Reel Pop

Captain America, the super soldier who personified the patriotic ideal by wearing tight blue underwear and cute red booties, is dead. The superhero, if you haven't heard already, was felled by a sniper's bullet in the 25th issue of his comic title. (Cap has been around since 1917; Marvel relaunched all its titles at #0 a few years back.)

I was a big Cap fan back in middle school. And the first animation I ever did with the LOGO programming language showed Cap's shield moving across the screen, I'm not ashamed to say. Well. Maybe a little ashamed. Shut up.

Anyway, you can already find a few tribute videos up on YouTube. And there are plenty of news retrospectives about the hero. Below, videos from Cap's various appearances in film and on TV. I'm still looking for vids from his 1990 straight-to-DVD movie disaster. Let me know if you find clips online.

Captain America (1944)
This Republic Pictures movie serial featured Dick Purcell as Captain America, a superhero only loosely based on the comic book. Below, the third chapter in the twelve-part series. The late English stage actor Lionel Atwill plays The Scarab. You can find the second part of this chapter here, and another chapter (showing Captain America brandishing a pistol, of all things) here.

Captain America (1979)
The 1979 made-for-TV movie was co-written by the great Jack Kirby and featured Reb Brown as Steve Rogers, aka Captain America. In this show, Rogers is the son of the original superhero, and his shield weapon doubles as a semi-transparent windscreen for his motorcycle.

Captain America II: Death too Soon (1979)
A video from the second TV movie.

Battle Fever J (Japan, 1979)
This Japanese series was co-produced with Marvel and was originally supposed to feature a Japanese version of Captain America. I'm throwing it in because the theme song is like sex for your ears.