Saturday, December 17, 2011

The Co-Creator of Captain America Dies


Joe Simon has passed away at the age of 98.

From an obituary in the New York Daily News...

"Wherever I was, I'd always be thinking up new characters - the idea for Cap came to me while I was riding a Fifth Ave. bus," Simon, who co-created the character with artist Jack Kirby, told The News earlier this year, as the major motion picture featuring their hero hit theaters.

"Captain America was designed to be the perfect foil for the Führer, and the Nazi Bund didn't like the fact that we were making fun of their great leader."

When the first issue hit the stands in March 1941, readers snapped up almost a million copies of Captain America Comics - which featuring the shield-carring hero punching Hitler square in the jaw.

“Tall, deep-voiced, cigar smoking, always armed with a quip or a wise crack, Joe Simon was my first boss at Marvel which was then called Timely Comics,” says Stan Lee. “He was an incredibly talented artist as well as a writer... I couldn't have had a better mentor.”

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