Captain America: The First 80 years

2021 marks the 80th birthday of Marvel's patriotic Avenger, Captain America. The brainchild of comic legends Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, he almost became known as Super-American, until Simon nixed it in favor of what has now become a household name, due in no small part to the string of successful movies produced by Marvel Comics.

Captain America: The First 80 Years is a by-the-decade retrospective of the hero's journey, detailing his origins, his evolution and adaptation to the threats of each decade, and his retroactive continuity changes that turned him into a beloved comic book hero. The crew at Titan have gone out of their way to not only tell the story of Captain America, they've nestled it in the story of the comic book industry and American 20th century history as well, so that a full and appreciable context exists.

The album devotes sections to the most memorable touchpoints in Captain America's career, guiding the reader through his war on the Nazis, then on to the battle on the home front against Communism in the 1950s, and then his revival in the late 1960s when The Avengers find him floating in a block of ice (which later necessitated the aforementioned retcon to explain who the Captain America of the 1950s was).

Featuring a ton of artwork reproduced from the golden age of comics up through the present, Captain America: The First 80 Years is an indispensible chronology for the Captain America fan. This hardcover volume is both handsome and inexpensive, and gets our red white and blue seal of approval.