Our Pal Sal #2 - Captain America #168

In this second installment of my traipsing through Sal Buscema’s penciling career, I’ve decided to concentrate on Captain America #168 (cover-dated December 1973), featuring the origin of Baron Helmut Zemo, he of Thunderbolts fame who, back then, adopted a moniker that would attain far greater significance down the road in an entirely different series—indeed, the current-day Baron Zemo
was first known as the one and only original Phoenix, hoo-ha!

This one-shot story—entitled “...And A Phoenix Shall Arise!”—was co-written by Roy Thomas and Tony Isabella; Sal’s pencils were embellished by John Tartag and George Roussos. I much prefer when he inks his own pencils though, like he did most of the time during his run on Spectacular Spider-Man. There’s a much sharper and defined look to the pages when he’s his own inker.

The cover tells us that we’ll gasp when we learn the villain's startling secret identity. These days it’d be hyped months in advance, back then it was just a blurb meant to draw in readers. Interestingly, they decided not to be too obvious about it from the get-go by substituting “Adhesive X” for “molten lava” and “death ray” for “laser blast” in the Phoenix’s word balloon. It’s a good, fun cover, even if it looks like Cap’s toes are dipped in the supposed lava. You’d think the heat alone would make him a bit uncomfortable.

Our tale opens with Cap and his partner, the Falcon, patrolling the rooftops. They engage in the Exposition Shuffle for a moment, but they’re interrupted by a big old FZASSK! Cap calls Falc a duck as the chimney behind them is blown to smithereens. When they look up, they are greeted by the sight of a man in a costume that is likely meant to look cool or something but, much as I love Sal, isn’t. Sorry, Sal. You gotta love 70s comic book dialogue, by the way. I particularly like how Phoenix has a very flexible definition of wit:




So there’s some running and shooting, Sam pounds on the red-and-yellow-garbed freak and gets some bigoted comments for his trouble, which I take it is meant to be a clue. Poor Falcon is about to be toasted, but wouldn’t you know it, the lasergun conveniently conks out and Phoenix decides to take a run for it, while Cap has forgotten all about this handy shield he carries around and which he tends to use to, you know, throw at people? Sheesh :)




Because the Phoenix spoke of vengeance, Cap decides to run down his list of enemies, figuring he has “more arch-enemies than most people have relatives.” He then proceeds to list, wait for it, five enemies, two of whom are (presumed) dead. Yeah Cap, that was some deep thinking you did there. Since Captain America is even less of a detective than post-Crisis Batman, he comes up with the bright idea to turn himself into bait, in the hopes of drawing out this newest foe. Falcon wants to help out but Steve is afraid something bad’ll happen to Sam, so rather than telling him this, he acts like a jerk (“So, go play with your pet birdies somewhere else, okay?” That sounded oddly dirty...). Ah, the tried and true superhero approach of not using your head. At all.

The ongoing plot of Cap having his good name sullied on the radio is paid some lip-service while our hero swings through town. For some reason either Buscema or his inker or the colorist decided not to give Cap any eyes in this panel:




Luckily Cap regains his eyes just in time to notice someone approaching him in a panic, who tells him how he was attacked by a nutjob who tried to kill him. Cap’s response to the man standing strangely still with his back to him in the alley? Throw his shield, right? No, of course not. Instead, Cap headbutts him in the back (“smash” is a sound now?) and the man falls apart. Literally, because it is a trap (duh) and Cap gets gassed. The scared guy turns out to be the Phoenix, who now obviously has the upper hand and could easily blow his hated enemy’s head off with his death-ray.

As super-villains are wont to do though, he instead trusses up the hero of the piece to a big metal slab hanging above a cauldron filled with something hot and bubbly and starts to talk about the reasons behind this entire exercise of revenge. When he announces the vat is filled with Adhesive X, Cap is surprised, since its inventor, Baron Heinrich Zemo, has been dead for years now. Sal Buscema gives us a nice shot of a face filled with rage before we fade into the moodily illustrated flashback origin scene, which even includes the reason why the original Baron Zemo hated Cap so much, for those who came in late.

After Helmut discovered that Captain America had been revived (back in Avengers #4) and then was present when the elder Zemo was buried under a mountain of rubble (Avengers #15), he set out on his path of revenge, reinventing his father’s Adhesive X and the Death Ray. Now I can dig the Death Ray, it’s your standard villainous prop. But Adhesive X is basically super-duper-glue, so I’m less clear on the nefarious purposes for that one. Especially since its properties appear to be very plot-convenient (note how when Heinrich got doused in the adhesive, only his mask wouldn’t come off, but his gloves and clothes still did—and wouldn’t his eyes be glued shut too? Oh well, best not to think about it, I suppose.)


Cap remains remarkably calm, trying to talk Zemo out of his killing mood, but the man ain’t having it. Luckily for the Captain, Sam Wilson suddenly jumps into the warehouse, since he hadn’t bought Cap’s earlier attempt to get rid of him and had planted a SHIELD tracer on Cap’s shield. Yes, SHIELD on shield, that’s funny. Or not. While Falc and Phoenix/Zemo are engaged in battle, Cap gets really upset about the possibility of Sam hurting the psycho who’s been trying to ice him, and not in the “I’ll be unfrozen to hype Marvel’s newest teambook” type of way—so upset that he not only breaks from his shackles, but somehow is also able to jump away from the slab, rather than actually falling into the cauldron as your average laws of physics would indicate.




The Captain tells Falcon that they have to try reasoning with Zemo rather than continuing the cycle of hatred. Zemo himself is less interested in that sentiment and makes a grab for Cap’s own shield, intending to kill him with it by throwing it at him. Smart move, Helmut, because whoopsie, the shield boomerangs back (how it does that I don’t know, it’s not as if frisbees do that sort of thing, do they?) and SWAPP!s the Phoenix right into the boiling Adhesive X. We get a nice shot of Zemo’s hand as he goes under, dying a gruesome death.




For future plot purposes, the writers decide to have Cap walk away all downbeat rather than, I don’t know, salvage the body from the vat, as he feels guilty for reviving “a whole generation’s hatreds”. Self-important much?




So, here we are, the first appearance of the self-same Helmut Zemo who would one day become one of my favorite villains. Back in this issue though, he was a bit of a throwaway fill-in villain, and would in fact not be seen again for nearly 10 years, when Marc DeMatteis finally decides to return him from the dead (which I will talk about sometime soon).

The art isn’t anything altogether special, to be honest, but I’m going to blame that on the combination of Sal being far less experienced back then and the inkers he was working with. There’s some cool shots though, and the art services the story well enough, such as it is, so I can’t complain too much. I can imagine that if I were a kid back in the 70s, I would’ve liked this or even loved this, although it does puzzle me that apparently nobody wanted to see the character again in all those years, or they would’ve brought him back sooner, wouldn’t they? Makes me think that perhaps even the ‘70s audience wrote this one off as filler. Little did Thomas and Isabella realize the potential for great villainy they had created, but that, as they say, is a story for another time...