In Avengers Mansion, Captain America sets aside his mighty shield to spell the weary Jarvis in opening the morning mail (maybe Jarvis got a paper cut):
All panels in this post are from Avengers #113,
written by Steve Englehart, art by Bob Brown and Frank Bolle
What's this? Why is Cap so confounded? Fan mail from some flounder? No!
So what is our star-spangled Avenger's response to this creepy communiqué?:
Yay, Cap! Now that's how you deal with hate mail! Nowadays we'd have a seventeen-part cross-over series in which Cap manipulates Nick Fury into hacking the USPS mainframe database to find the sender of this slimy snail mail, then enlist the Punisher to beat out of him the true mastermind behinds the devilish plot, who would probably turn out to be Iron Man with a brain slug attached or something. But in the seventies, this neat little piece of characterization tells us all we need to know in four panels: that there's still some ugly-minded, illiterate hate-mongers hiding behind anonymity to spew their prejudice against the American right of a artificial synthezoid to get smoochy with a Balkan mutant witch, and Cap don't put up with that crap.
I don't post on many out-and-out discussion boards like CBR or Newsarama, but I think that this would be a dandy response to post right after some of the dumb-ass statements made by fans and heck, sometimes even creators:
You da man, Cap. You, sir, are truly da man.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQenrY-T9_-EUVG2XBTW-ZiSnvw_V3JFU-8tiFlhrdgKCUBaE56ekbiILucymY9gA-xa4zdGy_z1Njojw78Z-YnlUiN4PIRRurK7GzqoEg3B-PmXl2RJaS1ZaVKVCEHP-m-WVr2xjqailLu1jlzylysiBGc3sVXLXNMFDzAURyrHhKBfcqyO4/s1600/button-libertybellmarch.jpg" "It's...")
14 comments:
Maybe the letter writer meant to say that androids have no **soles...which is probably true.
(You can tell that Cap doesn't use a letter-opener all that often).
Y'know, given what subsequently happened with the magical robot demon babies, the letter totally called it on the fire and brimestone bit.
I read stuff like that all the time on the Rapture Ready forums.
"I am sad u well all brun in hell! Yay god!"
Wow! Having been the recipient of a few letters like this, I certainly appreciate Cap's response! Thank, Bully!
In addition to hating bigotry and zeolotry, Cap ALSO gets cheesed off at those who misspell their rant-filled diatribes.
It's a good thing that I spell grate.
LMAO! Sometimes when reading this blog I crack up wondering, "How can a stuffed bull be so freaking witty?"
It would turn out that note was written by John Byrne.
I wonder if this subplot was inspired by the hate mail Hank Aaron got when he was on the cusp of breaking Babe Ruth's home run record. Peanuts did a similar story with Snoopy.
Never before have I seen a man crush paper with such vigor. That's not your ordinary paper crumpling...that's super soldier crumpling!
I will freely admit, I'd have liked for the author of that letter to see Cap's face when he reads the letter.
Something tells me bowel control might be lost.
Letter-Crushing Cap kicks Weeping Superman's butt!
"Athlete's wrist"? Athlete's foot I know of, it's fungal thing...is this a common name for an rsi in the US?
is this a common name for an rsi in the US?
I'm guessing there wasn't a common, layman's name for a repetitive stress injury back when this comic was written, but today we might call it:
Capt-al stress disorder!
Haw! I slay me.
Mr. Bully, sir, with this one post you have single-handedly restored my faith in comics fandom. And in tiny stuffed animals.
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