Captain America Fought Zombies Before Zombies Were Cool!

I am not a fan of modern zombie fiction. In part, this is because of my distaste for graphic violence, which I think is one of the worst things that ever happened to the horror genre. It is also, in part, simply a matter of personal preference. Give me a dead guy raised by voodoo or because of a curse rather than a world-wide zombie plague and I'll then be okay with the story. The second episode of the 1974/75 TV series The Night Stalker involved a voodoo-created zombie and contains one of the purely scariest moments ever produced in fiction from any medium.

But there at least one Zombie Apocalypse story that I enjoy. We have to go back to All-Winners Comics #1 (Summer 1941) to find it, but by golly, it's there.

The comic contained five stories respectively featuring the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner, the Black Marvel, the Angel and Captain America. It's Cap who has to deal with the Zombies.

These particular zombies are created by a Nazi mad scientist, who is kidnapping hobos, turning them into mindless killing machines that feel no pain, then having them rampage and destroy American military assets.

Joe Simon wrote the story and Jack Kirby illustrated it. It was a story that depends on really creepy images to work effectively and generate the appropriate horrific atmosphere. I think Kirby's best work as an artist came in the 1960s and 1970s, but he succeeds beautifully here in hitting that creepy vibe. The panels showing us the rampaging zombies put any thing from a George Romero movie to shame.

Anyway, Cap and Bucky go undercover as hobos, get kidnapped, and (after the villain conveniently explains his plan) beat up the bad guys and put a stop to this particular Zombie Apocalypse.

If you like modern zombie films and TV shows, then I have no problem with that. There's much of it I have never watched, so my opinion isn't a well-educated one and I freely admit it is based on personal preference. Just as I would hope no one would be dismissive of the fiction I can be passionate about, I hope that I would never be dismissive of someone else's tastes.

But for me, this Captain America story--published 27 years before Night of the Living Dead gave birth to modern Zombie movies--this is a story that shows us how to do such a story right.

Next week, we'll go on a mission with G.I. Robot as he takes on a Japanese Sumo-robot.