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Fighting American
Fighting American is a superhero created in 1954 by the writer-artist team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Published by the Crestwood Publications imprint Prize Comics, it was, contrary to standard industry practices of the time, creator-owned. Harvey Comics published one additional issue in 1966. One final inventoried tale was published in 1989, in a Marvel Comics hardcover collection of all the Fighting American stories.
Subsequent publishers have had short runs of Fighting American stories with the permission of the owners' estates. The character gained some notoriety due to a lawsuit in the late 1990s when Awesome Entertainment founder Rob Liefeld announced intentions to publish a mini-series that was allegedly similar to that artist's run on Marvel's Captain America title. After settling the dispute, Awesome released three Fighting American series.
Bitter that Timely Comics' 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics, had relaunched their superhero Captain America in a new series in 1954, the writer-artist team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created another patriotically themed character, Fighting American. Simon recalled, "We thought we'd show them how to do Captain America". While the comic book initially portrayed the protagonist as an anti-Communist dramatic hero, Simon and Kirby turned the series into a superhero satire with the second issue, in the aftermath of the Army–McCarthy hearings and the public backlash against the Red-baiting U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy. Simon specified for a panel audience at the 1974 Comic Art Convention in New York that the character was not so much inspired by Captain America as it was simply a product of the times.
Simon said in 1989 that he felt the anti-Communist fervor of the era would provide antagonists who, like the Nazis who fought Captain America during World War II, would be "colorful, outrageous and perfect foils for our hero":
The first stories were deadly serious. Fighting American was the first [C]ommie-basher in comics. We were all caught up in Senator McCarthy's vendetta against the 'red menace.' But soon it became evident that McCarthy ... had gone too far, damaging innocent Americans. ... Then, the turnaround, [as] his side became talked of as the lunatic fringe .... Jack and I quickly became uncomfortable with Fighting American's cold war. Instead, we relaxed and had fun with the characters.
Published bimonthly by Prize Group, an imprint of Crestwood Publications, Fighting American lasted through issue #7 (May 1955). The following decade, for Harvey Comics, Simon packaged a single issue of Fighting American (October 1966) consisting of "reprints and unpublished material" from the 1950s run, with some changes made to comply with the since-instituted Comics Code. A final inventoried Fighting American story, the three-page "The Beef Box", not drawn by Kirby, appeared in Marvel Comics' 1989 hardcover collection of the 1950s and 1960s stories.
The character was revived by Titan Comics in a new series starting in October 2017.
In the 10-page story "First Assignment: Break the Spy Ring" in Fighting American #1 (May 1954), Nelson Flagg was the unathletic younger brother of star athlete and war hero Johnny Flagg, and served as the writer for popular TV news commentator Johnny at station USA. When outspoken anti-Communist Johnny is killed by one of the many enemies his commentary has earned him, Nelson makes a deathbed promise to hunt down his brother's murderers. Recruited for the U.S. military's "Project Fighting American", Nelson has his mind and life force transferred to Johnny's "revitalized and strengthened" corpse. Assuming Johnny's identity, he adopts the costumed alter ego Fighting American to battle Communist threats. In the premiere issue's second story, the six-page "Second Assignment: Track Down the Baby Buzz Bombs", an unnamed, blond-haired teenager working as a page at Flagg's network assists the hero and is rewarded with own costume and the name Speedboy.
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Fighting American
Fighting American is a superhero created in 1954 by the writer-artist team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Published by the Crestwood Publications imprint Prize Comics, it was, contrary to standard industry practices of the time, creator-owned. Harvey Comics published one additional issue in 1966. One final inventoried tale was published in 1989, in a Marvel Comics hardcover collection of all the Fighting American stories.
Subsequent publishers have had short runs of Fighting American stories with the permission of the owners' estates. The character gained some notoriety due to a lawsuit in the late 1990s when Awesome Entertainment founder Rob Liefeld announced intentions to publish a mini-series that was allegedly similar to that artist's run on Marvel's Captain America title. After settling the dispute, Awesome released three Fighting American series.
Bitter that Timely Comics' 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics, had relaunched their superhero Captain America in a new series in 1954, the writer-artist team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created another patriotically themed character, Fighting American. Simon recalled, "We thought we'd show them how to do Captain America". While the comic book initially portrayed the protagonist as an anti-Communist dramatic hero, Simon and Kirby turned the series into a superhero satire with the second issue, in the aftermath of the Army–McCarthy hearings and the public backlash against the Red-baiting U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy. Simon specified for a panel audience at the 1974 Comic Art Convention in New York that the character was not so much inspired by Captain America as it was simply a product of the times.
Simon said in 1989 that he felt the anti-Communist fervor of the era would provide antagonists who, like the Nazis who fought Captain America during World War II, would be "colorful, outrageous and perfect foils for our hero":
The first stories were deadly serious. Fighting American was the first [C]ommie-basher in comics. We were all caught up in Senator McCarthy's vendetta against the 'red menace.' But soon it became evident that McCarthy ... had gone too far, damaging innocent Americans. ... Then, the turnaround, [as] his side became talked of as the lunatic fringe .... Jack and I quickly became uncomfortable with Fighting American's cold war. Instead, we relaxed and had fun with the characters.
Published bimonthly by Prize Group, an imprint of Crestwood Publications, Fighting American lasted through issue #7 (May 1955). The following decade, for Harvey Comics, Simon packaged a single issue of Fighting American (October 1966) consisting of "reprints and unpublished material" from the 1950s run, with some changes made to comply with the since-instituted Comics Code. A final inventoried Fighting American story, the three-page "The Beef Box", not drawn by Kirby, appeared in Marvel Comics' 1989 hardcover collection of the 1950s and 1960s stories.
The character was revived by Titan Comics in a new series starting in October 2017.
In the 10-page story "First Assignment: Break the Spy Ring" in Fighting American #1 (May 1954), Nelson Flagg was the unathletic younger brother of star athlete and war hero Johnny Flagg, and served as the writer for popular TV news commentator Johnny at station USA. When outspoken anti-Communist Johnny is killed by one of the many enemies his commentary has earned him, Nelson makes a deathbed promise to hunt down his brother's murderers. Recruited for the U.S. military's "Project Fighting American", Nelson has his mind and life force transferred to Johnny's "revitalized and strengthened" corpse. Assuming Johnny's identity, he adopts the costumed alter ego Fighting American to battle Communist threats. In the premiere issue's second story, the six-page "Second Assignment: Track Down the Baby Buzz Bombs", an unnamed, blond-haired teenager working as a page at Flagg's network assists the hero and is rewarded with own costume and the name Speedboy.