“Lest We Forget” (k025)

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Posted in K100.

“Lest We Forget” is a 20-page Kirby story from CAPTAIN AMERICA #112 [1969], inked by George Tuska and lettered by Artie Simek.

So, the story goes, Jim Steranko takes over CAPTAIN AMERICA from Kirby with #110. Shortly thereafter, for whatever reason, Kirby’s asked to draw #112 on an extremely tight deadline. He’s told the cliffhanger to #111 had Captain America dying. Did they want him to bring Cap back to life? No, they wanted him to keep Cap dead.

And thus was created the Kirby comic that most closely resembles modern Marvel comics, a full issue where almost nothing happens.

The story is pretty much that Cap’s mask is fished out of the water, and he’s presumed dead, so Iron Man is informed. Iron Man then goes over Cap’s file, so we get short vignettes of Cap’s original WWII adventures and villains, the classic retro-fitted “death of Bucky” bit with Zemo, Cap’s thawing out courtesy of Namor and scenes from his adventures of the previous few years, including such villains as MODOK, Batroc and others.

So the story is light, it does at least look really good. George Tuska inks, I think the only other work he did with Kirby was finishes on some Cap stories a few years before this, but he does a good job here, presumably on as tight a deadline as Kirby was.

https://www.comics.org/issue/22655/#160044
ESSENTIAL CAPTAIN AMERICA #2 [2002]
MARVEL MASTERWORKS #64 [2006]
CAPTAIN AMERICA OMNIBUS #1 [2011]
MARVEL MASTERWORKS – CAPTAIN AMERICA #3 [2014]

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