menace to take the law into his own hands," which is kind of a gross exaggeration of what happened, but okay. I mean, the cops were already after the guy, and technically he only did the exact thing the cop asked him to do the first time. He also, apparently, has a "Think of the Children!" complaint that kids might try to imitate his "fantastic feats" that they watch him do on TV, which.... Jameson, you are going to struggle with the future cause there's gonna be a lot of this kind of stuff on TV and in movies.

Oh, but then he says the children should be looking up to real heroes, like his son, John Jameson, the test pilot/astronaut who's about to go into orbit around the earth, and now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure this character was in the first Sam Raimi movie? As MJ's boyfriend?? I keep trying to picture it, but all my mind will conjure up is Paul Rudd dressed in his astronaut costume from the ball scene in Romeo + Juliet. So, that's what I'm picturing when I read this comic. Anyway, Jameson is just one of those overbearing helicopter parents that thinks their child is the most specialist special that ever specialed, is what I'm trying to say here.

Peter wonders why The Fantastic Four and Ant-Man aren't having these kinds of troubles, and hey, today I learned, Ant-Man predates Spider-Man.

Peter tries to get a job, presumably behind Aunt May's back, but no one wants to hire a high school kid. While he's out, he sees May going into a pawn shop where she pawns her jewelry in order to make rent, so he has a mild temper tantrum, where it seems like he's considering that life of crime idea again.

He doesn't get the chance though, because John Jameson launches into orbit, and unfortunately for him, the forward guidance package breaks loose from the capsule that he's in, and the capsule begins erratically falling back to Earth. NASA maybe, and idk, the military -- a bunch of important men standing around in suits are all like "Oooh... yeah, no this is really not good. Too bad there's nothing we can do about it." They have a replacement unit, but no way to give it to him as he hurtles back to earth.

That's okay, because Peter, as Spider-Man, is here to save the day. Jameson is charming as ever in his gratitude that someone is trying to save his son's life. Oh, wait, no he's not.

Spider-Man heads for an airfield, where he commandeers and airplane. Then he leaps from the flying airplane onto the falling capsule and replaces the guidance unit, allowing the capsule to land safely.

Oh, Peter, that is... that is adorably naive of you.

Jameson is successful in getting everyone to hate Spider-Man (including Aunt May!) and eventually the FBI caves to public pressure and puts out a wanted poster.

I actually love that they think the average person would know where to find the "nearest FBI Office".

Not to defend bullying in any way, but I think if you looked at this panel out of context, without the speech bubbles, you would think that Peter was a teacher, rather than a student.

Then we're introduced to May and Ben Parker, who absolutely adore their nephew. And gosh, why are they so old?? Like, as an uncle, shouldn't Ben be somewhere around the age of Peter's parents? I get that a lot of artistic choices in early comics was more about differentiating different characters, and making things pop (that's why there are so many red-headed sidekicks) but it's still a bit jarring.

I do like that we're shown that Peter has a really great relationship with his aunt and uncle.

Then we're told that Peter gets along with all of the teachers at his high school and I guess participates in running science experiments, maybe? Idk, he's got a bunch of test tubes and a guy in a lab coat tells him to keep up the good work.

Peter asks a girl names Sally out on a date, and she reiterates to him "for the umpteenth time" that he's not her type, then drives off with "dream boat" Flash Thomson.

Then he invites a group of students to the "science hall", and they, predictably, make fun of him for being a nerd.

One of the things that I was kind of surprised by was how angry Peter is throughout this comic. You almost get the sense that if a certain event didn't happen so soon after he got his powers, kinda veering Peter back onto the right path, that we could be reading a villain origin story here.

Also, I don't know how I feel about these radio-active experiments being open to the public. That kind of seems.... a little irresponsible. Actually, as it turns out, Institutional Review Boards didn't exist until the 1970s, so.... I guess Peter has a lack of overall regulations to thank for his super powers.

The scientists are demonstrating how they can control radioactive rays, just shooting beams of radiation right in front of the general public, no protection anywhere in sight -- they must not have Godzilla movies in the Marvel universe.

Anyway, you know the story. There's a spider, though the spider is not actually part of the experiment, it's just a regular old spider trying to live it's own life, about to have just a really terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. So, the spider drops down from the ceiling, accidentally going through the radioactive beam, and then landing on Peter's hand -- because Peter (once again, a high schooler and member of the general public) was standing close enough to the radioactive beam for this to happen. The spider, in it's last agonizing moments of life before dying from, presumably, radioactive poisoning, bites Peter on the hand.

Peter notes that the bite burns, and either the bite itself or the spider -- it's not really clear which -- is glowing. He does not mention this seemingly quite important detail to any of the adults in the room.

Speaking of the adults in the room, they make fun of Peter for looking ill following the experiment, because everyone except for May and Ben are dickheads apparently. Literally no on checks on him.

Outside, Peter's standing in the middle of traffic, feeling... honestly, probably high as a kite. It says he feels like his entire body is being charged with some sort of fantastic energy.

He misses the car that's barreling towards him until the last moment when it nearly runs him over -- again because it's New York, I guess, and everyone's a dick. He jumps out of the car's way....

And then scales the wall, because he can. A small child sees him climbing the wall and tells his mother and she says, "That's the last horror movie I take you to, young man!" which is just hilarious. She doesn't even look at what he's pointing at.

At the top of the building he grabs a steel pipe and crushes it as though it were paper. At this point he figures that the spider bite transferred the spiders powers to him.

The spider watching all this from the afterife:

He tests his powers a little in the city, then heads to the wrestling match to fully test his powers. As we know, he beats the strongman with his powers, then he catches the eye of a TV producer, who gets him a slot on the Ed Sullivan show.

This is our first look at Spiderman

He becomes very popular by climbing around on the walls and ceiling on TV, and shooting webs.

Then we get to the part where he chooses not to stop the escaping thief, and he doesn't do it because he feels ripped off by the person being robbed like in the Sam Raimy trilogy, or whatever was going on with the chocolate milk in the Andrew Garfield one.

I actually think this one is worse than either of those two. Like he does it out of pure teenage angst and selfishness.

And like, look, I don't think random citizens should feel obligated to help the cops arrest people, or feel bad about it if they don't, but he says he's doing it for selfish reasons. Plus, he's at this place (The Ed Sullivan show?) not as Peter Parker, but as Spiderman, so his identity is safe and people already know that he has powers, cause five minutes ago he was climbing around the ceiling.

We get another wholesome scene with Peter and Ben and May where they gift him a microscope that he's been wanting. Spiderman gains in popularity, winning accolades and awards for his television appearances.

And then.....

And then Peter comes home one night to find a police care outside his Aunt and Uncle's home, and Peter receives the terrible news that Uncle Ben is dead, having been murdered by a burglar. Hmmm.

I was very confused by this at first, because the scene hadn't happened. You know the one. With the line. How the hell is Uncle Ben going to impart his final words of wisdom if he's already dead??

Peter runs off to the warehouse where the robber is hiding out. The cops are standing around outside doing nothing because "...he'll pick us off like flies if we charge in there," which.... okay... sure we'll go with that. Actually this pretty much tracks with reality.

So Spiderman goes in, confront the robber, then *gasp*, sees his face, and it's none other than the exact same robber that he previously let escape. He wraps him up in a web, leaves him for the cops (who are still standing around outside) and goes home to cry, knowing that he is, at least partially, responsible for Ben's death.

But what about the line?? You know the one.

Wait, oh...

So, wait, Ben doesn't actually say this line in the comics?? The narrator says it? I swear there were a number of Marvel fans screaming online about how not having Ben Parker say this line to Peter in the MCU was hugely disrespectful to both Peter and Ben as characters.

Huh....imagine that.

Okay, so this was fun. it wasn't super exciting, as I knew pretty much everything that was going to happen (thank you MCU for not rehashing this yet again), but it was nice to see the original take on it. I imagine the big reveal was very impactful for readers at the time.

I've never actually been a huge Peter Parker fan, but I plan to give it shot, along with all my other faves, see how his story developed over the decades. I can't say this issue really swayed me, but then, there wasn't a lot new here for me, so we'll see.

Steve stops by an island prison, which is, I guess, under territory of France, now controlled by the Nazis, to check in on a friend, who is a political prisoner after France's defeat by Germany.

As usual, Steve just does not give any fucks. He never sugarcoats his feelings about the Nazis, he never plays political, even if it might be to his benefit to do so. Obviously antagonizing the warden of the prison where his friend it being kept isn't the most political tactic, but i guess it's true that Steve knows that he doesn't have to play nice in this situation, because he is Captain America, and he knows that he can take this whole prison down, if he needs/wants to. (One thing Comic Steve is not lacking, which is, I think different from his portrayal in the MCU, is confidence. Of course, a lot of that is possibly down to the fact that the vast majority of Steve's early life and backstory wasn't established by Marvel until much much later -- after his original run had completed.)

One thing I've also noticed about these early issues is that we never really get any kind of internal monologue from Steve, which is something that's much more prevalent in modern comics.

So we don't actually have Steve's motivations. He tells the warden that he's just there to check up on his friend, and there's never anything shown -- no scenes between him and Bucky or anything else -- that would indicate that this wasn't his true intention when he arrived, but I really kinda like to imagine that he went to this place with the full intention of Captain America-ing it up, and rescuing his friend. So, like, Steve is not bothering to try to placate this guy in any way, because he fully knows that his friend isn't going to be there much longer.

So, they bring out Steve's friend and he's.... looking a little rough.

Steve is of course quite horrified. But after a pointed look from the warden, Tom insists that they haven't treated him badly, and in particular the warden has treated him very well -- he just, you know, likes being so thin that he can barely stand and you can count each and every rib.

Then Steve is quickly ushered back outside where he is shown to the hut where he will be staying, and I'm only including this panel because Steve is wearing a pith helmet, which is a hat that really shouldn't look good on anyone, and yet, here he is, looking handsome as hell.

Steve obviously didn't fall for any of this bullshit, and again, I love that Steve just apparently wears his uniform under his clothes at all times. Like, is he afraid to pack it in his suitcase? I guess it does help with the speedy magical girl transformation into Captain America, but like, he's literally on what appears to be a tropical island, wearing his uniform under a suit -- how is he not absolutely dying from the heat?? Also, does this mean that Bucky is always wearing his uniform as well? Does he wear it to school? And once again, where are Bucky's parents??

Okay, so this prison warden guy is really not the brightest, because he doesn't even wait for Steve and Bucky to leave the island before torturing Tom again. Like, what exactly was the thought process here? Did he think that Steve was going to be like, "Well, my obviously emaciated friend says he's just fine, so I guess everything's good. I'm just gonna hang out the beach for a bit and get a tan and then head home."

Unfortunately for Steve, this prison torture chamber is set up like a Bond villain's lair.

No, but like, literally. Bond villain setup here.

This is the second time that they've put Steve in a man vs beast type situation.

Interesting, because here we have, canonically, the wings on Steve's helmet are made of steel, and are sturdy enough to use as a weapon.

And unfortunately, yes, Steve does kill another animal here, but in Steve's defense, it seems like the only other option was getting eaten by sharks. And I just think this was probably one of those popular tropes in the forties to show a character was really strong and fearless. We can't judge these comics by today's standards. And again, it's not like he really had a choice.

He does leave the third shark alive -- again, proving that he only killed the first two because he didn't have a choice.

When Steve crawls back out of shark pit, he finds the warden looming over Bucky with a knife, about to stab him -- which if you've been paying attention, threatening Bucky in front of Steve is just about the fastest way to ensure your imminent defeat. Although unfortunately, Steve does not in fact feed the prison warden to the sharks. Come on, the set up was right there!

They then rescue Tom, who somehow hasn't figured out that his friend Steve is Captain America, despite Steve arriving on the island that same day with a small boy named Bucky -- and you know what, whatever, we'll go with it. Maybe Tom is being tongue-in-cheek here, maintaining Steve's secret.

Okay, so one of Bucky's friends, Bob Shmidt, and his family are from Germany, and the Nazis have attempted to recruit his father for something. When he refuses, they beat him up and he ends up in the hospital. Bob runs to inform his friend Bucky what happened, which is very fortuitous, since, you know, Bucky is secretly bff with Captain America.

Yeah, you are Steve. Go get em!

Steve and Bucky sneak into the Nazis compound -- or, rather, they attempt to sneak in.

Bucky, how did you not see the bucket before you stepped in it? Okay, well you know how it is. If you can't sneak in, then you'll just have to fight your way in.

Steve and Bucky fight off a literal battalion of Nazis, and I didn't grab the panel, but Steve says, "You've had enough, eh? You're pretty brave until someone stands up to you and fights!" and that just feels like a very Steve line to me.

So, Steve and Bucky leave the Nazis in a pile of beat-up flesh, tell them to never threaten anyone again, and leave. I mentioned in my last post that Steve typically doesn't kill the enemies -- and I want you to hang onto that thought until later in this post -- and he says, "Well, we're going now. We never hit men when they're licked -- We're not Nazis! -- but we'll be back! The time has come for Americans to teach you a lesson! We'll be seeing you!"

Now, there's this thing in the middle of every issue, where kids could send in a dime and join Captain America's Sentinels of Liberty. Basically, they just got a membership card in the mail. it was a way for kids to feel like they were a part of the fight along with Steve, and I think they maybe actually did hold meetings (but those meetings were really just, like Captain America fanclub meetings).

I've talked previously about how Bucky works as a stand-in for the audience, but I swear I read somewhere, though I have to admit I cannot find the source again, that the Sentinels of Liberty was actually a means of propaganda in its own right, because kids would talk to their parents about how they were fighting Nazis, and how their parents should fight Nazis, too. Essentially it was a means to drive support for America getting involved in the war. Don't quote me on that, as I cannot find my source, but I swear I read this somewhere, and I think this case is really interesting if you view it through that lens.

Anyway, the Sentinels of Liberty exist in the comic itself (though this is the first time we've seen them -- again, let that thought hang out in the back of your mind a bit), as well, and are meetings where kids gather to talk about how they can help in the fight against Nazis. Like, literally join in the fight against Nazis.

Bucky of course, is the leader of one of these groups, and he holds a meeting the next day (yes, with fellow small children) where he instructs the members to find the location of other Nazi hideouts and report back so that Captain America can mop them up -- not that Bucky knows how to contact Captain America, because secret identity or something (?) -- but no one questions this apparent flaw in the plan.

Also, y'all, there is a picture of the group, and there is one black child in the group, and y'all.... the art.... ooof. That's all I can say. It's bad.

Okay, so these small children start spying on literal Nazis -- which I mean, look, you do what you gotta do, this was probably actually happening in Germany -- but as a means of propaganda, it is kinda a lot. Bucky happens to overhear two Nazis talking about how, at that precise moment in time, there are some other Nazis on their way to "take care of Captain America". Bucky runs back to camp to warn Steve...

...but it's too late because Steve is already missing.

I'm honestly not clear on whether the presumption is supposed to be that they took him from his tent (or at least camp) since they shouldn't actually know where to find him -- since secret identity and all -- but hold that thought, because the plot holes in the secret identity thing are big enough to drive a van though in one of the upcoming cases.

Anyway, where is Steve? Steve is passed out and being manhandled by a bunch of Nazi men.

Note that he is in his uniform, which would mean that he was taken as Captain America and not as Steve. But still...

Okay, so they knocked out Steve with some sleeping gas of their own invention, tied him up, and then we get this exchange.

Steve! You are a menace. Also I love how absolutely nonchalant Steve is, because then they tell Steve that they're going to use the sleeping gas to knock out the whole town and then take it captive. And then they quickly discover that they probably should have kept that detail to themselves, because this upsets Steve a great deal, and we get this:

Like, I am absolutely enamored with the fact that Steve was like "Okay, I'll stand here and pretend like you actually have me captured because it amuses me and I have clever quips about it" and then he's just like, okay, now I'm done pretending, and completely wipes the floor with all of them.

I mean, they didn't even successfully have him tied up (score one for Steve bondage fics where he breaks his bondage when he gets bored with it).

The Nazis run for their planes, and we canonically have Steve being able to fly a plane.

Also.... remember how I was like, Steve typically doesn't kill the villains.... yeah, that all changes here, where he literally does go target them and hunt them down.

Which is.... interesting, I think? The US didn't join the war until four months after this issue was released. Yes, ostensibly we joined the war because of Pearl Harbor, but things had decidedly been moving in that direction before Pearl Harbor. I just feel like we can track the overall feelings about the war and the Nazis by how Steve handles them at any given point in time during his run.

After he shoots down all the Nazis, and has a fist fight with one of them on the wing of an airplane (hello, Indiana Jones) he lands back on the ground where he meets Bucky, who tells him that the members of the Sentinels of Liberty (and their fathers) have gone to raid the Nazi hideout where they went before. Yes, again, literal children show up at the Nazi camp with a bunch of sticks and start kicking Nazi ass. And then Steve shows up and the Nazis flee.

Later Bob Shmidt's father turns up at camp to thank Steve for taking care of Bob when he was in the hospital (uh.... Steve did not take care of Bob while his father was in the hospital, he was off fighting Nazis.... with Bob! ... but anyway...)

Steve! Actually I think this is kind of sweet. He wants to reassure them that Captain America knows they appreciate what he does.

So this issue can be summed up as Cap goes to Hawaii. But instead of fun and sun, Steve gets sea monsters and volcanos and a very close brush with death.

Man, Sargent Duffy really really hates Steve. Like, you always got the impression that he didn't like Steve, but here he's just being an outright bully.

So, Steve and Bucky are assigned to accompany General Haywood to the naval base on Kunda Island to meet with Commander Philips.

While they are in route to Hawaii, the US navy receives a report that there is a sea dragon in the waters off the coast of one of the islands that is swallowing ships whole. Commander Phillips takes a naval ship out to investigate. Obviously he doesn't believe that a giant sea dragon is swallowing ships, because why would he.

Unfortunately for Commander Phillips there's a... a giant red sea dragon that swallows ships off the coast of the islands, and his ship gets swallowed.

General Haywood, Steve, and Bucky arrive on the island, and are informed that Commander Phillips' ship was... eaten by a giant red sea dragon.

Steve is like, "Uh, yeah, okay, see, here's a list of things that actually happened, and then there's this, which is a thing that did not actually happen" and he and Bucky duck away because clearly this is a job for Captain America.

Meanwhile, inside the red sea dragon, which is actually a submarine, Commander Phillips is being tortured for his passwords by Captain Okada, the military leader of an "aggressive Asian country". Captain Okada's plan is to drop dynamite into one of the island's volcanos and use it to wipe out the US navy base, and look, I just really feel the need to point out that this issue of Captain America came out on August 1, 1941, which was just over four months /before/ the attack on Pearl Harbor. I don't know, I just find the relationship between history and pop culture to be really interesting.

Commander Phillips' very distraught daughter arrives, and Steve decides to tail her, following some hunch of his. This is lucky for the unnamed daughter, because she's very quickly kidnapped by Okada's men and rowed out to sea in a canoe... which... sure ok, why not.

Steve and Bucky follow in quick pursuit in their own little canoe.

The red sea dragon predictably appears and swallows the canoe, and then we get one of my absolute favorite sequences between Steve and Bucky.

I don't know, I just really love that Bucky is like, yeah, we're both totally about to die, but I will follow you absolutely anywhere. Like, at no point does Steve tell Bucky his hunch, or share his plan, and still Bucky is like, "okay, whatever you say."

And I just really love this panel of Steve and Bucky running down the dragon's throat.

Okay, so inside the dragon/submarine, Captain Okada has given up on torturing Commander Phillips for his passwords, and has decided to torture his daughter instead.

Things get slightly confusing from here, but essentially, Cap and Bucky barge in and save Phillips, but not before Okada escapes with the daughter in this little barge ship thing that's stacked with dynamite. His people have also gotten the dynamite to the volcano (so I guess he didn't need the passwords after all?) and he's going to ram the dynamite barge into the city to prevent anyone from escaping the volcano.

Steve dives off the submarine, and swims over to the barge, where he rescues the daughter, then attempts to steer the barge away from the island before the volcano goes off, in a scene that feels so much like the end of TFA!Steve that it made me feel all mushy inside.

Bucky and Phillips watch from the observation deck of the dragon/submarine as the volcano goes off, and the barge swerves away from the town at the last possible moment, and then blows up.

And this is where things get just a little bit dark for Bucky.

And I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I want to say that this is the first time we've ever seen Bucky kill someone. I mean, even Steve doesn't typically kill the enemy (though he doesn't exactly save them either, if they happen to get killed in the process), but here Bucky outright targets and kills a ship full of people. And this is also, of course, the first time we've ever been led to believe that Steve was killed. I mean, obviously the reader knows he's not actually dead, but they let you sit on that question for just a bit, which, again, this is the first time that's happened.

And yes, Okada's plan was bad, I mean, he was going to kill an entire island of people to get rid of the naval base, but it's really framed that the reason, the entire reason that Bucky does this is because he believes Okada and his men are responsible for Steve's death.

I don't know. I just feel like there's an essay to be written about Bucky, and who he is when he's away from Steve's, I would say, positive influence. And I'd love to talk to Ed Brubaker and ask him about what inspired the Winter Soldier storyline. What was it? What did he see in Bucky? Idk, but I can't wait to see more.

Okay, so Phillips comes up to Bucky and he's like, "I have great news! My daughter is safe! Captain America saved her right before the barge blew up. If only he were still alive so I could thank him." And like, dude. I don't want to say that you're being a little tone deaf here, but come on. Are you kidding me?

And Bucky is like "that's great. So happy for you. I'm just gonna go grieve my best friend now. But that's great." And so Bucky wanders off on his own and then we get our long awaited reunion.

Gee -- I -- I -- let's not talk about what happened to Okada's ship.

Anyway, then we're back to my favorite trope

The ringmaster chooses who's going to be his next victim by spinning his Wheel of Death (TM), because all comic book villains have to have some convoluted way of committing their crimes.

Once again, our villain uses a member of a vulnerable population to do his bidding, against his will.

The murder method of choice in this instance is to let the tiger out of its cage (Yes/YES/The tiger is out), which then promptly kills General Blaine and, I guess, tries to eat him.

Since the vast majority of these cases are written to be like murder mysteries, and there's always 1-2 (or more) murders per case, I feel like the American Army has to be on the verge of running out of high ranking officers. Either that, or they're promoting people to general after, like, a week. The life expectancy of a general stationed near Camp Lehigh must be about the same as the life expectancy of a captain on the Death Star.

Steve magical girl transforms into Captain America, and then kills the tiger with his *bare hands*.

Steve, that tiger was probably mistreated, underfed and starving. Ahem. Anyway.

Then we get another installment of my favorite Captain America trope: Steve getting in trouble for doing Captain America things when he's supposed to be on duty.

While peeling potatoes, Agent Ross stops by, and Steve uses *himself* as his own secret identity to bolster his argument. Never change, Steve.

Betty goes to warn the defense commissioner that he may be next, but the warning comes too late, as he's already in the process of being murdered, this time via the snake charmer and a venomous snake.

Steve also turns up at the defense commissioner's, opting to ditch potato peeling duty, but, obviously, doesn't get there in time. And Betty gets kidnapped by the circus performers.

The ringmaster is not thrilled that Captain America decided to get involved again, so he decides to spin his magical wheel of death, and what do you know, it lands on Captain America.

Me thinks Betty Ross might be developing a bit of a crush.

As expected, Steve turns up and finds Betty dangling from the top of the circus tent. And then he and Bucky swoop in on a trapeze(!) and rescue her.