10 Weirdest Controversies Surrounding Comics
2. Not Everyone Was Cool With Captain America Punching Hitler
The image of Captain America socking Adolf Hitler across the jaw is one of the most iconic covers in comic history. It immediately establishes everything we need to know about the character: he's the good guy, and he's here to punch Nazis. Who could argue with that?
As it turns out, quite a few people. In today's day and age, it's safe to say that as a society we are generally okay with Nazis being punched. We're especially okay when the Nazi getting punched is Adolf Hitler, or "The Mac Daddy of All Nazis", as the kids call him. However, when Captain America Comics #1 was released in 1941, the US had still not become involved in World War II. In many American's eyes, Hitler was just a foreign political leader who seemed to be getting up to a bit of mischief, far away in Europe. Although by today's standards, attacking Hitler seems like a natural course of action, releasing this comic was a HUGE political statement.
And it paid off in a huge way: despite comics in the forties being looked down upon as an inferior art form (what's changed, eh?), Captain America #1 sold over a million copies. Unfortunately, it also generated a lot of hate mail and death threats for its Jewish creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, so much so that New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia granted them police protection. Not cool, Nazis!