Issue(s): Tales Of Suspense #95 (Captain America story only)
Cover Date: Nov 67
Title: A time to die... a time to live!"
Credits:
Stan Lee - Writer
Jack Kirby - Penciler
Joe Sinnott - Inker

Review/plot:
Steve Rogers gives up being Captain America because Sharon Carter turns down his marriage proposal which he made within five minutes of her first seeing him out of costume.

Her first duty is to SHIELD so she can't marry him even though she loves him desperately. Cap is sick of duty so he quits.

SHIELD obviously isn't happy about this turn of events, so they call in Tony Stark.

Tony Stark asks Cap how the Avengers will react to his resignation when they reconvene.

Cap points out that the team currently has enough members to start a colony. He calls Tony a good friend, which isn't something that's been shown on panel previously.

Cap hasn't just quit. He's also revealed his secret ID to the public. It's a pretty bold move by Stan Lee, although it's not clear if he really understood the implications it would have.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 2

Chronological Placement Considerations: Takes place after Avengers #46, where Cap is still debating: "Do I have the right to tell her... while I still wear the mask of Captain America?"

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Marvel Double Feature #19

Captain America: Man Out Of Time (the miniserie by Mark Waid about the first days of Cap in the modern world) establish a sort of friendship between Steve and Tony. Tony showed and explained to Steve all the most important moments of american history that Steve "missed" while he was "on ice".

I've always thought that Cap revealing his id to the public was a stupid move and it later required some silly cover story to repair the damage. I do love the shot of Steve and Sharon going for a drive.

I never really thought that Cap having a secret ID made much sense, simply because he spent practically all his time as Cap. Over the decades first Stan Lee and then various subsequent writers attempted to give Steve Rogers different civilian lives & professions, but none of them ever panned out in the long run.

In hindsight it's obvious that the only reason Cap had a secret identity for so many decades was because that was an accepted trope of the genre, and *every* superhero had a secret ID, whether it actually made any sense or not. In 2002 when Cap finally publicly unmasked once again during the Marvel Knights issues it had literally ZERO impact on the character, because it's not like anyone in the Marvel universe knew who Steve Rogers was in the first place. He hadn't had any civilian friends for years.

I remember that when I saw The Winter Soldier movie, and it was established in the very first scene that the general public knew that Steve Rogers was Cap, I literally thought to myself "Thank god they aren't trying to do any kind of secret identity nonsense."

I agree. Secret identity stuff works for a character like Spidey, but it is very overused in the superhero genre. That final scene of Iron Man 1, where Tony just flat out states "I am Iron Man" really was a growing up moment for Marvel as a whole.