Issue(s): Captain America #271
Cover Date: Jul 82
Title: "The mystery of Mr. X"
Credits:
David Anthony Kraft - Writer
Alan Kupperberg - Penciler
John Beatty & Co. - Inker
Lance Tooks - Assistant Editor
Jim Salicrup - Editor

Review/plot:
I don't know if you knew this, but Bernie Rosenthal is really into professional wrestling.

Captain America, on the other hand, can only see it through a lens of protecting the children and role models.

So when a wrestler gets killed, Steve Rogers is in uniform and muscling his way into the police investigation.

God, Cap. Chill out, huh?

This is a fill-in by David Anthony Kraft, one of several during J.M. DeMatteis' run. And there's a certain amount of allowance you make, plotwise, for a fill in.

So a plot about Captain America investigating the seedy underworld of professional wrestling...

...and helping to clear the name of a wrestler that got set up? Fine. As long as Cap gets in the ring at some point.

But Cap is written as such a stuffed shirt in this story, and Bernie is just devastated - devastated! - over the death of her favorite never-mentioned-before wrestler...

...that it's all a little weird.

Quality Rating: D+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: The MCP places this between Avengers #220-221. I've kept that placement but placed this after Captain America #272; see that entry's considerations for details.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Wrestling didn't actually become huge in this country until about 2 years later.

Reagan's hair on that TV Guide cover looks like Bill Sienkiewicz drew it.

It didn't get huge until around 1984-85, with Hulkamania (Hogan, not Banner) and Cyndi Lauper and all of that, but it was picking up steam by this point. Jerry Lawler and Andy Kaufman on the Letterman show would have been right around the corner when this issue was published, and more people were getting cable in the early 1980s and seeing regional shows, which is when the fuse was lit.

fnord has probably already recapped the issue, but Bernie's wrestling fandom comes up a second time. She and Steve go to a live match, and he's only marginally less stick-up-the-ass about it. He has a thought balloon like "This is a little theatrical for one who has experienced true combat!"

Oy, its bad. Between the trial by combat and king Aurthur giving cap trouble. im shocked Steve didnt run for the hills when he found Bernie crying about wrestling.