10 Mind-Blowing Facts You Didn't Know About Captain America

The first issue of Captain America Comics sold over a million copies, which was a staggering achievement, even by today's standards. Despite the fact the new series was heavily praised, some people (you know the type) hated it so much, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby received hate mail and death threats. One man was so outraged by the comic, he showed up in the lobby of Jack Kirby's workplace to pick a fight with him. Kirby was happy to oblige, but by the time he left his office, the man who made the threatening call was nowhere to be seen.

At first, this may not sound too surprising. Selling a comic of Captain America cleaning Adolf Hitler's clock was guaranteed to irk the Nazis.

But here's the thing; the writers received death threats... from Americans. At the time, there were many Nazi sympathisers in the US. The American German Bund, founded in 1936, was composed of American citizens with German ancestry who passionately promoted the Nazi Party, while America's policy of non-intervention in WWII was broadly supported across the country. People like this saw Captain America as an affront to their beliefs and so, lashed out.

Kirby would later serve in the frontlines of WWII, fighting in France and putting his skills as an artist to use drawing up reconnaissance maps of enemy positions.