Adam Graham's Blog: Christians and Superheroes - Posts Tagged "fighting-american"

Fighting American by Joe Simon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I liked the idea of Captain America, Commie Smasher when Atlas back to fight Communists spies and infiltrators in the 1950s, but the result was kind of bland. However, Cap's creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby gave us their own Commie fighting 1950s Superhero in Fighting American whose adventures were originally written in the mid-1950s and published in seven issues for Prize Comics and some additional material published in the 1960s for Harvey Comics.

Fighting American was joined in fighting evil for nearly 200 pages of Comic book excellence by Speedboy whose a bit faster than the average kid and makes him a natural ally for Fighting American.

The book's come after the Golden Age, and right before the Silver Age. Some stories have the earnest Golden Age feel. One of my favorites is, "Strangers from Paradise," where a Soviet boy is contacting Speedboy with a message of how great things are in Communist Russia, but it's got a double meaning. It's short but effective.

Simon and Kirby faced the same space limitations of other companies with the demand to write multiple stories in a 20+ page space, with most being between 5-8 pages, they told good stories with memorable villains such as "Super Khalovitch" about a ridiculous Communist superhero, or "Three Coins in the Pushcart" where not one but three Commie spies decide to pretend to be Fighting American in order to discredit him. "The Mad Inker," is a cute sort of inside joke story. And then there's a space alien whose charged with being a Communist Agent.

The origin story is probably the biggest problem with this story. Johnny Flagg is a disabled war hero and Nelson Flagg is his weakling brother. Johnny is killed but the government can reinvigorate Johnny's body if Nelson gives his mind to it. It's a very convoluted story that doesn't matter. Fighting American's always referred to as Johnny Flagg and Nelson Flagg is never mentioned again, so why not just have Johnny given superpowers?

At any rate, despite a few logical issues, I really enjoyed the entire Fighting American book with its great Jack Kirby art. It's a forgotten masterwork that every fan of classic comics should check out.



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