Issue(s): Captain America #105
Cover Date: Sep 68
Title: "In the name of Batroc!"
Credits:
Stan Lee - Writer
Jack Kirby - Penciler
Dan Adkins - Inker

Review/plot:
Sulking again about Bucky, Cap blows off a date with Sharon Carter and asks the military for a mission to keep him busy. Luckily, they've got a doozy for him. An enemy spy (they won't say which enemy) has placed a bomb in the city.

Different enemies would be willing to pay lots for the bomb, and they hire Batroc, along with the Swordsman and the Living Laser, to retrieve it.

If they are enemies of America, you'd think they'd be happy to have it go off in New York City, but i guess they've got better plans for it. Cap fights the "Batroc Brigade" one by one and defuses the bomb in time.

Along the way he starts comparing himself to Jesus. When Batroc runs away when he hears that the bomb is armed, Cap says "There was another who gave his life for the masses... many centuries ago... And though he was the wisest one of all... he never thought of the humblest living being... as undeserving." Weird. I think Cap needs some serious psychological help. We've been lucky to not get a lot of religious claptrap in Marvel comics so far, and considering both Stan and Jack were Jewish, i'm not sure where this is coming from.

On the other hand, you gotta love Batroc.

    

The art on page three and four - a sequence that shows Batroc walking in on a training session with the Swordsman fighting a four-armed robot - is thin and sketchy looking compared to the rest of the book. It doesn't look like Kirby; it looks more like Gil Kane.

    

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 2

Chronological Placement Considerations: The Bucky wounds may have been re-opened after Cap put aside doubts once and for all that Bucky was dead in Avengers #56.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Marvel Super Action #7

Both the Swordsman and the Living Laser had taken on the whole team of avengers. Here they lose to cap in a few panels.

I dunno. Both of them appeared in the Avengers as solo threats, but they didn't really take on the whole team by themselves. The Swordsman stalemated Cap in one-on-one battle in his first appearance, then fled from the Kooky Quartet int heir other two fight scenes even *after* getting the Mandarin's gadgets in his sword.

Thereafter he was a henchvillain, regularly losing to single Avengers, sometimes losing even in tandem with his frequent partner Power Man (as when Hawkeye takes them both out himself in Avengers #30, with an assist from the Black Widow). Heck, Cap had already beaten Swordsman and Power Man all by himself in Tales of Suspense #88.

As to the Laser, his first appearance is him *losing* a one-on-one fight with Goliath. The rest of his debut story is mostly him either escaping the Avengers or luring them into traps, and he only battles the whole team once he's got his own rebel army backing him up.

It's really not until the 1970s that the Laser gets upgrades that make him a major threat tot he team, and arguably he's still not really a powerhouse villain until he turns into living light energy in the 1980s.

Does Anybody know the "origin" of the name "Batroc"? I always found it pretty weird...

It's a pun on Batrachia, a genus of frogs.

Sorry, not a genus, but rather a clade.

Really? Very clever then, isn´t it?

I think this info about Batroc makes him all the more clever as a literal "French frog"...compared to the likes of...um, Leap-Frog.

Batroc is also nearly an anagram of Acrobat (not as funny as Batrachia I'll admit...)

In some alternate universe Batroc never formed his Brigade. Instead, he gathered the Acrobat, Leap-Frog, and the Kangaroo to form....the Lords A-Leaping.