Captain America Annual #3 [1976] – The Thing from the Black Hole Star

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Cap battles aliens out in the country in this issue, called by a farmer who, in an odd throw-away set-up line, called Cap after seeing him on a talk-show debating the topic of super-heroes, fantasies and UFOs. So that’s what Cap does between battling super-villains. Anyway, the first alien, called only the Captive, is being pursued by others, and manages to convince Cap and the farmer that he was an innocent being held in a black hole for a million years. Seems to me Cap is being unusually trusting, until the farmer is killed, as the Captive reveals himself to be the last of an evil race of life-energy sucking parasites.

CaptainAmericaAnnual31976.jpg

Cap doesn’t take well to being duped, and is able to disable the Captive, allowing the aliens to take him and shoot him out into a nova. Later Cap makes a report to the government, who decide to hush up the incident. There’s even a reference to Cap fighting the Kree and the Skrulls, which I’m guessing was added by someone in New York.

A pretty decent story, overall, although depending a bit on Cap being overly trusting. A lot of very neat bits of art, from the various alien designs and spaceships, and an interesting precursor to some of the themes in Captain Victory in the 1980s.

Inking on the 35-page story is by Frank Giacoia and John Verpoorten, the cover is inked by Giacoia.

Published 1976

One thought on “Captain America Annual #3 [1976] – The Thing from the Black Hole Star

  1. nick caputo

    I always liked that last page as well. Kirby added a bit of questioning of authority, perhaps not on the level of Steve Engelhart, but it still worked well within the context of the story.

    One would have to see the penciled page to know if Kirby’s copy was rewritten (as it was many times in his stories) although it is possible Kirby made reference to those characters on his own.

    Nick Caputo

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