15. The Fighting American by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby

I wrestle with the ethics of adding a comic book to the 50 Books count, not because I consider reading comics in any way a lesser literary or artistic endeavour than reading just words but because they can be so quick to read and feels a bit like stat-padding. Ideally, I would have a separate count/blog just for comics, but I don't read enough to justify that.  My general rule is that if it took me a few days and if it is an entire series, then I can count it.  If the material is particularly interesting and worth discussing, I may even bend those previous two rules a bit to get one in.

Fighting American checks all 3 boxes, so I'm counting it.  There were only 8 issues and the are all collected in this beautiful hardback.  It's quite an interesting evolution as it starts out being a Captain America facsimile but with the bad guys being the reds rather than the Nazis. The first issue is sort of straight forward, having a similar concept of Reds as we see in the I Was a Communist for the FBI OTR series, with commies being these impossibly organized cells all over the country, led and connected with other types of criminals.  By the third issue, though, things start to get really weird.  It's a great combo of Kirby clearly starting to feel his insane creativity busting out and both of them recognizing the insanity and absurdity of the red scare.  The bad guys get wackier and the tone gets goofier until by the end we are in Plastic Man territory.  It's great fun!

From this (where they wipe out an invading force hiding on the summit of Mt. Shasta!):

To this:

 

What's also interesting is how Fighting American actually lives with his sidekick in the same apartment and they even share a single bedroom!  Different times.

The art is early Kirby so not quite as angular and explosive as he would get but definitely uniquely his style.  Bodies in the fight scenes are always so contorted and lined, nothing wrinkles like a bad guy's suit when he gets flattened by a Kirby hero.  And I love his teeth!  My only complaint is that the inking and colour separations are a bit sloppy.  I suspect this is not a fault of the reprint but that these comics were cranked out quite rapidly at the time.  

As always with Kirby just incredible covers, works of art each one