Thanks to the super-soldier serum, Captain America is the best that a human being can be – super-strong, super-fast, super-agile, doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, and has a Nintendo DS Brain Training age of 20. Not bad for a guy who’s technically in his 80s now. And, well, dead. Yes, Captain America – at least, Steve Rogers, the Captain America that people have been growing up with ever since Double-yuh Double-yuh Two – is no more. He was shot by a sniper at the end of 2007’s massive Civil War cross-over and unusually for a comic book icon, is still dead. But let’s take this opportunity to briefly remember the hero that he was: created by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon as a ra-ra tool in the Second World War, Cap really came into his own in the 1960s, when Kirby and Lee thawed him out and put him in charge of The Avengers. In a post-9/11 world, the juxtaposition of a man with a rigid moral compass in a world going to hell in a handbasket led to some of the best Captain America comics in years. For that reason, it can’t be too long before the old super-soldier serum flows through Steve Rogers’ veins once more.

FIRST APPEARED IN CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS #1 (1941)
CREATED BY JOE SIMON AND JACK KIRBY