Saturday Night Furor!

CAPTAIN AMERICA — Issue no. 224, May 1978

Book: Captain America

Issue No.: 224

Published: May 9, 1978

Title: “Saturday Night Furor!”

Cover Price: 35¢

Remember that movie D.O.A, where the guy gets poisoned and has to figure out who poisoned him before the poison kills him? This Captain America story reminds me of D.O.A. It opens with Captain America unconscious, washed up on a river bank. He’s rescued by a couple who take him to their home. When Cap wakes up, he doesn’t remember the last few days, and when he takes off his mask and looks in the mirror, he is shocked to see someone else’s face looking back at him. (Plus his hair is black, and Cap’s alter ego Steve Rogers is usually blond in the comics).

From there Captain America goes into detective mode and starts working to figure out who left him for dead and what happened to his face.

This is a fill-in story, credited to “guest writer” Peter Gillis and “guest penciler” Mike Zeck. Plus at the story’s end, a note from the editor states “we’ll return to our regular story line next issue — be here!” But as far as fill-in stories go, this is a pretty entertaining one, and the pencils by comics legend Mike Zeck are (of course) rock solid. Plus the story fits well into the then-current Captain America storylines, which had included Cap suffering from some memory lapses.

(Plus I have an actual paper copy of this book, so that makes it even more fun to read.)

It turns out Captain America is a pretty good detective. He figures out who tried to kill him (it was super-villain Tarantula) and what happened to his face (Cap was working undercover and wearing some kind of Mission: Impossible-style super-realistic mask). And Cap figures out all this in time to track down and capture Tarantula.

Week Nineteen Wrap-Up

I read nine regular 35-cent Marvel comics from the second week of May 1978, plus a 60-cent annual and the 60-cent Marvel Classics Comics Robin Hood book. (As usual, I didn’t read the three U.K. weekly books, and I skipped Crazy Magazine no. 40 that came out on May 9, 1978.) Total cost of these books in ’78 was $5.05. Adjusted for 2023 inflation (new year, new inflation calculation), that’s about 23 bucks.

Next time — On to week twenty, which has a bunch of my favorite books, including Avengers, Conan, Devil Dinosaur, and X-Men! It’ll be tough to choose which one to read first!