Captain America Comics #1
Steve Rogers, a frail young man rejected by the Army, volunteers for a secret super-soldier program and is transformed into the peak of human physical perfection. In the issue's most famous image — drawn a year before Pearl Harbor — he punches Adolf Hitler directly in the jaw on the cover, a deliberate provocation by its Jewish creators. He is immediately partnered with Bucky Barnes, a teenage sidekick, establishing the mentor-sidekick dynamic.
Captain America Comics #1 defined the patriotic superhero and showcased Jack Kirby's revolutionary approach to dynamic action composition, a visual language that would define superhero art for decades. The issue sold nearly a million copies despite death threats to Timely's offices, demonstrating comics' power as political propaganda and cultural commentary. Kirby's kinetic page layouts remain the foundation of superhero art direction.
Simon and Kirby created Captain America in late 1940, while America was still officially neutral, as an explicit argument for American intervention against fascism. The choice to have him physically attack Hitler on the cover — a sitting head of state — was an extraordinary act of political courage that generated real threats against the creators, underscoring how seriously the medium's social impact was taken.