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Captain America Omnibus
Captain America Omnibus, Vol. 1
As America began preparation for the inevitable entry into World War II, a secret military project gave birth to the greatest one-man fighting force ever known: Captain America! Transformed by the Super-Soldier Serum from a 97-pound weakling into the Star-Spangled Avenger, Steve Rogers led the charge to liberate the world from the Axis Powers' grasp. But before the war's end, an accident left Cap frozen in suspended animation and his sidekick Bucky seemingly dead, while the world turned on for decades.
COLLECTING: TALES OF SUSPENSE 59-99, CAPTAIN AMERICA 100-113, NOT BRAND ECHH 3
COLLECTING: TALES OF SUSPENSE 59-99, CAPTAIN AMERICA 100-113, NOT BRAND ECHH 3
843 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 1969
13 people are currently reading
163 people want to read
About the author
Stan Lee
7,563 books2,342 followersStan Lee (born Stanley Martin Lieber) was an American writer, editor, creator of comic book superheroes, and the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics.
With several artist co-creators, most notably Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he co-created Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Thor as a superhero, the X-Men, Iron Man, the Hulk, Daredevil, the Silver Surfer, Dr. Strange, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Scarlet Witch, The Inhumans, and many other characters, introducing complex, naturalistic characters and a thoroughly shared universe into superhero comic books. He subsequently led the expansion of Marvel Comics from a small division of a publishing house to a large multimedia corporation.
With several artist co-creators, most notably Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he co-created Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Thor as a superhero, the X-Men, Iron Man, the Hulk, Daredevil, the Silver Surfer, Dr. Strange, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Scarlet Witch, The Inhumans, and many other characters, introducing complex, naturalistic characters and a thoroughly shared universe into superhero comic books. He subsequently led the expansion of Marvel Comics from a small division of a publishing house to a large multimedia corporation.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 19, 2018
Captain America Omnibus contains material from Tales of Suspense 59-99 and Captain America 100-113.
One of my earliest memories is of flipping through my uncle's Captain America 100 so I've been on the lookout for something like this for decades. Sure, there's a wee bit of overlap with the contents of Marvel Pocket Books Captain America that a different uncle gave me but this one is built to last and not a tattered paperback from the 70s.
The Tales of Suspense issues are from when he shared the book with Iron Man so a lot of them are Captain America, and later Cap and Bucky, beating up scrubs for 15 pages. I find it interesting that when Cap was appearing in The Avengers every month, they set his Tales of Suspense adventures in World War II so it wouldn't conflict with the Avengers stories, a far cry from more recent times when Wolverine was in 8-10 books a month, continuity be damned!
Highlights of the first 12 issues include a retelling of Captain America's origin, meeting Agent 13, aka Peggy Carter, a clash with Baron Zemo, and a multi-parter with the Red Skull. At one point, my wife told me about what was happening in Ann of Green Gables. Then she asked what was happening in my book. "Captain America is punching Nazis," I said. The art is Kirby in his prime for most of the first twelve issues with George Tuska doing finishes on a couple. The letters pages indicate the readers of the 1960s were just as entitled shits as today's readers.
From there, things shift to the present day of 1965. Captain America battles reawakened Nazi robots, Batroc, meets Sharon Carter and Nick Fury, and encounters other stuff. I much prefer Dick Ayers working over Kirby's layouts than George Tuska. John Romita handles some of the art chores, predating his fantastic work on Amazing Spider-Man. Kirby returns to do art chores until after clashes with the Red Skull and the Cosmic Cube and the Adaptoid.
I could easily run out of space recounting the stories. They get a little repetitive after a while. While it's Lee and Kirby in their prime, there's only so far you can go with Cap. It's not the Fantastic Four nor should it be. As a result, a lot of the stories are Captain America beating the shit out of people, usually the Red Skull, although Batroc takes more than his share of ass-kickings. Then again, they probably weren't written with a 40 year old reading them in 100 page chunks in mind either.
The final four issues of the collection were my favorites, a multi-partner involving Rick Jones taking up the Bucky mantle and the apparent death of Captain America, with three parts done by Jim Steranko.
While I think the Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man from this time period were better, this Captain America omnibus was a good read and an interesting look at Captain America's early tenure in the modern Marvel universe. 3.5 out of 5 stars.
One of my earliest memories is of flipping through my uncle's Captain America 100 so I've been on the lookout for something like this for decades. Sure, there's a wee bit of overlap with the contents of Marvel Pocket Books Captain America that a different uncle gave me but this one is built to last and not a tattered paperback from the 70s.
The Tales of Suspense issues are from when he shared the book with Iron Man so a lot of them are Captain America, and later Cap and Bucky, beating up scrubs for 15 pages. I find it interesting that when Cap was appearing in The Avengers every month, they set his Tales of Suspense adventures in World War II so it wouldn't conflict with the Avengers stories, a far cry from more recent times when Wolverine was in 8-10 books a month, continuity be damned!
Highlights of the first 12 issues include a retelling of Captain America's origin, meeting Agent 13, aka Peggy Carter, a clash with Baron Zemo, and a multi-parter with the Red Skull. At one point, my wife told me about what was happening in Ann of Green Gables. Then she asked what was happening in my book. "Captain America is punching Nazis," I said. The art is Kirby in his prime for most of the first twelve issues with George Tuska doing finishes on a couple. The letters pages indicate the readers of the 1960s were just as entitled shits as today's readers.
From there, things shift to the present day of 1965. Captain America battles reawakened Nazi robots, Batroc, meets Sharon Carter and Nick Fury, and encounters other stuff. I much prefer Dick Ayers working over Kirby's layouts than George Tuska. John Romita handles some of the art chores, predating his fantastic work on Amazing Spider-Man. Kirby returns to do art chores until after clashes with the Red Skull and the Cosmic Cube and the Adaptoid.
I could easily run out of space recounting the stories. They get a little repetitive after a while. While it's Lee and Kirby in their prime, there's only so far you can go with Cap. It's not the Fantastic Four nor should it be. As a result, a lot of the stories are Captain America beating the shit out of people, usually the Red Skull, although Batroc takes more than his share of ass-kickings. Then again, they probably weren't written with a 40 year old reading them in 100 page chunks in mind either.
The final four issues of the collection were my favorites, a multi-partner involving Rick Jones taking up the Bucky mantle and the apparent death of Captain America, with three parts done by Jim Steranko.
While I think the Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man from this time period were better, this Captain America omnibus was a good read and an interesting look at Captain America's early tenure in the modern Marvel universe. 3.5 out of 5 stars.
October 14, 2024
This is my first time reading most of these early stories and seeing the art. I very much enjoyed the depth of Cap as a man out of time as he wrestled with the memory of his fallen partner and the loss of the world he knew, as well as the action scenes of course!
February 9, 2024
A nice trip down memory lane as Captain America was one of my favorite superheroes.
February 20, 2023
I honestly didn’t expect to be this disappointed. But sadly, the return of Captain America just doesn’t have the Lee/Kirby spark of their other titles like Fantastic Four or X-Men, although F4 is a high bar indeed.
Most of the book is spent with standard Lee torch-bearing for Cap’s lost love, intermixed with Red Skull appearances. And while a big complaint is the lack of longer story threads, those with the Red Skull always just seemed to sputter out.
The end of the book has far too much pining over Bucky, similar to his character in the MCU. It just get like they couldn’t come up with any good ideas.
Even Kirby’s art is pretty bland and repetitive. It’s a real shame.
But hey, sometimes even the greatest kinds can pull out a dud. If nothing else, this just sets the floor with the dynamic duo of 1960’s Marveldom.
Most of the book is spent with standard Lee torch-bearing for Cap’s lost love, intermixed with Red Skull appearances. And while a big complaint is the lack of longer story threads, those with the Red Skull always just seemed to sputter out.
The end of the book has far too much pining over Bucky, similar to his character in the MCU. It just get like they couldn’t come up with any good ideas.
Even Kirby’s art is pretty bland and repetitive. It’s a real shame.
But hey, sometimes even the greatest kinds can pull out a dud. If nothing else, this just sets the floor with the dynamic duo of 1960’s Marveldom.
November 20, 2023
Aside from the Sternako penciled issues and issue 93 (via the reprint in Marvel Double Feature No. 17), I had never read any of these comic books prior to now. It sounds almost criminal in retrospect. How could I have skipped this Silver Age goodness by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby all of this time? It's impossible to be everywhere at once. I read constantly and still have barely scratched the surface of this medium. It's a wonderful problem to have, truth be told. I have yet to experience who knows how many great classics.
The book starts out with Cap co-headlining the title Tales of Suspense with Iron Man. The distribution agreement that Marvel had with DC at the time kept their stable of titles at 8 per month until the Marvel expansion of 1968, which allowed Marvel to increase the number of titles published each month. Iron Man was given his own series, and Tales of Suspense was retitled Captain America with issue 100.
How can anyone not love Stan Lee's hyperbole charged writing? I love how his villains are all megalomaniacs who spout off long-winded expositions. Things start off fast and furious, with Kirby drawing Cap in action sequences far more explosive than in any other title on the stands at the time. I like Kirby but am not one of those people who put his every brushstroke on a pedestal. Kirby was a workhorse and was extremely prolific. Sometimes he just punched the clock and cashed a check, other times he was brilliant. He is both on this run.
Issue 63 is the first of countless times that Cap's origin is re-told. Only Spider-Man's origin seems to have been retold and reinterpreted as many times as Cap's has. The Red Skull is a recurring foe, and I love the Sleeper robot arc. World War II was still very real to Americans, being only 20 years in the past at the time of publication. It's likely that many of the kids reading this were the children of veterans. Pretty much everyone knew someone who served. So while the abundance of WWII flashbacks and Nazi sleeper agent stories might seem tedious on the surface, once one considers how severe the impact that the war had on the national psyche all should be forgiven.
Batroc the Leaper debuts in issue 75, and he becomes a staple of Cap's rogues gallery. Kirby's original take on the character shows a burly brawler. Over time, he will be portrayed as a more, shall we say, svelte opponent. Sharon Carter, Steve Rogers' love interest, also debuts during this time period. While Jack Kirby co-created Captain America in 1941 with Joe Simon, it was Stan Lee and Jack Kirby who brought Cap kicking and screaming into the Marvel Age of Comics. The foundations of the character that we know and love lay in the Golden Age, but all of the characters that we identify with Cap come from the Silver Age. Bucky and the Red Skull are the only real holdovers from the original Golden Age series.
Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. are basically co-headliners of the strip as this run progresses. Fury manipulates Cap into doing his bidding whether Cap realizes it or not. Them, who morph into A.I.M., follow Nick Fury here from his title, Strange Tales. Stan Lee was like a spider weaving a web, connecting all of these titles together into a shared universe. The Cosmic Cube (or Tesseract as you new-jack Avengers movies fans know it) debuts here, ditto the Super Adaptoid. It's actually quite stunning to think about how many characters were created in so short a time span, never mind the fact that most of these characters and concepts have stood the test of time.
Gil Kane's brief run on the title was great, especially issues 90 and 91 where Joe Sinnott inked his work. Kane really lived and died by his inker. Left to his own devices, his inking is too faint, like he traced each line once and said “that'll do it.” With a strong handed inker like Sinnott (or later Romita, Sr. on Spider-Man), Kane's genius was fully realized.
The Black Panther, Baron Zemo, Hydra, the Trapster, the Hulk, Madame Hydra (later Viper), and Dr. Faustus are also found in this book. I have always been fascinated by Dr. Faustus, as he would fight heroes on a psychological (and chemical) level.
There is nothing I can say about the genius of Jim Steranko that hasn't already been said elsewhere, and said better. Suffice it to say his work is brilliant. He and Neal Adams were the most innovative mainstream comic book artists of the 1960s, with Steve Ditko being a close third. Steranko and Adams played with panel layouts, and Steranko's “camera pans” gave his work a cinematic feel which was groundbreaking at the time. People robbed his style but not the thoughts or intentions behind it, and this is why so many modern comic artists come up short when compared to Steranko and Adams. I dunno, maybe I'm just a dinosaur who is full of shit. You decide.
Steranko's splash page to issue 111 is incredible. I love the “camera angle changes” which then fade into the scene on page 2. I can almost here some jazzy music, like an opening sequence in a movie from that era. Brilliant stuff.
A story from the vastly overrated humor mag Not Brand Echh is included as a bonus in the back of the book. I found it to be unreadable. I find it puzzling that this series tops so many people's wishlists for series that they want to see collected in Masterworks. You couldn't pay me to read that crap. One man's treasure, right?
I adore the Marvel Omnibus line of hardcovers. This book boasts superior linework and color restoration over the existing hardcover Masterworks. The softcovers use the same files found in this book, so if you can't find a copy of this long out of print book and want the best possible reproduction, the softcover Masterworks from the last few years are the way to go.
The book starts out with Cap co-headlining the title Tales of Suspense with Iron Man. The distribution agreement that Marvel had with DC at the time kept their stable of titles at 8 per month until the Marvel expansion of 1968, which allowed Marvel to increase the number of titles published each month. Iron Man was given his own series, and Tales of Suspense was retitled Captain America with issue 100.
How can anyone not love Stan Lee's hyperbole charged writing? I love how his villains are all megalomaniacs who spout off long-winded expositions. Things start off fast and furious, with Kirby drawing Cap in action sequences far more explosive than in any other title on the stands at the time. I like Kirby but am not one of those people who put his every brushstroke on a pedestal. Kirby was a workhorse and was extremely prolific. Sometimes he just punched the clock and cashed a check, other times he was brilliant. He is both on this run.
Issue 63 is the first of countless times that Cap's origin is re-told. Only Spider-Man's origin seems to have been retold and reinterpreted as many times as Cap's has. The Red Skull is a recurring foe, and I love the Sleeper robot arc. World War II was still very real to Americans, being only 20 years in the past at the time of publication. It's likely that many of the kids reading this were the children of veterans. Pretty much everyone knew someone who served. So while the abundance of WWII flashbacks and Nazi sleeper agent stories might seem tedious on the surface, once one considers how severe the impact that the war had on the national psyche all should be forgiven.
Batroc the Leaper debuts in issue 75, and he becomes a staple of Cap's rogues gallery. Kirby's original take on the character shows a burly brawler. Over time, he will be portrayed as a more, shall we say, svelte opponent. Sharon Carter, Steve Rogers' love interest, also debuts during this time period. While Jack Kirby co-created Captain America in 1941 with Joe Simon, it was Stan Lee and Jack Kirby who brought Cap kicking and screaming into the Marvel Age of Comics. The foundations of the character that we know and love lay in the Golden Age, but all of the characters that we identify with Cap come from the Silver Age. Bucky and the Red Skull are the only real holdovers from the original Golden Age series.
Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. are basically co-headliners of the strip as this run progresses. Fury manipulates Cap into doing his bidding whether Cap realizes it or not. Them, who morph into A.I.M., follow Nick Fury here from his title, Strange Tales. Stan Lee was like a spider weaving a web, connecting all of these titles together into a shared universe. The Cosmic Cube (or Tesseract as you new-jack Avengers movies fans know it) debuts here, ditto the Super Adaptoid. It's actually quite stunning to think about how many characters were created in so short a time span, never mind the fact that most of these characters and concepts have stood the test of time.
Gil Kane's brief run on the title was great, especially issues 90 and 91 where Joe Sinnott inked his work. Kane really lived and died by his inker. Left to his own devices, his inking is too faint, like he traced each line once and said “that'll do it.” With a strong handed inker like Sinnott (or later Romita, Sr. on Spider-Man), Kane's genius was fully realized.
The Black Panther, Baron Zemo, Hydra, the Trapster, the Hulk, Madame Hydra (later Viper), and Dr. Faustus are also found in this book. I have always been fascinated by Dr. Faustus, as he would fight heroes on a psychological (and chemical) level.
There is nothing I can say about the genius of Jim Steranko that hasn't already been said elsewhere, and said better. Suffice it to say his work is brilliant. He and Neal Adams were the most innovative mainstream comic book artists of the 1960s, with Steve Ditko being a close third. Steranko and Adams played with panel layouts, and Steranko's “camera pans” gave his work a cinematic feel which was groundbreaking at the time. People robbed his style but not the thoughts or intentions behind it, and this is why so many modern comic artists come up short when compared to Steranko and Adams. I dunno, maybe I'm just a dinosaur who is full of shit. You decide.
Steranko's splash page to issue 111 is incredible. I love the “camera angle changes” which then fade into the scene on page 2. I can almost here some jazzy music, like an opening sequence in a movie from that era. Brilliant stuff.
A story from the vastly overrated humor mag Not Brand Echh is included as a bonus in the back of the book. I found it to be unreadable. I find it puzzling that this series tops so many people's wishlists for series that they want to see collected in Masterworks. You couldn't pay me to read that crap. One man's treasure, right?
I adore the Marvel Omnibus line of hardcovers. This book boasts superior linework and color restoration over the existing hardcover Masterworks. The softcovers use the same files found in this book, so if you can't find a copy of this long out of print book and want the best possible reproduction, the softcover Masterworks from the last few years are the way to go.
May 7, 2021
Cap fights cartoon Nazis, a cartoon Frenchman, and the Red Skull about a dozen times. More crazy gadgets than you can shake a James Bond at. The continuity is dodgy and the stories often don't make sense, but it's hard not to be pulled in by Stan's snappy, melodramatic scripting. It was nice to go back to a time when America and its ideals were things to be admired and fought for. Make Americans great again!
August 7, 2021
There's a certain repetitiveness to Cap's early Silver Age stories that I don't appreciate. Endless waves of Red Skull's thugs, endless scenes of white people in suits. It takes some time for the good narrative threads to begin to play out (Sharon Carter, T'challa) and when the volume gets to Cap's solo book you can see Kirby get room to breathe. There's Steranko too, and while I appreciate Steranko's art, he's too much of an asshole for me to really like him that much.
June 29, 2024
Not every single issue is stellar, but the best stuff here (the peak Kirby issues, the Steranko trilogy) is so legendary, and the book so lovingly put together, that it is impossible to award it less than five stars. The afterword in which Steranko breaks down his issues page by page is worth the cover price alone.
September 29, 2025
3.5/5
Like most Silver Age tales, this volume is full of corny dialogue and paper-thin plotlines.
However, through their various experimentations with Steve, Lee & Kirby establish the base of his character as an American ideal and introduce other concepts & characters that will only grow in importance as Cap makes his way through this new & unfamiliar time.
Jim Steranko comes in towards the end of this volume to rework Cap a little more and help prop him up so the stories can keep coming.
Like most Silver Age tales, this volume is full of corny dialogue and paper-thin plotlines.
However, through their various experimentations with Steve, Lee & Kirby establish the base of his character as an American ideal and introduce other concepts & characters that will only grow in importance as Cap makes his way through this new & unfamiliar time.
Jim Steranko comes in towards the end of this volume to rework Cap a little more and help prop him up so the stories can keep coming.
May 17, 2021
Before Marvel Studios--with no small contribution from Chris Evans!--Captain America wasn't really what comic readers would call a cool character. He had the reputation for being a bit of a Boy Scout, the epitome of the square-jawed do-gooder draped in the flag. I've been making a point recently, however, of going back to the original Stan Lee and Jack Kirby days to see the characters at the start of the Marvel Universe in the 1960s by reading these massive omnibus collections. What I found was a character who was more complex than what people give him credit for. He was a #WorldWarII era character revived during the early 60s, so there's emphasis on being out of step with the times, like a Rip Van Winkle. Layered over that was a heavy strand of trauma from the war years, not just from years of combat but survivors' guilt as well; his teen sidekick Bucky died during the war, and so his alienation and loneliness is compounded by his grief and guilt. Lee took a two-dimensional character that was a cipher for American propaganda during the war years and really humanized him in this set of books as he got lost in his old photo albums and was visibly pained by any reminder of his lost ally. One standout book has to do with Cap seeking out help from a psychologist, who ends up being an enemy agent dosing the star-spangled Avenger with hallucinogenic drugs and gaslighting him as a means of softening him up for defeat. He should've been tipped off when his name was Doctor Faustus! Other highlights include Cap dealing wiht the fallout from publicly revealing his identity (for a chance at love!) and a team-up with Black Panther against Baron Zemo (just like in the film Civil War)! Jim Steranko also draws a few books, which are visually striking, even if the story is just fine.
November 12, 2023
For the longest time, I would've told you that these Silver Age Captain America comics were some of the best comics of all time. And, actually, some of them are. Reading the first several issues in this collection, though, made me realize that some of them are just okay.
I've been a huge Cap fan since I was a young kid, partly helped by VHS tapes containing episodes of the old '60s Marvel Super Heroes cartoon show, which used art from some of these very issues. I think it's partly because of that that I was slightly disappointed by the exclusion of Avengers #4 from this collection. It's absolutely essential to read that issue before diving into the material from Tales of Suspense and then Cap's solo series.
Many of the issues featuring the Red Skull are among the best, but the reliance on characters like Power Man (not to be confused with Luke Cage) and Baron Zemo's Masters of Evil brought down my overall enjoyment of the book.
The art is great, of course, being done mostly by Jack "King" Kirby with some incredible issues from Jim Steranko. While Stan Lee may not be the greatest writer of all time, I do appreciate a lot of his work more than the average comic fan.
I never know how to end these things, so I'll just say that I do think this collection is worth buying for the really good issues. Just don't expect every one to be a classic, and you'll be fine. I came very close to rating it five stars, but in the end, it just wasn't as perfect as I'd hoped it would be.
I've been a huge Cap fan since I was a young kid, partly helped by VHS tapes containing episodes of the old '60s Marvel Super Heroes cartoon show, which used art from some of these very issues. I think it's partly because of that that I was slightly disappointed by the exclusion of Avengers #4 from this collection. It's absolutely essential to read that issue before diving into the material from Tales of Suspense and then Cap's solo series.
Many of the issues featuring the Red Skull are among the best, but the reliance on characters like Power Man (not to be confused with Luke Cage) and Baron Zemo's Masters of Evil brought down my overall enjoyment of the book.
The art is great, of course, being done mostly by Jack "King" Kirby with some incredible issues from Jim Steranko. While Stan Lee may not be the greatest writer of all time, I do appreciate a lot of his work more than the average comic fan.
I never know how to end these things, so I'll just say that I do think this collection is worth buying for the really good issues. Just don't expect every one to be a classic, and you'll be fine. I came very close to rating it five stars, but in the end, it just wasn't as perfect as I'd hoped it would be.
July 27, 2015
this is actually some of Lee's better work. Kirby as always is brilliant but best when inked by Joe Sinnott.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews