Issue(s): Marvel Treasury Special: Captain America's Bicentennial Battles, Captain America #201, Captain America #202, Captain America #203
Cover Date: Jun-Nov 76
Title: "Captain America's bicentennial battles: Mister Buda!!! / The lost super-hero! / My fellow Americans! / Stop here for glory! / The face of the future!" / "The Night People!" / "Mad, mad dimension!" / "Alamo II!"
Credits:
Jack Kirby - Writer
Jack Kirby - Penciler
Herb Trimpe, John Romita Sr., & Barry Windsor-Smith / Frank Giacoia - Inker

Review/plot:
Trimpe, Romita, and Windsor-Smith ink the Treasury Special only. The regular issues are all Giacoia.

You can't open a comic from 1976 without seeing a reference to the Bicentennial, usually in the form of an ad trying to sell you a commemorative coin with Cap blowing on a fife. And in that same spirit comes this Marvel Treasury Special which features Captain America meeting a Mister Buda who sends Cap on a time traveling mission to experience the history of the United States.

Cap and Buda are also arguing about something but it's hard to understand exactly what.

Mister Buda is later revealed (not by Kirby) to be the Elder of the Universe known as the Contemplator, so there's that. The other interesting thing is that Kirby's historical choices aren't just the obvious ones. Sure there's World War I & II and the Revolutionary period (where Ben Franklin steals his idea for the American flag from Cap's costume)...

...but also a near meeting with anti-slavery radical John Brown...

...a collapsed coal mine, and a nuclear bomb testing site. Plus a meeting with young Jack Kirby.

And some other weird scenes.

It's very clearly a historical/memorial type of book, but there's a good if somewhat confused message in there, and enough strangeness to keep it interesting.

The Treasury story also has a few pin-ups, including some imaginary Caps from other time periods. The Revolutionary War era one will be used much later in Mark Waid's Sentinel of Liberty series (although i don't recall a Hessianazi).

Things get weirder with the return to the regular series. Weird even for Kirby.

After stopping by to say goodbye to Mason Harding, creator of the Madbomb, Falcon finds that Leila has been kidnapped by a group of... wait for it... roving mental patients...

...who live in a pocket dimension and steal random objects from people on Earth. They want Leila because they need the Falcon because in their pocket dimension they are frequently attacked by monsters so they need a super-hero.

The Falcon tries to rush to where Leila was last heard from by trying to catch a plane. Literally.

The owner of the plane is Texas Jack Muldoon, a hootin' and hollarin' cowboy oil man.

Falcon then winds up getting sucked into the pocket dimension. Both Leila and Falcon are subjected to shock therapy. The Falcon is then sent after a monster that says "Aarrr! Rrowr!"...

...while Muldoon has one of his scientists create a portal to the other dimension. Sharon Carter is... i dunno, just psycho, and unhappy about Cap going to rescue Leila and the Falcon.

Texas Jack Muldoon joins Cap for the rescue.

The brainwashed Falcon and Cap get into a fight, but when the dimension's native rock monsters attack the group...

...Cap takes advantage of the mental patients' limited intellect and tricks them all back through the portal.

There's a lot of references to the Alamo which led me to believe that Muldoon would have to stay behind, holding off the monster hoards as everyone else fled, but nothing like that happened.

The dialogue is just terrible, and the story doesn't give Kirby as much to work with artwise as his other Cap plots.

The most interesting thing is that the mental patients' dimension and its inhabitants look a bit like it could be part of the Negative Zone...

...but i suppose that's just thanks to Kirby's recognizable art style.

Quality Rating: D

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - first Contemplator (as Mister Buda)

Chronological Placement Considerations: Despite the appearance of Mason Harding, issue #201 doesn't have to be a direct continuation from #200 and indeed the MCP place the Treasury book between Cap #200-201. Marvel Team-Up #52 takes place after Cap #203 and then there are a number of other Cap appearances before Cap #204. I'm exercising my "interdimensional teleportation doesn't have to be instantaneous" rule and not placing Marvel Team-Up #32 directly after this, mostly because of some dependencies for Spider-Man regarding the Team-Up issue.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Captain America: Bicentennial Battles

This story continues in Marvel Team-Up #52.

The Night People were announced in FOOM as the Midnight People.

At one point, Texas Jack Muldoon lassoes somebody(Cap?) from inside the plane, something people tended to see in the sillier silver age DC comics.

DC's Bicentennial promotion was a silver Superman belt buckle, and to get it you had to buy several of one month's DC comics with a special Bicentennial banner on the top--and then mutilate the covers in order to mail the banners in. Given DC in 1976, it wasn't a great loss, but still...

That movie scene foreshadows some of Cap's treatment in his recent movie.

Not only does Ben Franklin rip off Cap, he also snags Clea under Dr. Strange's nose. He's lucky he didn't get turned into a super-villain.

There's also an obligatory "Jaws" scene with Cap fighting a great white shark. You could create an entire website about how often "Jaws" got cashed-in upon in mid-1970s comics...

Here's an example of that ad with Cap on the fife that fnord references. I think this image appeared in like every book that Marvel put out that year.

I gotta say I liked these issues. Well, really, the whole Kirby return run. Corny as hell but fun. Texas Jack is a big cartoon but it was hard for me not to read all his lines and not laugh. And Mark it was Falcon he lassoed from a moving plane. Ridiculous, yes, but it made me smile.