Review by Ian Keogh
In the mid-1960s Captain Action was an early attempt to sell action figures to boys, with his history detailed in Mark Waid’s informative introduction including how DC came to produce a tie-in comic. Why, though, would anyone want to read the five issues over fifty years later? Well, for starters those five issues were drawn by Wally Wood, then Gil Kane, two giants of the field, and in interviews Kane has cited Captain Action as his best work. Given how many pages Kane produced, that’s some claim, yet it’s certainly a contender, mixing dynamism, creativity and the solid figurework that always characterised Kane’s art. Whether inked by Kane himself, or Wood, these remain stunning action pages.
It’s Wood, however, who draws an origin story provided by Jim Shooter, then just sixteen. It’s clever, recasting the assorted global pantheons of gods as a single race of departing space travellers, leaving a gift of their powers distilled into coins transferring those powers to the worthy. In this case it’s archaeologist Clive Arno, but the gods of evil also provide a legacy, acquired by Arno’s assistant Krellik. It’s a functional plot, but also has to crowd in Superman and Arno’s son, and while Wood’s layouts sparkle, the figures are stiff and staged.
When Kane takes over the writing as well as the art he dispenses with Shooter’s plots, takes Captain Action somewhere altogether more cosmic, and eliminates the idea of his being able to acquire any super power via an obscure god. Kane’s dialogue is melodramatic, but with a more quantifiable set of abilities for Captain Action and stronger emotional content, the final three stories are far stronger, and infused with still interesting ideas.
The last of them presents what in 1968 would have been unthinkable times, although it reflects the disconnect between the righteous Americans of the 1950s and the hippy generation that followed. A demagogue is stirring up discontent with the political status quo, and encouraging the public to rise up and sabotage the pillars of society. With this 2022 reissue it’s almost impossible to avoid the connection between 1968’s fiction and 21st century reality. Kane’s writing may not be polished by today’s standards, but he’s trying something energetically different, and let it be noted his work pre-empted DC’s era of social relevance that kicked off in 1970. However, one imagines this wasn’t the type of story a toy company wanted to see promoting their action figure.
Despite material that was innovative for the times, it’s Kane’s art that now raises Captain Action above average. The closing pages present reproductions of some original art, and some layout sketches, and accompanying the stories are promotional ads drawn by Murphy Anderson, Kurt Schaffenberger and Chic Stone.
