Captain America 213 p 7 (September 1977)
by Jack Kirby (1917-1994) and Dan Green (ca. 1946-)
13 x 20 in., ink on paper
Coppola Collection

“The Night Flyer!”

After dreaming that he is fighting the Red Skull, Captain America awakens, still blind, in the hospital. The Falcon, whom a SHIELD team rescued in South America killing “Big Bird,” is by his bedside.

Jack Kirby and Stan Lee … or Stan Lee and Jack Kirby … launched the modern age of superheroes in 1961 with their naturalistic approach to the Fantastic Four. This history is written. Kirby was with the company from 1958 to 1970, when the stress of creative differences split him from Lee and the growing monolith of the Marvel Comics Group.

His separation was a hiatus, and he returned to Marvel from DC from 1976-78, writing and drawing his co-creation with Joe Simon, “Captain America,” from issues 193-214, this page being from Kirby’s penultimate issue before his permanent split from the mainstream comics companies in 1978.

His art still had the same blocky power, but it always felt a little off compared with the work in the 1960s. And, heretical or not, the guy could not write. He was used to providing margin notes of ideas in his art, which Lee or other writers would turn into actual script dialogue that seemed more situated in the modern world.

This page starts off with the memorable “That’s It! Wake Up, Chum!” and pretty much goes downhill from there.